What is the Purpose of an Email Autoresponder?

What is an Autoresponder?

An autoresponder is basically a piece of software which manages emails for you. It sends out automated emails which are sent after certain triggers.

One way to use an autoresponder is to use it to send emails to potential clients. If you have a list of email addresses (perhaps through social media connections), then an autoresponder can send out an email to everyone at the same time.

Once you have people on your mailing list, an autoresponder can be set up to send emails to those people on a regular basis. One common example is a welcome email being sent to a person when they sign up for your mailing list. The trigger is the sign-up, and the email is usually sent out a few seconds later.

A common second email is usually generated and sent a day later, and this one offers the potential customer something. Following this, you will have emails sent out on a regular basis. This forms a basic email marketing campaign.

Other uses involve trying to sell a product to someone, offering someone a discount on a product, reminders when products have been left in the online shopping cart, up sales on already-bought products and services, incentives to share positive feedback after buying a product, and much more.

What are the Advantages to You?

From the paragraph above, you can see how extensive the email sends can be. Imagine sending those out to a customer. Now, imagine sending each of those emails out to every single customer or potential customer.

With an autoresponder, you put in the time initially and then everything is automated. By compiling numerous emails and triggers at the start of your campaign, those emails are sent out when needed without you having to do anything. You benefit from a great return on investment from little input after the initial input. You make a lot of money, and you save a lot of time.

What Else Can They Do?

What you have seen above would constitute the most basic email marketing campaign run by an autoresponder, but there is so much more than you can do. Want to know what? Then, let’s take a look.

Birthdays

When you gain subscribers, you can ask for their date of birth. This detail will allow you to set up an automatic email to be sent out on the person’s birthday. This auto-generated email can wish your reader happy birthday while giving them a coupon or discount for their birthday. It is a nice personal touch which can generate sales for you.

Move Subscribers

When your subscriber buys a product, they become a buyer and not a potential buyer. You do not want them to be inundated with the same emails as a potential buyer would get. An autoresponder can move them to a separate list where they might get emails looking for repeat business instead of first purchases. This helps you to take advantage of upsells too.

Renewals

Many subscriptions need to be renewed. There are some products which require repeat purchases too (think about shave clubs). Autoresponders can manage that for you, sending out emails at specific times to remind a customer to sign up for the next cycle, or suggest it is time to buy a product again.

Personalize

When a customer buys a product or visits a certain page, it gives you information about that customer. If they buy product A, then they may be interested in product B. The more information you have about a person, the more you can tailor your emails to that person. An autoresponder helps you to do this. Based on transaction history and pages visited, the software can send out certain emails to a subscriber.

Tips for Setting Up Your Autoresponder

When you are setting up the automated emails, think about how that would look in an inbox. It is vital that you set some time between subsequent emails. A day is the shortest period of time that you should set between them, and the more emails you send, the more time should be between them.

When you are creating your content, ask yourself, ‘is this relevant to the person I am sending it to?’ If you have a mix of relevant and irrelevant information in emails, then the subscriber may class all of your emails as irrelevant and put them straight into their trash.

Think about more than just time. Conventional email marketing had certain times between each email, but autoresponders allow you to do so much more than this. Think about emails being triggered by purchases, clicks, views, and anything else which will help you to generate user engagement.

The most vital tip is to try, try, try again. Your autoresponder will give you reports. Take these reports and figure what is working and what is not. Do not be afraid to change your campaign.