Are Autoresponders An Important Part Of Internet Marketing?

By Diane Walker
Posted Tuesday, August 3, 2004

Setting up and using email autoresponders on your site is an easy way to make repeated contact with your visitors. Studies have shown that more than 60% of a site's visitors who eventually end up buying a product or service don't do it on their first visit. An E-mail autoresponder is one way to encourage your visitors to return and make that purchase!

It can be simple to set up and use an autoresponder, unless of course, like me, you set up a message when you're over tired, late at night, and forget to tell the autoresponder what message to start at and what message to stop at while running a "test". I actually did this and sent 491 blank email messages to our personal email account! Needless to say, I clogged up our account and had to delete each message individually. Very time consuming and frustrating to say the least but it never happened a second time. And, it has given us something to laugh about from time to time.

There are many advantages to having e-mail autoresponders such as:

* Give your visitors an easy way to receive a "printer friendly" version of your sites main sales messages.
* Send a several part e-mail course (the free email course can be a powerful incentive for your visitors to leave their email addresses which also builds your subscriber list.
* Send repeated messages to your visitors with reminders of what you sell and what its benefits are.
* Collects addresses for your e-mail ezine which will give you periodic access to your site's visitors. You can sell advertising in your ezine or just use it to promote your products and services.

There are two main types of autoresponders. They each have their pros and cons.

Autoresponder services:

Autoresponder services are web based services that allow you to send a series of emails to a visitor who has either requested the email through a web-based form on you site (the service provides the html code for your site to use) or who has sent an email to a specific address the service has provided you to use. The primary advantage of such services is that they are very easy to set up, and are very reliable. In addition, they are host independent. This means that your web host doesn't have to allow you to run any particular services on your site to have access to all that an e-mail autoresponder can provide.

Autoresponder programs (or scripts):

The other choice for an autoresponder is to purchase (or lease) a program or a script (usually written in perl, requiring CGI access on your server.) Several of these are available. They offer the potential for lower cost, especially if you have multiple web sites to support. (But be careful to check the license agreement. Some license agreements require an additional fee if you are going to use the program or script on more than one site at the same time. These types of autoresponders also allow, potentially at least, for increased flexibility. Some are quite powerful in their own right, while perl scripts can generally be modified to suit your needs for a fee.

Whatever your choice or needs Email Autoresponders most definately play an important role in your success as an internet marketer.

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For More Motivational Articles, Sales & Marketing Tips, Send a blank e-mail to: articles@freesupersponders.com

About The Author
Diane Walker is the Publisher of "Marketers In Motion" A weekly newsletter with resources, articles, helpful tips, trivia and humor. For more information visit: (http://mim.s5.com) or Subscribe at 59ramb@bellsouth.net. Write "subscribe" in subject line.