Automation is an important part to any business. The less time you devote to doing small redundant tasks the more time you will have to devote to primary business activities, such as: product development, advertising, customer service, and list building. Or, you may want to have more time for enjoying other things in life other than working, so the more you automate your business the more time you will have available to spend on whatever you desire.

Putting an online business on autopilot is not very difficult and much of it can be done by simple using autoresponders to do many simple tasks for you. An autoresponder is a software program that you pay usage fees for, or that you buy and put on your own hosting account’s server. It is a program that responds to email inquiries from other people with whatever you program it to send out. And it can also easily be programmed to send out email messages that you enter into it at whatever time you want. Therefore an autoresponder, abbreviated AR, can be used for many purposes to assist in handling business communication activities.

An AR can be used to promote your products or services and to get people to visit your website. Just type or copy and paste your sales or informational message into your AR and have it sent out to whoever you have entered into the AR. Then, when a person receives your message and visits your web site and makes a purchase you can have your AR setup to deliver another message to them. The message would thank them for their purchase and then deliver their product and receipt to them.

You may also program it to give your customers detailed instructions on how to go about obtaining their products and describing other products you have to offer that they may be also be interested in purchasing. In this way you have the ability to promote more products and possibly make more sales. You can also program your AR to send out follow-up messages a day or two after a purchase to ask customers if they are satisfied with their purchase. This assists in building strong customer relations and also gives you another opportunity to promote more products while saving your time.

It will also allow you to make more “back-end” sales by using follow up messages every few days. It is advisable to always include some meaningful and relevant information in your follow up messages so your messages do not appear to just be blatant sales messages, which most people do not generally like or appreciate. The beauty of all this is that you can be off doing something else while much of your business communication activities are being handled automatically by your AR.

Autoresponders are great for training and teaching purposes. Many college professors who teach correspondence courses set up their lessons in an AR and then send them to their students at specified times throughout the semester. And, because the courses being taught often do not vary much from semester to semester, or from year to year, the lessons can be set up one time and used over and over again with only minor adjustments being needed.

ARs are great for providing training lessons to all types of groups. For example, a 12 week training course can be written in advance and then scheduled for deliver when the time is appropriate. The lessons can even be set up to be delivered to different groups at different time intervals. ARs are great for keeping members of an organization informed of upcoming events, deadlines, and special offers or promotions.

Promoting products for sale is one of the most popular uses of autoresponders in online business. But when using an AR to promote your sales just realize that most potential customers do not like the direct “hard sale” approach and it has been documented that on an average a potential customer must hear from you at least 7 times before a sale is made. It is usually best to contact potential customers in the first 2 to 4 messages with valuable information that is interesting for them to read or use in their lives. It is good to give away something of interest and value and to thank them for subscribing to your email newsletter or ezine.

It has been said that the best way to entice sales is to build interest slowly and start with an informative message about something that interests your reader. And, when you do try to make a sale be sure to focus on a problem or solution that your product or service will help resolve for them. Gain their confidence by providing free information that is relevant, accurate, and informative for them.

There are many AR services available and you can certainly find them by doing a search with any of the main search engine services. Many AR services will give you free limited service, but be cautious of these AR services because they will put their advertisements on all of your outgoing messages, or limited the amount of messages and subscribers you can send to. These things certainly will not help your business any. Be very careful when choosing and signing up with an autoresponder service to use in your business.

Some popular ARs frequently used are listed below:

- http://www.aweber.com/
- http://www.a1ebiz.com/
- http://www.getresponse.com
- http://www.emailgogettersystem.com/

And, of course there are many, many more so please do a good and thorough investigation and analysis before deciding which AR to use.  The autoresponder I use and highly recommend is Trafficwave.

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Imagine if John (an avid poker player) visits your website. You sell a book that helps him improve his poker game. He’s highly interested in what you have to offer, but he’s just not ready to purchase yet. He’s still recovering from that extended holiday and needs to pay off the credit card that he maxed out playing poker online.

He sees a form on your site asking if he’d like more detailed information, and so he fills in his name and email address. Within seconds an email is sent to John with a short summary of the benefits offered by your book and a couple of useful tips he can use right away.

A few days later, John receives another email that goes something like this:

“Hey John, I know you’re quite busy, especially with the holiday period coming to an end, but I just wanted to get in touch with you to let you know we’ve got a special coming up for that ‘How to win at poker’ handbook you’ve always wanted.”

John’s forgotten that he’d been looking to buy a book like this and this email reminds him that he needs to improve his game. John adds buying the handbook to his “To Do” list and goes about his daily business.

Another few days later, John receives another email; again, reminding him that the special is about to end alongside another juicy tip that’s in the book. John realizes he doesn’t have much time now, and goes off to purchase your “How to win at poker” handbook.

Every email sent to John was automated. You didn’t have to wait for him to subscribe, you didn’t have to personally address John, nor did you have to send him an email every few days.

The example above shows how a series of auto responder emails can be used as a powerful “hands off” marketing tool for your web site.

Now, take a few minutes and think to yourself, “How can I use auto responders on my web site?”

No, seriously. Stop and think. This simple exercise could easily add another stream of revenue to your web site that you didn’t know existed.

But I don’t sell anything online!

