If you’ve reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up with answering the mountain of emails that threatens to bury you alive every single day, you’re ready to learn about autoresponders.

The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they’re eating up your revenue), you have a problem. The good news is an autoresponder is an inexpensive – or even free -method of quickly responding to emails. What these programs do is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as they are received.

Emails are essential to your business for many different reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices give you their feedback about your website – for free!
However, if you spend all your working hours answering these emails, how are you supposed to run your business? The answer is simple: use autoresponders. Autoresponders are programs that automatically respond to your emails without you so much as having to click on your mouse.

There are a number of good reasons why you need an autoresponder besides just answering your email. For example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to send information about your services or products, price lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across large numbers of emails.

Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an autoresponder. Additionally, you can advertise your business and then build stable relationships with your customers by using autoresponders.

Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with your email program to a specialized script that runs on your web hosting company’s server. This kind of script may use a web page form or simply operate with your email account. This kind of script is programmed to send out a standardized message whenever an email is received. The message is sent to a particular script or email address.

Some autoresponders can do more than simply send out standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined interval of time. For example, you can set your autoresponder to send out a new message every day for as long a period as you desire.

There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free of charge. Your website hosting company often provides autoresponders as a free service. If this is not the case with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge, providing you attach an advertisement for their company to your emails.

To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact numbers and addresses, and a brief message.

It’s a good idea to attach a signature to every email that is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your business identity every time a customer sees it. The more they look at your signature, the more likely your company will spring to mind when your particular service or product is needed.

You can create a standardized signature that every employee in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every staff member create their own personal signature. Of course, like everything in life, there are some rules and guidelines to creating a personal signature.

Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line. Make sure that your email program does not cut off your text! The content should include your name, your company name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact details, such as 800 numbers. Lastly, always include a short personal message about your company. It should be a subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly your company’s reliability and longevity.

Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create courses that you can then offer your site visitors for free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert and that precisely targets your potential customers.

Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a different sub-topic. The first topic should always be a welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation about what is to follow. Your explanation should be enticing, getting the point across that you are offering free, quality information that your target audience will find of great value.

With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the topic title, information about your company and its services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue on.

Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable information, and leaves the visitor lusting to know more. Otherwise, you may lose them in the very beginning.

The autoresponder I use and highly recommend is Trafficwave.

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Perhaps you, like me, have web hosting that includes, free of any extra charge, unlimited autoresponders. That being the case, you might be inclined to balk at any suggestion to start paying for them.

Recently, however, I made the switch to paying a monthly fee for unlimited autoresponders. Am I rich (with money to burn)? Have I lost my mind?

Actually, I consider this move to paid autoresponders to be a wise decision. Here are some reasons why you might want to pay for an autoresponder service.

1. Sequential Autoresponders: Although many web hosts offer unlimited autoresponders, each autoresponder is only capable of sending one response. Building business relationships with paid autoresponder services can thus increase your sales.

2. Tracking Capabilities: The autoresponders that come with your web host don’t have built-in tracking capabilities. Tracking customer response with paid autoresponder services can lead to more effective advertising campaigns.

3. Deliverability: A very large number of your newsletter subscribers are not getting your newsletter if it is sent using your web host’s mailing list program. Improving newsletter delivery with paid autoresponder services will improve your bottom line.

4. Legal Protection: Since the e-mails you send are hosted on the autoresponder service’s servers, you are insulated from false accusations of sending spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail). Protect yourself legally with paid autoresponder services.

You could also consider buying an autoresponder program (or script) that will allow you to run unlimited, sequential autoresponders from your websites. However, they can be expensive, require some technical skill, and still have some disadvantages.

For example, since you are hosting your own autoresponders, you might still have issues with deliverability and legal protection.

Paid autoresponder services, with their many advantages over other autoresponder systems, can increase your business profits. The one I use and highly recommend is Trafficwave.

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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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