In almost any business it’s vital to keep in contact with your customers and respond to their needs promptly. I can’t tell you how many potential sales are missed because the business owner (us or others, for that matter) failed to contact a potential partner and customer or send the information they asked for…

As well, according to the Pareto principle, 80% of the prospects you come in contact with may not buy your products, use your services or join your business opportunity when you first present it to them… likely due to bad timing, need to develop further trust or other factors.  In light of that, keeping in touch with these prospects and developing relationships with them over the long term can pay huge dividends.  However, it can be a cumbersome management process if we don’t have the right tools.

An e-mail autoresponder is an automated e-mail system that delivers information in a personalized fashion to the recipients and then follows up with them, over the coming days, weeks and months, all in autopilot. The most obvious benefits include serving customers faster and more efficiently, saving a ton of your own time by not having to copy, paste and customize each e-mail, and keeping constant contact with customers/subscribers.

3 important features of autoresponders include:

1) Personalization - Send personalized e-mails to recipients that call them by their frist name, and also merge custom fields in the body of the e-mail to fit their specific needs. This alone saves you a ton of time and gives your better responses because the recipients love hearing their names in the e-mail instead of just “Hi everyone” or “Hi gang” or whatever you say when you mass e-mail. Some e-mail programs offer this feature, but the key benefit of a hosted autoresponder is that it’s on 24/7! Most people don’t have their computer on 24/7 just so that their e-mail programs can serve the e-mails on time.

2) Subscription - Send time-delayed e-mail to the people who subscribe to your mailing list via the opt-in form or by your manual entry. The time-delayed e-mail can be customized to be delivered within specific time frame from the day the subscriber info is added. This is perfect for marketing a product, service, or business opportunity like ours.

3) Broadcasting - Send INSTANT, PERSONALIZED e-mail to your entire list to introduce a new product, service, or simply wish someone happy birthday!

And there are 2 basic types of autoresponder service available in the market today:

1) The first type is a subscription-based service, where the service provider offers the complete, turnkey solution as soon as you sign up. Companies such as Aweber,Get Reponse and iContact.

2) The second type is a self-hosted service, where the user buys the autoresponder software and hosts the software on his/her own server. The cost is one-time only. A good example is Sellwide Follow Up Mailing List Processor (this is what I’m using now).

In summary I have 4 recommendations and you can’t go wrong with any of them since you’ve got everything to gain!

1. Aweber
2. Get Reponse
3. iContact
4. Sellwide Follow Up Mailing List Processor (this is what I’m using at the moment)

Sellwide Follow Up Mailing List Processor Advantages:

Aweber, Get Reponse or iContact Advantages:

Sellwide Follow Up Mailing List Processor Disadvantages:

Aweber, Get Reponse or iContact Disadvantages:

Verdict: Invest in a professional autoresponder service will go a long way in helping your business.  Start off at $19.95 a month for up to 500 recipients is good enough for most people getting into the e-mail autoresponder world.  Think of it this way… If you save 2-4 hours a month using an autoresponder (I’m understating this), it’s going to be more than worth it.  I’m pretty sure you’re worth more than $5 – $10 an hour :p  Hope this helps. Continue reading →