E-Marketing Articles:
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Auto-responders
How to Use an Automatic Responder for
Effective Prospect Follow-up
Copyright 2003 Herman Drost
When a prospect shows an interest in your product, if you don't deliver
what he wants immediately and follow up on him, you lose sales.
No matter what you're selling online, using an automatic responder to do
personalized follow up, can drastically increase the amount of sales you
receive. It can also dramatically cut down on manual follow up of your
prospects.
Once a prospect requests your information there are a million and one
things that can divert his attention from it.
For instance:
His computer crashed, he has to wait several days to get it repaired.
His wife called, her car broke down again. He has to pick her up.
The kids are screaming, the dog is chewing on their favorite toy.
His friend needs a ride to the airport...now!
These are just a few examples of what can happen to cause your
prospect to forget about your offer. That's why it is so important to get
your offer in front of a prospect more than once. The ideal number is 5-7
times.
How an automatic responder (autoresponder) works
These programs automatically return a prewritten message to anyone who
sends a message to the autoresponder's email address. They usually allow
for one or more follow-up messages.
Types of automatic responders
Single follow up - this one will reply once only to any message sent to it.
These are very useful for letting someone know that you have received
their mail and will get back to them shortly, or you could inform people
you are away on vacation.
Multiple follow up – these are often called sequential autoresponders.
They can be programmed to follow up over a period of days, weeks, or
months with any number of sequential messages.
Features:
Send multiple follow up messages
Messages can be personalized
A copy of each requestors message can be sent to your e-mail address.
Can create an online form to insert in your web page.
Supports both plain text messages or HTML.
Broadcast email updates to your entire customer list
Attachment support - your messages can contain one or more
attachments.
Tracking URLs - setup a tracking URL to track click throughs from your
messages
Totally Ad Free
Automatically adds an "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of each message.
Free automatic responder
autorespond-it.com (contains all the above features)
limitlessfollowup.com (free perl script)
sendfree.com
getresponse.com
freeautobot.com
Paid automatic responder
rapidreply.net
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How to set up an automatic responder on your web site
1. Create a form on your web site to capture your prospects information
(i.e. name and email address.) You can do this on one or several pages or
use a pop-up or pop-under (www.isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion.com)
on your web page. I prefer the pop-under because it is less obtrusive for
your visitors (pops up when the prospect has left the main page).|
2. Write a series of 3-7 personalized follow-up messages regarding your
offer. You have the option of spacing these several days (or weeks) apart
from each other.
3. Set up a confirmation page (www.isitebuild.com/success) to confirm
your prospects successful subscription.
4. Set up an error page (www.isitebuild.com/failure) in case your prospect
makes a mistake filling out the information. Create an email link on this
page that will direct him to your offer. Your autoresponder will still
capture his email address for follow-up.
5. Upload your main page (containing your subscription form), confirmation
page, and error page to your web host. If you are using a pop-up page,
upload this one as well.
6. Check all your web pages before you begin your marketing campaign.
Test the links and check the pages in different screen resolutions, and
browsers.
7. Begin your marketing campaign.
Creating multiple personalized follow up messages to your prospects,
gives them a better chance to respond to your offer, resulting in
increased sales. Using an automatic responder will allow you more
free time to focus on implementing other marketing strategies.
*********************************************************************
Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of
http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Site
Design and Low Cost Web Hosting
Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more
original
articles.
subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more
of his in-depth articles at:
http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
***********************************************************************
Article reproduced with kind permission from Herman Drost
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