The Art of Using Auto-Responders in

Your Online Business

THE ART OF USING AUTO-RESPONDERS IN YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS

Auto-responders are a tool built into most message management systems. Whether you

are using Mail Chimp, AWeber, Constant Contact, IContact or almost any other quality

messaging service, an auto-responder will be built into the product suite.

What they allow you to do is send out a series of messages to your e-mail subscriber

customer at intervals without manually having to do any work beyond the original setup

of your e-mail campaign series.

For example, when they first subscribe to you, it is customary to send them a welcome

message that tells them a little more about you or your organization and possibly

provides them with a gift they hopefully will value. Gifts can be created in many forms

and it is entirely up to you as to what you decide to give them and by the way, it often

transpires that the person is willing to sign up to you because you have advertised the

gift beforehand, they have seen it and they want it – so give good thought to what you

give out as it may be what gets them to sign up in the first place. A few guiding

principals for your gift:

To keep your costs down or at nil, make it something that can be electronically

transferable to the person signing up.

The gift most often should be educational or inspirational to them in some way –

so they do remember it over time and treasure that you were willing to part with

it

It should be perceived as being a gift of high value to them – they will treasure it

more and you don’t want them to feel insulted by it – I recommend you think

hard and give them something you would value if you were in their shoes.

It should be something that stands out – is unique – you don’t want to give them

something that they can get anywhere on the Internet. Make them feel special.

The gift should have relevance to your business. After all, it is your type of

business they have expressed an interest in when they signed up in the first place.

So here are some gift ideas that I think may be useful to someone just signing up to your

business.

A checklist of good ideas that they can use to make money in some fashion if they

apply themselves.

A checklist of something relevant to your business. Are you in Travel? How about

a checklist of things to pack when you go on a trip – etc.

Are you an online trainer? Give them a coupon for a free course.

Have you written and published anything? Give them a copy of it or let them

download a free copy of it electronically.

Give them an application or some software that could be useful to them.

Give them a template or templates of something (Could be done in Excel, or

PowerPoint, etc.)

A free sample of something

A plugin of some sort, custom ringtones, screensaver, free music access, etc. –

you get my drift.

So this gets us past the first thing you do with your auto-responder. You can automate

all of this so they can signup, get their gift and you don’t need to manually do any

additional work at all except for maybe view your signup statistics periodically.

Once they have signed up, start sending them periodical useful information such as a

newsletter. Most marketers will get something out to their subscriber base about once a

week or so. The newsletter really shouldn’t be trying to sell them anything, just convey

some more knowledge or insights to them to help them during their day. You want to

send them content that they will want to see and that they will be looking forward to

your next installment with a desire to open the next message from you when it arrives.

Pat Flynn, a well respected and successful online marketer says he only sends them a

promotional message about every one in seven messages. A strategy like this is a good

thing to keep in mind. As you set up your auto-responder campaign, it’s a good idea to

be thinking of setting up a series of 30 or more messages in a periodic sequence,

carefully interspersing your promotional messages so that they don’t feel inundated with

pressures to purchase anything. You want them believing you are in a relationship with

them – that you are not just a salesman.

And when they get to the end of your auto-responder series, hopefully they have

purchased something by then. But in any case, keep the relationship going – you can

have multiple campaigns built into your messaging platforms over time. A second series

of e-mails can start after the first one concludes. These cost you nothing but a bit of

time to setup – and they are well worth it as you never know when your prospect will

choose to buy or who he or she will tell about you if they like you – which helps you

grow.

So use auto-responders in your business and give them careful thought when setting up.

You may find that over time, they become the heart and soul of the marketing side of

your business venture. Good luck in your marketing activities.

This lecture is also found in video format in my online training course:

Click on the image above to take this course at 50% off using the discount coupon link I

have embedded behind the image. There is also a 30-day money back guarantee when

you take this course – so you are not even risking the $15 you pay to take it.

Through this course to which you will have “Lifetime Access”, you will also gain access to

me and I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you might have while taking the

course. I just might become an additional very useful resource to you.

See you on the inside.

Best wishes, - Dan Grijzenhout

ABOUT DAN GRIJZENHOUT

Dan Grijzenhout: (Bio and resume at: http://howtoguru.org/about.htm ). For close to thirty years, Dan has been a professional business and information systems consulting professional working to executive levels for both private and public sector organizations globally, a number of which were "Fortune" level enterprises.

Dan has founded, operated and sold an online global payment services company that moves millions of dollars on behalf of its 100,000 plus account holders annually; he has been interviewed on the show "World Business Review" by former head of NATO and Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig, for his work in advanced digital and online telecommunications services and nation-wide online and card based "Loyalty" programs; and now works at writing to share his years of experience with others; helping those that wish to undertake entrepreneurial endeavors.

Social Media Marketing, Professional Consulting, and Authorship: During the past year, 2015, Dan has focused nearly all his time and energy on building considerable hands-on expertise in social media marketing and social media strategy. To this end, he has built 3 websites geared to training people to be able to start, build and successfully operate online businesses and also to teach students the “Art of Professional Consulting”. These websites include: A “Blog Site”, a Training Course site and a “Mobile Technology – Responsive” Showcase site that allows him to showcase recommended “Affiliate products” along with his own content creation products which include to date four Amazon-Kindle published E-Books, over 40 published social media and business related training/learning articles, and over 70 published YouTube training videos, video podcasts and iTunes available podcasts on mobile platforms such as Smart Phones.

He has gained expertise in many online content creation toolsets including the full suite of Adobe Creative tools and Adobe Dreamweaver for website development; video and audio editing software; 3rd party social media related website services and content creation partners; and most main-stream social communication platforms including Facebook and Facebook business pages, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Reddit, Goodreads, Amazon Author Central, LinkedIn, Ezine Articles Publishing, Amazon-Kindle Book Publishing, Amazon Create Space and more. On these platforms,

Dan has now amassed over 15,000 followers and subscribers and more are following him daily.

Dan’s most recent work has been to build online training courses which he now primarily hosts on the Udemy.com training platform and on his own blog site.

See his profile and course list on Udemy at: https://www.udemy.com/u/dan-grijzenhout/ Dan currently has seven courses on this platform.

To view Dan’s informational articles and blog posts and to take his training courses through his website, go to http://howto-guru.com. The courses can be found under the “Online Training Courses” tab in the header menu.

FINDING DAN GRIJZENHOUT CONTENT ONLINE

Below are online locations that you can find my created content.

http://howtoguru.org My primary business site. This site contains my content, discounted Udemy course coupons, access to my books and: Software, electronics and other products that I have experience with and recommend as being good quality.

https://www.udemy.com/u/dan-grijzenhout/ My profile page on the Udemy.com training site. Shows all of my currently available training courses.

http://howto-guru.com/ My blog and “lead capture” site. I use this to communicate interactively with my subscribers and to promote products I recommend. (Helps me keep the lights on here!). From this site, my students can currently take the same courses at the same prices I charge on the Udemy platform but soon, more detailed, extensive training classes will be offered here.

https://www.pinterest.com/dgrijzenhout/: On my “Boards” on this site, you can find content I have created such as my video podcasts, articles, some training videos and more. I have also pinned other 3rd party created content that I have found useful in building my online presence and in doing online research for content I create.

https://youtube.com/DanGrijzenhout123 : View my created learning videos posted on YouTube.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DanGrijzenhout123: View my content contributions on Google Plus

https://www.facebook.com/Howtoguru.org : View my “Howtoguru.org” business page on Facebook.