Internet Marketing -- Autoresponders
Another thing to use is called an autoresponder, AKA: "infobot" or "email on demand." Autoresponders are an extremely valuable time and money saving tool. Many of the places that host your web site give them to you for free. I get thirty of them for free just from my hosting service.
How Autoresponders
Work:
If I told you to send an email to mailto:linktrade@antion.com . Well, guess what? I don’t have to do anything with it. Your going to get an email back from my web site autoresponder AUTOMATICALLY giving you the details on how to trade links with antion.com. I don’t even see your request. I don’t have to reply and you don’t have to wait or make your potential customers wait for you to answer their email.
It only takes a few minutes to set up once you know how to do it. They’re all different so you have to figure out how to do it. I know when I promoted that big benefit seminar I was doing, I just said, “For details send an email to cystic”-- it was Cystic Fibrosis, so mailto:cystic@antion.com . Bam! All that happened behind the scenes while I was sleeping. These are the ways you can automate your promotions and keep them selling for you. You will not be sitting here in front of the computer all day long. Autoresponders are a great way to get the information out to your market.
It's a good idea to have a copy of the original email sent to the autoresponder forwarded to you. Some people don't understand exactly what to expect from the autoresponder and they put a message inside the body of the email. If you don't at least take a peek at these emails, you may accidentally ignore a question from a prospective customer.
Autoresponders can handle many more emails than you could ever process manually. Also, you can send a ten-page email just as fast and easily as sending a two paragraph email.
Don't forget to let people know that you won't sell or give away their email address to other parties. It's okay for you to send them a follow up email, but people really don't want to be spammed because they took you up on your offer for information.
When writing the messages that will go out on your autoresponder try to write them in such a way that you don't have to change them too often. If you do this the autoresponder will work quietly behind the scenes with little or no attention.
Again, check the place that hosts your web site for autoresponders. Many of them give them to you, just ask them. If not, just type in “autoresponder” in any search engine. You can also go to http://www.download.com and search for "autoresponders" or see links just below. They are cheap, like a dollar a month so most of the time they’re just given away free.
These sites give
you links to lots of autoresponder companies:
http://www.davecentral.com/mailauto.html
http://www.autoresponders.com/
http://www.zipresponse.com/free.html
If you would like to have autoresponders and sell or give them to others, check out this package: http://www.varpro.com/