Auto responders can work for ANY business. You don’t need to be selling something online for them to work. For example, let’s pretend you have a hair styling business. You cater towards young men looking for a modern, attractive hair style. Part of your service includes helping them select a hair style that greatly enhances their facial features and gets them the compliments they’re after from the ladies.

On your website, you setup a simple form, something like: “Guys, get the hair style that’ll get you noticed. Free email report shows you how.”

Once John’s filled in the form, he gets an email with a summary of tips about the type of hair style suited for men with different features. It also mentions that you’re an expert in this field and your salon regularly helps men go from dud to stud in less than an hour.

A few days later, John receives yet another tip — this time on how washing his hair with a different shampoo can lead to different results. John starts to see how much of an expert you are, but also how much he’d rather just pay someone to take care of all this for him. He hasn’t got much time now since he’s started killing those poker sites. And so off he goes to call and make an appointment at your salon.

What else should I know?

The content in your auto responders need to be useful. Whilst including marketing hype purely about your product and services can work if there is a strong interest, you’ll usually need to provide relevant tips and information to keep your subscriber engaged and ready to pull out their wallet when need be.

You should opt to use autoresponder software that offers personalization, which includes the ability to address John by his first name, as that greatly increases response rates.

Finally, you should TEST your auto responders. Make sure they aren’t trapped by spam filters, make sure the subscribers are receiving the auto responders in the order they’re meant to be and so forth.

Armed with this new knowledge, you should be able to add an additional stream of revenue that could do some serious boosting to your profits. Some online businesses use this single marketing strategy as the sole way of getting new clients. They do this because it works!

Now, have you decided how you’re going to use auto responders for your business? I recommend Trafficwave.

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How would you feel if you could send out all the information that your potential customers have requested without checking your email?….sound good….!While this may seem impossible, it is becoming more and more popular among the most successful internet marketing people. And the reason for this: an Auto responder..!

An Auto responder is an automatic method of responding to emails sent by existing or potential customers and is a must for any Internet Business or organization.  Time is money and answering e-mails personally takes far too much of your already valuable time for you and your customers.  Auto responders allow you to spend this time on other important aspects of your business whilst the customer receives the information required almost immediately

Because of the versatility of Auto-responders they can be used by practically any type of business.  Answering questions about products and services, providing information on pricing and delivery including being used to welcome new customers to your website and thanking them for visiting.

Why use an Auto-responder? When you can list the information on your site…..the advantage is that they send you notification each time a response is sent out allowing you to track the success of your promotions that your conducting.  Plus e-mail addresses of possible customers so that you can post update and new information to them.

It is crucial to choose the right one.  An auto-responder should enable you to be as personal as etiquette allows in sending out follow ups to all potential customers as persistence has been proven to pay off.  It often takes as many as 7 e-mails before any sale in finalised.  In some cases the customers have asked for specific information and therefore an Auto-responder should allow unlimited space for the text to do this.  But generally speaking advertisement should be short, direct and to the point.

Auto-responders are one of the important internet marketing tools that should not cost a lot in terms of value for money.  There are free auto-responders available online from many sources, although generally speaking a greater range of facilities are offered by the paid for programs.

Finally the automatic responses of the auto-responder will add to your business strategy and increase traffic to your site day and night while you do nothing. Just make sure that the one you finally select supplies you with all your requirements you need enabling you increase business profitability and internet standing.

Get started today by keeping in contact with your customers and building your business. My autoresponder of choice is Trafficwave.

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Essentially, there’s no internet marketing without autoresponders, and vice versa. It’s very simple: without the use of autoresponders, it’s impossible to succeed at Internet Marketing nowadays. Autoresponders can take over many of those marketing tasks that make an online business successful.

As an Internet Marketer,  you’ll probably agree when I say Internet Marketing is pretty time consuming. A big part of your marketing arsenal are your autoresponders. They can be used to stay in touch with your existing customers, but they’re even more important as a tool to develop a relationship with your potential customers.

With an autoresponder, you can deliver sales messages or email courses. You can send reminders and some autoresponders can help you to build your list. When you think about it for a minute, you can probably come up with plenty of ideas how to use your autoresponder to generate more sales en to build relations with your customers. A bit of creativity on your side, creates endless possibilities.

When you want to become a successful internet Marketer, you need to know this: an opt-in list and an autoresponder are vital to any type of online marketing. In fact, if you would take away all of their marketing tools, most marketers would fight to the death to be able to keep their list and autoresponder!

I recommend Trafficwave to build your list and your business!

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The great thing about TrafficWave Autoresponders is not only is it a must have tool but also there are so many ways to promote the business as well. If you have a business or blog online a autoresponder is a must have tool as it gives you the ability to follow up with potential or current customers. By being able to build a relationship with your prospects you can find out how you can best serve them.

If you have a website or blog you need to have a way of capturing their email information. Too many times someone may come to your site and be interested but the phone might ring or the kids are running around so they leave your site and may never return. If you have a opt-in form on your page they can enter their email address and the TrafficWave Autoresponder can follow up with additional information.

I show alot of offline businesses how they can benefit by using TrafficWave. For example, hair salons are able to keep in touch with repeat customers, bands are able to let their fans know when and where they will be performing next, bars are able to let their customers know when they are having special events, chiropractors can offer special discounts during a slow part of the season.

The ideas are truly endless and apply to any business that is looking for new or wanting to keep their customers updated. I don’t sell this business I offer people that already have a business how to improve their business. So really it’s a win-win.

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