What is an Autoresponder Good For

General Information Dissemination

Anybody that has information they want to be instantly available to anyone else might well use an autoresponder, since many are available for free. It could be information about a product you are interested in. It could be instructions on how to use or repair a product that you have. It could be an article about how to lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Anything that can be be put into text (and with HTML email, pictures or drawings also) can be sent by autoresponder. 
 

Building An Opt-in Mail List

Just as a brick-and-mortar business loves to build a happy clientele that keeps coming back to buy again and again, so online business want to build relationships with visitors as well as customers so they will keep coming back. Physical stores may ask their customers to provide their name for a store mailing list which alerts them to special sales, etc. The online mailing list is even more important than the physical counterpart, because there isn't an online equivalent to driving down the street and noticing a "Sale" sign in the window of your favorite store. For an online business to compete and survive, it is virtually necessary for the owner to build an email list of people who have willingly given their names, with the expectation that they will be advised about things they are interested in. Building this list can be done several ways, but an autoresponder or email list program with autoresponder functions is usually the tool of choice. You need to be careful, of course, in selecting the autoresponder for this purpose. Some are much better suited to do it than others.
 

Following Up With Visitors

So you have an opt-in email list started. What do you do with it?  A list of names isn’t much good unless you follow up with them about your product offerings. Obviously the basic autoresponder function of responding to e-mail messages isn’t of much value here. You need a function that can send follow-up messages to addresses you already have. And that is one of the additional functions of a good autoresponder or an e-mail list program. It is often called the ‘broadcast’ function for obvious reasons – a message is broadcast to all the addresses in the list at once. Again, not all autoresponders allow this function, and some do it better than others.
 

Multi-part Courses

Offering multi-part courses is one of several methods to attract visitors to your site. The course establishes you as an expert in some field - even if you aren't! Any good information source can be broken down into several parts and placed in autoresponder follow-up messages, to be sent at whatever interval you choose. This approach is often used as a sales tool. When the student gains confidence in you through the information you have provided, you can then present your product (hopefully related to the course material) and hopefully gain a sale. You can advertise your free course anywhere on the Internet. Included in your instant or follow-up message would be an invitation to join your opt-in list. Do you get the idea of the power of offering a free course?
 

Basic Sales

Studied have shown that you need to present your product before a potential customer several times to increase the likelihood of making a sale. To do that, you want to give the potential customer a good reason to send his/her e-mail address. Since he/she may not have enough interest simply to ask for more information about your product, you will want to offer some incentive, like a free gift or service. Whatever the method, you want to get the potential customer into your autoresponder message sequence, then, in those messages, send your customer to your web site to make the sale.
 

Customer Support

This is a large topic. If you are selling information products, you may want to use autoresponders as the product delivery method. You can provide after-sale support information such as FAQs (frequently asked questions), thank-you messages, request for testimonials, etc. There is really no limit other than your imagination to the uses that autoresponders can provide in supporting your customer.