[Show Transcript]
I’m Randy Charach from RandyReport.com and THIS is the show that takes you from internet zero to business hero!
Let me ask you a quick question: if you could hire an employee and legally, ethically, and morally pay them pennies to sell you products and services everyday for months and even years to come, would you do it?
The question would be absolutely unheard of for a human employee – that’s just plain wrong. However, I’m talking about technology in this case. The loyal electronic employee, the autoresponder.
Simply put, an autoresponder is a system that lets you create mailing lists to talk to your overall audience with consistency and ease.
Imagine that you wanted to let everyone know of an event going on at your business, like a special sale, or even a new store’s grand opening. Instead of plastering flyers all over the place or spending money on a big newspaper spot, you can use an autoresponder to run the actual launch of your new venture from start to finish AND you don’t have to limit yourself to just one or two messages.
In the case of a grand opening, you may want to send out promotions that would interest your audience even after the grand opening. With the power of autoresponders, you can create a feeling of exclusivity from the beginning…it’s a proven sales booster in just about any business market. People want to feel special, and creating a mailing list just for them may give you access to their attention far more effectively than a general ad.
Compared to a traditional advertisement, autoresponders provide a stronger return on investment. Once you have permission to send e-mail to someone in your target audience, you can send your messages to them until they decide they don’t want to hear from you.
So that means that if you enter the world of autoresponders the right way, your business will have a nice home in your audience’s inboxes for a long time.
As you might have guessed, autoresponders are completely permission based. Your audience gives permission for you to send them automated messages by “opting in”. All that this means is that they enter their name and email address so that they can get on your mailing list.
What you really want to go for is a double opt-in list, which is just like the regular single opt-in I just mentioned, but it adds one more step for verification purposes. Double opt-in lists are the most valuable because the person has honestly taken the time to open their arms and say “Let me in! Let me in!”
It’s a great feeling to check your autoresponder stats for a mailing list and see people opening up their inboxes to you! This is something you definitely want to implement in your business as soon as possible for best results.
So, how do you harvest these juicy benefits for yourself?
What we need to do first is decide how we want to set up the structure. You can find and use software hosted on your company’s web server, or you can go with an email service provider. These guys are pros — they handle every aspect of email deliver you can think of.
I definitely recommend going this route for the best deliverability possible, as well as ease of use. While you can go with your own self-hosted solution, this is just one more item on your to do list. It goes without saying that you already have plenty to do for your business. I know I do — unfortunately, I haven’t been able to use the ol’ magic wand to make it all disappear yet!
The other side of structure is putting the opt-in forms on your website. You’ll want to place these as high as you can on your website without the user having to scroll. The goal here is to get as many subscribers to your mailing list as possible. So it just makes sense to draw attention to the opt-in box as soon as possible.
There are a few tricks to getting your opt-in box to stand out in order to get more people to sign up for your mailing list. You want to have a good headline that pulls them in with a clear call to action. You can even add a few bullet points highlighting why the visitor should sign up immediately. You can also add a freebie to entice the visitor to sign up — it’s called an ‘ethical bribe’ in marketing circles and it works very well. It can be a special coupon, audio or video clip, or even a small digital guide.
As always, these are general tips — every industry is different. If you are going to offer a freebie, make sure it actually will provide value to your audience. No matter what industry your business is in, it’s pretty safe to say that value is the universal business language!
Well, it’s time to tackle the most important part of the autoresponder: filling it with compelling content. These are your follow up messages, broadcasts, and newsletters. Follow up messages are structured on a set sequence and are sent out one after the other, spaced out evenly. You can send them daily, weekly, bi-weekly and even monthly. It’s a system so regular it could make clockwork jealous.
Content really is what separates cold, unresponsive mailing lists from red oven-hot mailing lists filled with people who are developing trust in you and what you have to offer. That’s where the power of autoresponders comes in when it comes to generating a strong income stream for your business. Since they’re on autopilot, all the work is done in the beginning. After the content is loaded in, it runs automatically for your 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Each message does not have to be long. However, each message should focus on interacting with the audience and encouraging them to take action on whatever information you provide. Autoresponders are a perfect way to not just raise the bar in your business, but truly send it sky high! Automating your business in a strategic way is definitely the way to grow your business very quickly.
Speaking of growth, remember…just as your audience can sign up for your mailing list at any time, they can also leave at any time. By law, there has to be a way for your subscribers to unsubscribe from your mailing list. This is usually going to be at the bottom of each message. It’s absolutely critical that you take the time to really show your audience that you have a strong reason to be in their inbox. After all, sending out a lot of messages is rather easy, but getting people interested enough to open your e-mails is another story.
The easiest way to make sure your emails have the highest chance of getting read is to be interesting and give great value.
When I sit down to think about what to share with all of you here on Randy Report, I think about what I would share with a good friend that’s interested in the same topic I’m writing about. Put your audience in the same position and they’ll be sure to consider everything you offer to them. You deserve it!
Of course, the only way to get a feel for your audience and how they’ll respond to an actual mailing list promotion is to go out and create an autoresponder and load it with targeted messages to your audience. Try it out today and see just how far your new electronic salesperson can take your business!
Our question this week comes from Jessica T. from Sacramento, CA who wrote:
Hi Randy! First time watching your show, but I like it already. When you create these messages, what sort of call to action are you referring to? Do I have to sell something on every message?
Thanks so much for joining me, Jessica! To answer your question, you don’t have to sell a product on every single message, but it’s important to get your audience in the habit of doing something on each and every email. This makes it easier in the long run to offer products and services in the future because your audience is already used to taking action from the beginning.
By starting out in this manner, you’ll have a more responsive list than if you were to just give information without asking for some sort of action to be taken. There aren’t any guarantees that each and every person will always open, read, and take action by clicking on a link or taking a poll, but these methods ensure that your chances of success are as high as possible.
So, if you have a video to share or a link to pass on, share it freely with your list – it can only lead to a closer tie to your list!
Well, that wraps up this episode of Randy Report. Since company’s websites, prices and quality of service on the Internet change rapidly, for my up-to-date recommendations on resources and for free tools and training, visit me today at RandyReport.com.
Today you learned
how to unleash the power of autoresponders to automate your promotion and sales efforts on a completely new level. The keys to a successful autoresponder campaign is building the structure of the autoresponder, as well as the specific content that you need to put into follow up messages.
To recap, structure is basically the technical aspects of the autoresponder, most of which can be handled by the autoresponder hosting company you decide to go with.
The rest of the structure process is just copying and pasting a few special lines into your web page to make the opt-in box appear. Remember that a double opt-in list is the most valuable, so make sure that your autoresponder settings are set properly.
The second part is filling the autoresponder with content – the only points to keep in mind is to provide value, and to provide value in a way that encourages the reader to take further action on what you’ve shared with them. Value is what will really keep subscribers saving a space for you in their inboxes for weeks, even months and years to come, so if you keep that in mind you should have no trouble raising the bar in your autoresponder efforts.
[End of Show Transcript]
