Last week, I talked about how to get subscribers and increase your opt in rate. This week, I’m going to talk about a what might be the most important aspect of your email list: setting up an autoresponder.
Setting up an autoresponder for your email list refers to writing specific emails be sent out automatically to new subscribers following their signing up for your list.
You can write and set up as many of these followup emails as you want to be sent out to a new subscriber as well as deciding the duration over which they are sent out. You can send one out every day following a new sign up to your list or you can space them out. You can even schedule them in such a way so that you never send out an email on a particular day of the week, regardless of when that person signed up.
I know a few people who write and design dozens and dozens of emails when setting up an autoresponder, ready to go out whenever someone signs up. There’s nothing wrong with this if you have enough to write about over that many emails. You can think of it this way: the more emails which you can auto schedule, the less work you have to do.
You’re not required to have any kind of followup emails, but you should think about setting up an autoresponder for 3 reasons:
Developing a Relationship With Your Reader
First, followup emails are great for developing a relationship with your subscriber right from the start. A new subscriber probably still doesn’t know everything about you or what exactly they’ll be receiving in terms of content until you start emailing them, so get off on the right foot by offering a lot of free quality information or additional incentives in these emails from the start. Keep in mind that these are the emails which every single new subscriber will get before they’ve likely received much or any other content from you.
I’ve put a lot of work into my autoresponder series which I call “The 10 Day Fast Track Training Course” which teaches people everything they need to know to really make money today through affiliate marketing. That’s 10 consecutive emails packed full of free but quality information and while I may recommend a product here or there, most everything which I recommend is completely free of charge.
There aren’t any surprises and it really is just 10 days of quality information which I think is a great way to start a relationship. Over-delivering to your audience is a constant must and this is how I do that from the start.
Makes Them Expect Your Content
Secondly, the autoresponder puts your new subscribers in the habit of looking for subsequent emails and content from you. Every day my new subscribers receive a new email as part of the training course. There have been instances where some my subscribers look forward to this content so much to the point where they have emailed me and asked if they could get the next day’s email early. That tells me that I’m doing something right and that they’re paying attention to anything I send them.
Powerful Sales Tool
Finally, the autoresponder can also be used as a powerful sales funnel through which you can market your products or services. The autoresponder should address and solve the subscriber’s problem over the course of a handful of emails and through those emails you can recommend products which can help your subscriber with that problem.
A good technique to use is to offer some content in your first couple of emails with just a slight mention of your product or service, but then use that third email to hard sell to your new subscriber. Then on the fourth and fifth email you might go back to providing useful information and pulling the emphasis away from selling. There’s an old statistic which showed that, on average, people typically will purchase your offer around the 7th email. This is because it takes time developing a relationship with your subscriber, so they likely want to get the impression that you know what you’re talking about before they start taking your advice to purchase something.
You should also tweak your autoresponder emails over and over again. I routinely take another glance at them every month or so to see if there is anything which I should change or update. Because everyone sees these emails and sees them before anything else from you/your newsletter, you want to get the copy just right.
If you’d like you can sign up for my list at the top of this page if you haven’t already done so to take a look at my autoresponder series of emails and see the kind of strategy and copy which I employ.