by Rahimah Sultan

When a prospect or customer signs up to receive your emails, there should be a response sent by an autoresponder. This should happen whenever someone clicks on a link and makes a purchase or when anyone signs up for a newsletter or membership in your program, to show your appreciation for their time and effort.

An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex. The software sends a sequence of emails to a person who has taken some action. You write the emails, enter them into the autoresponder system, set up the triggering function for the series, and schedule when they should be sent.

Sequence Emails

People generally want more than the initial offering. For example, if readers bought your ebook on the basics of knitting, you could do a sequence of emails beginning with the different types of knitting needles, the second email would be about the yarn, the third on patterns, and so on.

Drip Email Campaign

For readers who are ready to buy something from you, are thinking about it but want more information, and those who are interested in being on your list but don’t know if they want to buy anything right now, use a drip email campaign.

If you had a recent campaign to get more leads by offering something free pertaining to one of your services, and you’ve captured their emails, send this group a series of emails with engaging content about how you created the service to solve a common problem many readers encounter in the running of their business. You can give a case study in one email and another case study in the second email in a story-telling form.

In the bottom of these two emails, offer a short bit of content about your book or service with a link or CTA (call-to-action) button to the book or service on solving the common problem.

Now split your readers into two groups:  Those who made a purchase (Group A) and those who didn’t (Group B). Group A will receive automated emails referencing elements of the book shown in emails as to how you can help them be more successful. Once they’ve received a few of the supporting email sequences that may also have links to videos, you can offer your readers a product demo and a free consultation.

In the meantime, Group B is getting occasional automated emails like Group A received, but they also get other emails with different content about other services you provide, including links to content with more information such as a video. Those in Group B who click on the book link show they’re still interested in the book and, potentially, your personalized service but just may not be ready yet.

Webinar Autoresponder Email Series

Marketers like to show their fol­lowers how they can carry out something in their business that will help them make more money. Using the drip email example above, a webinar can be offered at some point for Group A because they showed the most interest in the product.

Group A has already seen a video or two as part of the sequence emails they received. Now you can send an email inviting readers to attend a webinar where they can see the service in action and how it can help them decide on using your product or information. When the webinar invitation goes out, readers fill out the form and send it back. This generates the reservation acceptance email that carries a link that is automatically code-created with that person’s identification and takes the person to the webinar link when the time comes to join up.

A day before the event you send a reminder email and again right before the webinar begins. Readers just need to click on the link several minutes before it starts. The link takes them right to the webinar page where each reader is recognized as a pre-registered attendee (because of the ID link code).

When the webinar is over, get the list of attendees and those who didn’t. Create separate channels (lists) for each group. Put aside those who attended but didn’t sign up for the service.

For the registered non-attendees of Group A in the “drip” campaign, now moved into a Group A short-term email list, send an autoresponder message saying they were missed at the webinar but there’s a link for a replay if they’d still like to see it.

If your short-term list of members clicked on the replay link but not the link to get your service, send an automated email several hours later, asking if they’d like to have a consultation to know more. They can click on a link in the email to generate a callback from you or set up an appointment with you.

After 24 hours, send out another autoresponder email reminding them that the discount will be over in 24 hours, so they need to act now. If no actions were taken, you can move non-responding people to another email list to receive regular emails about products and services you have to offer, including emails that just offer valuable content without any sales approach.

Sequence emails, drip email campaigns, and a webinar autoresponder email series are three types of email campaigns you can set up for a boost to your business.

Your Auto Responder and More