I’m this week researching for a new autoresponder system, which has been long overdue. An autoresponder is more than just another robot e-mailer, it is a whole set of automated e-mails having periodic send times. From a marketing perspective an autoresponder comes close to being your best friend.
The best friend tag is not a flippant remark, I’m saying that with a high degree of proof.
The internet as an audience is a fickle thing, particularly if you consider how we normally shop in the offline mode. Shopping offline takes on various differing guises but we often see one common theme which is that of customer loyalty. We like to return to known places, to places we have had good experiences, quality products, transparent service, hassle free purchasing and above all, shops which are credible.
Credibility is an area which is paramount to achieve when looking to sell or offer anything through a website fronted business. Credibility is essential.
So how do I look to build credibility and more to the point how does this relate to autoresponders?
The answer is to offer your clients quality information they are searching for, and offer it for free. Free courses are one of your best tools in building business credibility and more importantly repeat visitors. Repeat visitors turn into paying visitors as they will begin to believe in you and believe in your product.
An autoresponder can be set to send a free course as a set of periodic e-mails, triggered by the user signing up for the course. in the background you have already composed your free course and saved it as a series of say ten e-mails. Now when the new prospect signs up for the free course they are sent the first in the series immediately, with the second in the series sent, let’s say, within 24 hours.
You break the timing up a bit and let’s say the third mail arrives a week later, and the fourth, five days later and so on. By the end of your course (perhaps a month or more) the potential client is eagerly awaiting the next installment and has faith in you and your services, you have built credibility over time.
This leads me back to where I started, my hunt for a new system, a system to install onto one of my servers to become the company autorepsonder, to allow us to migrate away from the third party system in current use.
So there we are ..