With hundreds of websites online, getting traffic to your website is not an easy task. So, when you succeed in not only getting visitors but also subscribers to your site, you must pay them special attention. New subscribers are often not very familiar with your company but they are eager to know more about you. You can build on their newfound interest for your business and turn it into profitable customer relationships through email marketing. However, the truth is new or established business owners often do not have the time to send out follow-up emails to each and every new subscriber and this is where the email autoresponder comes in.
What Is An Email Autoresponder?
As its name suggests, an email autoresponder is simply a sequence of emails that is automatically sent to a subscriber. You can set the order by which the series of emails will be sent as well as the frequency of delivery. Typically, the ultimate goal of email autoresponders is to convert the visitor or subscriber to a paying customer.
These automated emails differ from spam because the email delivery is triggered only by a specific action, which is usually when the visitor signs up to become part of the company’s email list or whenever the visitor opts in to receive updates from the company provides an email address. Since it requires the visitor to subscribe first before the email cycle is triggered, it is actually the complete opposite of unsolicited mail or spam.
Popular examples of this tool are Aweber and Getresponse. You can use Aweber to automatically send a welcome email to your new subscribers followed by a series of follow-up emails. Aweber has hundreds of professionally-designed email templates to match your brand. You can also add your logo and other images to your emails with its image hosting service. Meanwhile, Getresponse’s autoresponder tool is focused on delivering targeted content or messages to your subscribers based on their needs and actions such as when they complete a transaction or clicks on something on your site.
What Do Email Autoresponders Contain?
The most basic email autoresponders are welcome emails, transaction confirmation and thank you emails. You can start with these but there are so many other ways to use this tool. Email autoresponders can be created similar to newsletters with their content varying greatly with elements of a direct sales email. The specific content of your email autoresponder would depend not only on your particular business segment but the promise you made to subscribers, which made them sign up in the first place.
The most popular type of email autoresponders contains tips and advice; however, you can do different types of content depending on your business from recipes to worksheets, eBooks or tutorials. Basically, what you want to send is your best, most engaging content that will sustain the interest of your subscribers over a certain time period while at the same time providing a venue to promote your product or service or encouraging the subscriber to keep checking back on your website. It is very important to achieve balance in your content between useful information and your promotional message.
Why Have An Email Autoresponder? 
Setting up an email autoresponder program is like putting a platform in place for you to market your business and make a sale. With this tool, you don’t have to keep on reminding yourself to send follow-up emails to potential customers. An email autoresponder campaign is an excellent way to keep in touch with your visitors and existing customers without significant time investment. You only need to set up everything once and depending on your settings, the tool will handle the rest of your email marketing for you.
Setting Up an Effective Email Autoresponder
It is important to customize your content even if you’re sending an automated email and to set the right pace of email delivery. You don’t want your subscribers to forget you but you don’t want to constantly be in their inbox and risk them opting out or marking you as spam. Send a welcome email right after subscription then space out the next emails every other day, every three days and then every week.
When an email autoresponder program is set up right, it will send timely and highly-relevant content to customers to meet their needs and interests. Joining an Internet marketing training program like Wealthy Affiliate can help you learn how to effectively use email autoresponders as well as other online marketing tools that are most relevant today.
