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Squeeze Profits from Your Autoresponder
by Todd Kenovas


Many web businesses are using autoresponders, but too few maximimize their potential. That means losses in various ways: chance for contact with potential buyers, marketing visibility, repeat visitors, and revenue. Quite simply, overlooking any possible autoresponder use is bad for business.

Lead capture is likely the most common autoresponder use. A common technique is to drive traffic to a lead capture page with a pay-per-click campaign and offer some juicy information in exchange for a name and email address. Sales messages can eventually be sent as follow ups to the information series. But autoresponders can be incorporated in many other ways. The impact on your bottom line can be substantial, especially if you combine several autoresponder uses.

Autoresponder use beyond lead capture can be slotted into two categories, though the lines may blur at times:

- Marketing: sending information to enhance or promote sales.

- Services: making information available to customers or visitors, helping to increase business visibility, draw return traffic and ensure customer satisfaction.

In the marketing category, here are four powerful ways to use autoresponders:

1. Offer a useful gift in exchange for completed customer survey. The survey could be sent when an information series is completed, after a fixed number of sales or after a certain time period.

2. Scheduling in an unadvertised bonus or a customer appreciation gift can reap rewards in strenghtening the relationship. Don't wait too long to make this offer to a new subscriber or customer, because it could make the difference in retaining someone who is lukewarm about your product. And don't forget the long-established customers. They deserve a reward for sticking with you, and they are just too valuable to be taken for granted.

3. Motivating and training affiliates.

4. Exchange products with another marketer to be offered when someone unsubcribes. You lose a subscriber and maybe she gains one. And offering a parting gift can create goodwill that will come back to you in other ways.

Depending on the type of web site you have, you might compile a long list of autoresponder uses for the services category. Free reports are a typical use, and they can serve to cross over into marketing by linking to subscriptions that carry a stronger sales message.

A services list might also feature:

1. Answers to frequently asked questions.

2. Your products and services catalog.

3. Back issues of your newsletter.

4. If you have a long list of endorsements or testimonials, provide an autoresponder option and also suggest that the information be passed on to others.

5. Reference material form the public domain, with you links prominent.

6. Lengthy material of any kind.

Since many Internet users are on dial-up, providing material that can be read offline is a courteous practice.

And excellent service translates into another marketing vehicle, one that the autoresponder can enhance nicely.

 


About The Author: Author Todd Kenovas is Marketing Manager for the targeted marketing resource, Webways Media. See http://www.webwaysmedia.com for more information.