Marketing Effects

Autoresponder Basics Video:

In the last lesson, I talked about why you need to build a list. Today, I want to cover one of the tools you’re going to need to build your list.

Let’s start with what an autoresponder is.

In its most basic form, an autoresponder is simply a program that will automatically reply with a prewritten message when you send it an email. For example, if you go on vacation you may setup an autoresponder on your work email letting people know that you’ll be out of the office. So let’s say you set one of these up next time you’re away. Now whenever someone sends you a message they’ll automatically get a reply in their inbox from you saying that you’ll be gone.

Now, when dealing with autoresponders from the view of an email marketer - someone looking to make some money, we’re going to need a system that’s considerably more advanced, but the basic concept remains the same.

Today’s autoresponders will not only automatically reply to emails sent to them, but are capable of addressing you by name when they send you an email. So instead of just a subject line of “Here’s the report your requested” - an autoresponder can use the subject line of John, Here’s the report you requested” - or whatever the person’s first name is. They can even be setup to collect phone numbers, mailing addresses, even birthdays, and the number of children a person has.

Not only that, but today’s autoresponders can be set to contact a person multiple times over a period of days, weeks, months or even years - and it will email these people automatically without you needing to do anything once you’ve setup your messages. Are you starting to see why having an autoresponder is so important? It not only allows you to send a person a free report they requested automatically, but can also continue to followup with that person and make sales for you all on autopilot.

In my next lesson, I’ll cover the process of choosing an autoresponder and cover some of the details you need to be aware of. And I’ll even give you a few recommendations on who to go with.

Lesson #4 covers why it’s important to build an opt-in email list. Having your own responsive list is like being able to legally print money so don’t be lazy and skip this step. If you want to be successful in this business, you need a list.

Today I’m going to cover why you need to build a list. I was initially planning to just jump right into how to build a list, but I figured I should explain why it’s so important first because otherwise you might not see the point of going through all the extra work.

Here’s the best way I can explain it – having a responsive list is like being able to legally print money. You need to make some quick cash, you send a promotion to your list. Want to buy a Lexus but don’t have the cash? Just send the bill to your list.

Do I have your attention yet?

When you have a list, whether that be past customers, people who’ve subscribed to your free newsletter, or people who’ve requested a free report from you, you have a captive audience that you can market to.

I know that most people prefer to just put up a salesletter on their website to sell a product. And then they go about driving traffic. Well, on a site a good salesletter will sell 1 or 2 people for every 100 visitors. The other 98 people go away and don’t make you any money.

If, on the other hand, you built your site to do nothing but get the visitors contact info, you could get 20 or 30 people out of every 100 to give you their information. Then they’re yours.

Still not convinced – consider this. It takes a person seeing your advertisement seven times before they buy. That means you can either try to attract the same person to your site seven times to get the sale, or collect their contact info once, and then you can market to them as much as you want. And if you’re using email, you can market to them as much as you want for free.

Whenever someone visits your website, you should be doing everything you can to get them to get their information. The more of it the better. Name and email is okay. Getting their mailing address, name and email is much better. So rather than salesletter, try to make getting the email address the focus of your sales pages.

When it comes to the actual setting up of your website, you have a lot of choices. You could write a book about it. In fact volumes of books have been written on this subject. So rather than giving my own version of what’s already been written, I’ll point you in the right direction and let you decide what works best for you.

Not when it comes to setting up a web page, it helps to learn a little bit of HTML. Even if you don’t on building the site yourself, it’s helpful to know a little in case you need to make a simple change and can’t get ahold of your designer right away. If you type in HTML tutorial into google you’ll get a lot of good options where you can learn html for free. One that I think is particularily good is davesite.com/webstation/html You’ll learn all you need to know there.

Alright, now that we’ve got learning a little HTML out of the way, it’s time to design your site. And you have a lot of different choices of software, templates and services. First, let’s cover the software. Now there are a lot of choices, and I wouldn’t call this an all inclusive list – just some of the better programs out there. As far as webpage editors, Dreamweaver and Frontpage are two of the most popular. A lot of designers say Dreamweaver is far superior to Frontpage, but I’ve used both, and for my purposes, they both work fine. I tend to use Frontpage just because that’s what I learned with. Another piece of software you make want to consider is Xsitepro – it’s designed specifically for Internet marketers and has some extra features that Dreamweaver and Frontpage don’t. All of these programs have a bit of a learning curve, but if you plan on building the sites yourself, they’re worth learning. Pick one for now and stick with it instead of trying to learn them all.

There’s also some online software that your host may provide that will help you build a website. Honestly, I find that these programs tend to be a bit limiting, and most are flexible enough if you’re trying to build money making website. So if you run across one, you may just want to pass.

Now if you don’t want to go through all the work of designing everything from scratch, there’s a lot of options out there for you to buy website templates. Now, if you’ve never worked with a template before, try to stick to simpler designer, as the more complex ones can be very difficult for a beginner to work with. Also, avoid any design that includes Flash animation. Unless you have a flash editor, you won’t be able to customize it, and it just makes working with the template more difficult, and rarely makes your site sell any better anyway.

And if this all sounds like too much work, then there’s the easiest method. Hire a designer. And if you hire a college student or outsource the design rather than calling up your local design firm, this can usually be done pretty cost effectively.

So that covers your options for designing and setting up your website. You have a lot of choices, and you should be able to find one that fits your comfort level and budget.

Thanks for visiting MarketingEffects.com. I’ve decided to take my Marketing Effects website and give it a complete overhaul. My goal is to make this a site to visit for Internet Marketing Lesson Videos. First, I decided to go with blogging software. I’m still in the process of modifying it so I can have the videos streamed by my server instead of by Youtube or similar sites. Also, I’ll be doing product reviews, writing a newsletter (you’ll be able to sign up for that soon). The first of the videos will be for newbies, but for you more advanced people out there, don’t worry - those videos are coming. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, I’m all ears. Just use the comment section.

Gary Ruplinger
Owner - MarketingEffects.com