Auto Responders – What They Are and How To Use Them Effectively For Marketing

Email marketing is not just a “one and done” thing. You cannot simply get a newsletter up and running and watch the sales come through. People have this misconception about email marketing, and it’s tough to shake.

The reality of the matter is simple, you will need to do more than just have a “squeeze page” up and running. This is a good thing, and once you have emails setup, you can definitely do well. But you need more than that, because you’re going to face a lot of interaction, and if it falls on deaf ears, you’ll lose clients. If you want to sustain some good marketing collateral, consider an auto responder and make sure that you understand how to use them properly.

The Simple Side of Auto Responders

Focusing on email marketing, you are going to need to have a sign up form. People will give you their email address and you will send them newsletters. At the core of this relationship is the initial sign up. When someone signs up for your email list, you have two things that can move forward. First, you will need to respond to the person that has signed up. You could do this manually, if you were able to watch your email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If someone finds your site at 2 in the morning, are you going to be awake to reply?

Chances are that you are not going to be awake. That’s where the second thing will come into play, and that’s the auto responder. Auto responders are automated emails that you set up. You set them up to literally respond to an initial inquiry. It works like this:

• Client A signs up for your email newsletter.
• Client A receives an automatically generated email confirmation.
• Client A confirms their email, and are subscribed to your newsletter.

That’s what happens across the board for everyone that signs up for your list. It’s a simple thing that you can set up and use to confirm the newsletter element.

Using Auto Responders For Marketing

The basic formatting of how this all works is illustrated above. However, how do you harness that to do more than just confirm a newsletter sign up? Well, that’s where things get a bit trickier. In discussing affiliate marketing, and lead generation for marketing purposes, you will see auto responders are important. How so?

Take the example above and switch it up a little.

Let’s assume that you offer a free eBook to people that sign up for your newsletter. That’s what your squeeze page illustrates. So follow this path:

• Client A signs up for your email newsletter, under the guise that they will receive a free item.
• Client A checks their email, and there’s an automatically generated email confirmation.
• Client A reads the email and notices that there’s a download link.
• Client A downloads the free eBook.
• Client A is subscribed to your newsletters, and now has a free eBook you’ve given them.

It’s that simple. That is how you can use an auto responder to not only generate leads, but also give people a download link. Now, if you have an affiliate network you’re working with, here is a chance to give them an option to purchase something, or sign up for another newsletter. Either way, you are doing 2 major things here. You’re signing people up for your newsletter, and you’re giving away something for free. That’s a combination that works within internet marketing as a whole.

More To Learn

As far as auto responders are concerned, there are some advanced techniques that you can use them for. Mainly, you want to avoid having to respond to every email inquiry that you receive. One squeeze page could give you 100 or more emails. Do you really want to reply to each one in a unique fashion? Why not just write up 1 auto responder and let the automation cycle work for you? It’s a lot easier. Start there, and then seek out more advanced techniques.