If you wonder what is an autoresponder then I can tell you that it is a program that you use to set up email lists and manage responses to people on those lists. The most common type of email autoresponder these days is a service that you subscribe to. Some popular ones are Aweber, Get Response, Trafficwave, and Mail Chimp. Those are all paid services. There is a free one called Listquik but it has a learning curve and isn’t very user friendly. If you are on a tight budget it may be worth considering, but it doesn’t have the flexibility of a paid service.
I used to recommend Aweber, not only because I use it but because it’s pretty much the standard and it’s also easy to use, and the monthly membership fee is reasonable until your list grows a lot. They do have their share of downtime, but so does any large service. I started saying to people, maybe check them both out and decide for yourself. Getresponse is the other big time autoresponder on the block. You don’t always need an external autoresponder, especially if your system does all the emailing for you, or if you have a funnel system with a built in one. With tis funnel system builder, you get the ability to build lead capture pages and there is a built in email autoresponder that stores your leads and you can send out automated emails just as with the larger stand alone service linked to above. The thing is that with some of the MLM affiliate programs out there that use their own capture pages to catch your leads, they only integrate with the big 2 services, so sometimes you need Aweber or Getresponse. Make sense?
What is an autoresponder message series?
This is a series of response emails that you set up to be sent to your email list members on a scheduled basis. For example, someone accepts your offer and provides their email to you in exchange for whatever information that you were providing in exchange for it. You have a series of messages ready to be sent to them. The first one is usually, but not always, sent immediately. It may be a thank you message. It might provide further information or point them to another offer or similar opt in page. Perhaps it sends them to an affiliate offer that they already received when they signed up but this is so that they have it in case they want to visit the page or offer again. Many people do not accept on the first exposure to an offer, but if their curiosity was peaked, they may decide to visit later, and having this in the initial response email provides the information so they can do so.
The subsequent messages are set to go out on a schedule. They may go out every few days, or on whatever schedule you want to send them.
How do the names and/or email addresses get into your email list? You gather them in a variety of ways. One way is to send out email blasts in the form of offer ads to safe lists and list services in order to drive people to an offer page or somewhere where you can offer them something in exchange for their email address. It’s really as simple as that. Different people do it in various ways and have varying degrees of success with it.
They offer a visual email building tool and a form building tool.
In this video I demo the online form builder for you:
With Aweber, you can share your email campaigns out to your team, or anyone else using the service, by setting the sharing to on and then providing the name of the message series to whomever you wish to share it with. This is handy in case you are a team builder and perhaps want to share out an email series with a junior team member who isn’t as experienced but you want to get them up to speed quickly, or maybe provide it for learning purposes.
What is an autoresponder the best for?
An autoresponder is like a secretary that is always there, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. It doesn’t need to be fed or take a break or have days off. It’s always there.
Imagine how difficult it would be if you had to personally respond to every list response? It would be such a burden. Then you would have to personally copy and paste each email response that goes to each respondent, and then keep track of which response that each respondent is supposed to receive since they reply at different times and are due different replies. Another thing to keep track of is how many days are supposed to go between each response. This is a lot to keep track of and when that list gets large it can quickly become a full time job. This is where you will be happy that you know what is an autoresponder and that you have put it to good use.
I have seen many new marketers ask what is an autoresponder on forums so it must be the case that many try to get into this business without even knowing which tools are necessary in order to market effectively online. I guess that’s normal since that is how people learn. They get into something new and just don’t know even the bare minimum. It’s useful to have this information written down so here it is.
There are other items that these marketers need to know, everything from keyword research to blog creation and setup, and all of the other technical things that are needed to run an online marketing shop.
