Bob's Home Business Blog

If you’re just starting out online as an Internet marketer with your home based business you’ll soon discover, if you haven’t already found out, how valuable your email autoresponder will be to your Internet enterprise.

Without this invaluable tool you wouldn’t be able to build a list of prospective customers, you wouldn’t be able to follow up with your prospects to persuade them to become paying clients, you wouldn’t be able to follow up with your customers to make them other offers and you wouldn’t be able to deliver freebies to your list on a regular basis to keep them on your list.

Simply put an autoresponder is an email auto response system that follows up with people who’ve contacted you via email. These email machines have allowed present day Internet marketers to automate their home businesses to the point where at a certain stage of development their online ventures can literally run themselves 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You can use these email responders to help generate income for your business by implementing these four techniques:

1. First of all you can sell an e-course to your website visitors and deliver it to them on a daily or weekly basis for a set period of time and for a set price. This course can be created in advance, uploaded to your autoresponder and pre-set to deliver each individual module on pre-determined dates. You can also intersperse different product offer messages between course delivery dates in an attempt to up sell your customers.

2. Secondly, you can persuade people to subscribe to your list by offering to send them a free tip on a daily basis related to your niche market. For example, if your topic is home business opportunities online you can provide information each day to your prospects on a home business money maker of the day which could be one of your affiliate marketing products you may be promoting at the time.

3. You can entice more subscribers to join your list by offering to send a freebie of the week to your members. You can scour the Internet for free offers related to your home business and upload them to your email system to be delivered each week like clock work to your list. Once again you can add promotions to these email messages advertising your products which may increase your sales and profits by giving away free gifts to your subscribers.

4. Finally, you can create a membership email system whereby you charge a monthly fee for delivery of a lesson every 30 days related to some aspect of Internet marketing such as list building. You could request a $10.00 fee for each of these informative articles explaining all facets of building a targeted responsive email list in a step-by-step fashion.

So as you can see your email autoresponder can be the heart and soul of your online home based business and success would be very difficult to attain on the web without it.

Bob Withers

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Without having an effective follow up process in place what are the odds these people will remember you and your website and decide to come back? The chances of this happening are either very remote or non existent and this is why you must have a system in place which captures their contact information on their first visit and then follows up with them on a regular basis.

To accomplish its goal of converting these prospects into paying clients your follow up must remind people to revisit your website and it must tell them why they should do so. Your messages should describe in detail how they will benefit from buying your product. It should show them how their lives will either be improved or made easier in some respect after purchasing and it should also convey what you’re going to do for them after they become one of your customers.

Most of the time your visitors don’t buy on their first visit because they need or want more information and your follow up mechanism will solve this problem by giving them everything they need to make an informed buying decision. The first major component of your follow up process, and perhaps the most critical, is a reliable and efficient autoresponder.

The best route to take is to hire an autoresponder service to handle your email responses. Perhaps the most popular and the most reliable service available online is Aweber; however you should research the different services available on the web and choose for yourself.

After making your choice your next step is to load your follow up system with your email messages which should highlight the benefits of your product and which should explicitly ask your prospects for the sale. It should also tell your readers exactly what they must do to purchase your merchandise outlined in a step-by-step fashion. Most people want to know precisely what their next move is in order to purchase and past experience has demonstrated this is the best way to close the deal.

Your follow up message shouldn’t just be a sales pitch; you should include something of value such as an ezine subscription or a discount coupon to use for their first purchase. You can send a different message every day or you can stagger your follow ups to every second or every third day, but the important thing is not to let them forget you and your home business and you can  accomplish this by following up on a regular basis.

Your messages can continue for as many days as you want. Some Internet marketers send email follow ups for only a week after the initial visit while others do so for an entire year afterwards. It’s up to you, but you should have at least ten original messages ready to load into your autoresponder system and then schedule your delivery for whatever time intervals you feel will produce the best results.

The most important point to remember here is to establish some kind of email follow up system because you never can tell when a potential customer will be ready to become a paying client, and by reminding them on a regular basis that you want their business they will remember you and your home based business website when it comes time to buy.

Bob Withers

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One of the most important components, and perhaps the most important part, of your online home business is your autoresponder. It works 24 hours a day 7 days per week helping to build your venture on the Internet. According to Tech Terms online: “An autoresponder is a program or script on a mail server that automatically replies to e-mails.”

“Though it is run from the mail server, an autoresponder can usually be set up by the user through a Web-based interface. For example, a company might set up an autoresponder for their support e-mail address to let users know they have received their support requests.”

Your email autoresponder will follow up with your customers and your potential customers as often as you want and when you want, it’s up to you. However, there are other ways you can make your email automatic response system work for your home business and here are 5 techniques you can employ to get the most out of your website lifeline:

1. On a daily basis you may get 3 or 4 or more queries from customers and potential clients about your products and services and your business in general. Instead of replying to each one individually upload a frequently asked questions article to your responder which can be emailed en masse to your list at different times during the year, perhaps every 2 or 3 months. This will save you a lot of time each day which you can devote to other areas of your enterprise such as marketing your products.

2. Draw up a master list of your merchandise including prices and any discounts you may be offering as well as any services you provide and publish it to your list on a regular basis. You can also upload your sales materials, order forms and product descriptions to your email response system. Remember not to inundate your list with this information. Space out these deliveries, allowing enough time to pass between each mailing, so as not to offend your customers and your potential clients by sending too many offers.

3. Try to make things more convenient for your list by including the terms and conditions of your sales as well as your return policies, refund terms and purchase arrangements in autoresponder format so they can read this at their leisure.

4. If you publish an ezine for your members some of your list may not have received certain issues because of having joined after publishing began or for other reasons. Because of this it may be a good idea to publish back issues in autoresponder format which would provide easy access and allow them to catch up on their reading.

5. Upload a customer response or client feedback questionnaire to your responder and publish it at regular intervals throughout the year. Always stay on top of your customer’s wants and needs and make it a habit to ask for their opinions on what you can improve upon, what needs to be eliminated and what’s working. This can be accomplished by adding your feedback form in autoresponder format.

These are 5 email autoresponder techniques you can use to help improve your home business while at the same time give you more time to dedicate to the daily operation of your enterprise.

Bob Withers

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