Email Marketing Via Autoresponders 

The most valuable asset of the online marketer is, "Time!" Time's an asset, that 
for the most part, is taken for granted. It's invisible, odorless, tasteless and 
something that goes unnoticed, until you begin to run out of it and learn how 
much it truly costs! 
The key to becoming a successful online marketer lies in the ability to 
accomplish multiple, or redundant, marketing tasks at the same time. Wouldn't it 
be nice to have a clone, sitting next to you, sending out sales letters, welcome 
and thank you letters, order confirmation letters or any other email tasks you 
deem necessary? Well, you can have just that, and it's called an autoresponder. 
Let's begin by taking a moment and explaining what an autoresponder is. 
"An autoresponder is simply a program that runs through an email program that's 
designed to automatically respond to any email message sent to it with a 
pre-determined response, usually a sales letter, to the email address of the 
person who originated the response." 
Autoresponders are also known as mailbots, automatic email and email on demand. 
Autoresponders were fashioned from the huge success of fax on demand used in the 
offline marketplace. 
Autoresponders are becoming a very popular tool in the online marketers toolbox 
and it's my belief that autoresponders can increase your profits by as much as 
20-25%. The advantages of autoresponders far outweigh any disadvantages of 
utilizing this powerful tool. 
So let's take a look at autoresponders and their essential components, the 
advantages and also the disadvantages of utilizing autoresponders. 
Essential Components 
Not all autoresponders are created equal. There are thousands of companies 
online that offer an autoresponder service and there are just as many options 
and pricing structures. Here's my list of the essential components you'll need 
to make sure your autoresponder service offers to ensure your autoresponder is 
an effective online marketing tool and a valuable partner in your online 
business. 
Autoresponder Naming: You'll need to be able to have quite a bit of flexibility 
in the naming of your autoresponders. In order to have an effective advertising 
campaign, you'll need to be able to track the responses to your advertisements. 
Utilizing the naming feature allows you to have complete control over your 
online marketing and advertising efforts. Make sure you have a wide array of 
options available in naming your autoresponder. You want to be able to name your 
autoresponder something that pertains to your product or business and also for 
tracking your advertising effectiveness. 
Autoresponder Length: Make sure you select an autoresponder service that offers 
unlimited length for the text of your autoresponders. This may seem like a bit 
of overkill but this gives you the flexibility when preparing your sales 
materials. There's nothing worse than having to cut down a successful sales 
letter to fit the autoresponder. 
Autoresponder Free/Unlimited Updates: Make sure you select an autoresponder 
service that offers free and unlimited updates or changes to your 
autoresponders. In the online marketing world you absolutely need the 
flexibility to be able to provide up to date product information to your 
prospects and clients. Charges for changes to your autoresponders adds up very 
quickly! You need to have total control and be able to add, remove or change 
your documents as many times as you wish, yourself, without having to pay any 
extra for doing this. 
Autoresponder Keywords: Many autoresponder services require your prospects to 
put a keyword into the subject line or message body. Your potential customers 
may simply forget or mistype something and they'll never receive your document. 
Make sure to choose an autoresponder service that doesn't require the use of 
keywords. 
Receipt Notification: This is vital to your follow up efforts. This is simply an 
email notification sent to you that someone has requested information from your 
autoresponder. It provides the prospects email address and any of their comments 
inserted into the body of their email request. This is simply a must have option 
for any serious online marketer! 
Advantages Of Autoresponders 
Here are a few of the primary advantages of utilizing autoresponders in your 
online marketing and advertising efforts: 
Speed: This is why using autoresponders is vital to the success of your online 
business. We live in a now environment and the Internet only throws fuel on the 
fire. When we want information, we don't want to wait for days, hours or even 
minutes, we want it now! This is especially true when we're answering an online 
ad and requesting more information. A well written online advertisement will 
touch prospects emotions and elicit a response, requesting more information. 
When emotions are involved in the mix, it's essential as online marketers to 
respond with that additional information immediately. By doing this you'll get 
your sales message read in the best possible environment, by a hot prospect. 
This is exactly why I mentioned earlier that an autoresponder can increase your 
profits by 20-25%! 
Cost: It costs nothing for a prospect to look at your online advertisement and 
request more information. Unlike other advertisements that ask for a prospect to 
send a SASE or possibly $1-$2 for an additional report, it costs nothing to send 
an email. You're dealing with a base of approximately 75 million who have email 
access and since they usually have a single monthly rate, they're not paying for 
each email. So there is no cost for sending or receiving a single email message. 

