Just What Is An Autoresponder?
The word ‘Autoresponders’ has been used more and more over the last few months and pretty much all of us have now experienced them even if you don’t yet realise it.
But just what is an autoresponder and why should you think about using one in your business?
Well, let me explain.
The simplest form of an autoresponder is when you send a message to someone and you immediately receive an email back that tells you that person is out of office. This email will have been sent automatically (no human response was required) and it will have responded to you – hence the name autoresponder.
You will have also probably seen an autoresponder if you’ve purchased products off of a website. Take Amazon for example or Ebay. If you’ve purchased something from Amazon or made a bid on Ebay, the chances are high that you will have immediately received an email from the company confirming your purchase or your bid.
And you may have seen autoresponders at work if you’ve subscribed to a newsletter from a website. In most cases now, you will have immediately receive an email from the company concerned welcoming you to the website with a copy of the newsletter.
Now, trust me when I say that a human is not sitting there at all times of the day or night responding to messages that come in from a website or order confirmations – these emails are sent automatically from you by a computer programme that has been specifically written for this purpose.
But, why should you care? What has this got to do with your business?
Now (hopefully) you’ve got your head around what an autoresponder is, I want you just to think for a minute about the power of autoresponders and how they can help your business.
Imagine that while you’re on holiday, a potential customer visits your website. On your website, you have a mechanism to allow someone to subscribe to receive some top tips about your product or service. The potential customer is interested in what you do and then signs up to receive these.
These tips are sent to the customer automatically while you’re relaxing on your holiday. Over the next few days, the customer receives more tips and helpful information all while you’re soaking up the sun on the beach. By the time you come back, the customer has been so impressed with all the free information that they’ve been receiving that they’ve placed an order for your products or services.
Now ok, there is a bit of work required here – you’ll need to write the tips and useful information in advance and put them into a series of emails that the customer receives over the next few days or weeks. But, once you’ve done that, a potential customer will receive this series of emails over time from you even while you’re asleep.
And it will happen with every new customer without you even thinking about it. You’ll be perceived as being helpful and useful and you’ll be building a relationship with your potential customer while massively reducing the time you take on this activity.
You can even set up a series of emails so that everytime a customer purchases a product or service from you, they get emails automatically to encourage them to purchase more from you.
I’m only giving you a brief introduction to autoresponders here, but the power of them for building a relationship with your customers and reducing the amount of time you spend doing your marketing is immense.
So, where do you go to get an autoresponder? Well, there are a number of packages already out there including Constant Contact, 1ShoppingCart and TheAutoResponder to mention but a few. Have a look at them and see whether they are for you.
But for now, just consider the benefits that autoresponders could make to your business – if you understand that, you can definitely take your business to the next level – automatically!