Using With Your Web Site: This is an excellent opportunity to provide a number 
of ways to integrate autoresponders into your online marketing strategy. A 
problem almost every webmaster faces is how to get vital information on the 
visitors to their web site, their visitors! You can get this vital information 
in an number of ways, such as, via guest books, online order forms, ezines 
subscriptions and especially by offering additional free information via an 
autoresponder. You can offer via autoresponder, updated price lists, product 
listings, or any other information you wish to distribute. When a visitor uses 
this "mailto" link they'll receive your marketing information and you'll capture 
their email address. 
It Automates Your Online Marketing: As I mentioned earlier, time is a valuable 
and vital asset to every online marketer! Anything that an online marketer can 
do to automate daily tasks makes them even more effective. Using autoresponders 
is the easiest way to automate the selling process! If you don't have to spend 
hours going through your incoming email and manually sending out your replies. 
If you use autoresponders in your online advertising, your prospects will get 
the information they want immediately and you'll have be able to utilize your 
time for additional online marketing efforts. Now your marketing like the pro's 
and are essentially doing two things at the same time. Then once a day sort your 
requests in your follow up folders and you've just opened up a large chunk of 
time to use more productively. 
Disadvantages Of Autoresponders 
There are hardly no disadvantages of using autoresponders in your online 
marketing and advertising but here are a couple that might become minor 
disadvantages: 
Almost Impossible To Personalize Your Autoresponder: Since you're basically mass 
marketing with your autoresponder you can't personalize each response. There are 
many services out there that do include a simple addition of the requesters 
email address in a hello line but it's still not personalized. You want to make 
sure you check the body of incoming autoresponder requests for any additional or 
specific requests for more information and reply to those as soon as possible. 
You can also tell your prospects that they are requesting information from your 
autoresponder in your advertisement which tells them that they are going to get 
immediate information from your autoresponder. 
Spammers Collect Your Autoresponder's Email Address: When you begin marketing 
online you'll find that occasionally, your autoresponder's email address will 
get collected by the spider software used by those who collect and sale email 
addresses. Then an Internet newbie buys these email addresses and sends out 
their bulk email message and doesn't hide the email addresses, your 
autoresponder's email address is now exposed. Then an upset recipient sends his 
reply back to the originator of the spam by using their "reply to" button on 
their email program without deleting the laundry list of other email addresses. 
Your autoresponder sends your sales letter to the sender and they just think 
they were spammed by you too! Multiply this by 10 and can you see the possible 
disadvantage? This has happened to me. It's fairly easy to fix by emailing any 
of the recipients who complain to you and explain what happened when they send 
their reply to the entire list and you might add they could also be accused of 
spamming by their actions. This will usually do the trick. 
A Final Thought 
You can take advantage of autoresponders in any number of ways. These are very 
powerful online marketing tools that increase your productivity, provide a means 
to automate tasks and free up your time, provide immediate information for your 
potential customers, provide customer service and can increase your profits. If 
your not currently utilizing this valuable asset in your online marketing and 
advertising your costing yourself potential sales and creating more work. When 
you consider the cost for this resource, I think you'll agree that there isn't 
another online marketing tools that produces these benefit for the price. 
Good Luck and To Your Productive Online Marketing! 

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Excerpted From "Internet Marketing Issues" A Free Weekly Ezine Published By 
Terry Williams & Associates.