What is an Autoresponder?

What is an autoresponder? Among online marketing tools, an autoresponder is a great way to deliver compelling, engaging and interesting content to your target audience, automatically.

Simply put, an autoresponder allows you to send email messages automatically to people who have elected to receive them (your subscribers). For example, if you’ve created a free report, a template, a guide or other helpful piece of content, you can let your website visitors access it in exchange for their email address.

Chances are, they’re interested enough in your topic to want to stay updated in addition to getting the content you’re giving away. An autoresponder provides a great opportunity for you to follow up with these users automatically.

Now that you know the answer to “What is an autoresponder?” The next question is how to go about using it correctly.

How to Get Started with Email Marketing Using an Autoresponder

Now that you better understand what an autoresponder is, how can you use it to market to your customers or visitors via email?

Well, the important thing to remember is that people don’t like being sold to. They do, however, appreciate informative, interesting and helpful content. The very first thing that you can do in order to understand how an autoresponder works, is to use one to set up not just the delivery of your guide or updates but to thank your user for subscribing to your mailing list.

Here’s what you do.

First, create the piece of content you’d like to give away. It can be a free guide, a template, or anything that you believe your website visitors would find useful. Don’t get too hung up on this step — you can always go back and change it or improve it later.

The important thing at this step is to create something that users will find valuable enough to want to give you their email address for. It doesn’t have to be long or detailed, but the more valuable it is, the more likely they’ll be to stay subscribed after receiving it.

Next, you’ll need to sign up for an autoresponder service. There are several email marketing companies that offer an autoresponder capability, including Aweber, GetResponse and many more. Many of them have free or low-cost trials.

Once you’re signed up for your preferred email marketing service, it’s time to use the autoresponder. All of the email marketing services we’ve reviewed will walk you through this process (as it differs for each service), but the overall process is the same.

The Double Opt-In

In essence, what you’re doing is welcoming your users to your mailing list. Most, if not all email marketing service providers will require you to do what’s called a double opt-in. This helps protect you from being mistakenly labeled as a spammer and ensures that only the people who want to subscribe to your mailing list are subscribed.

The way this works is that the very first email that your users will receive, the “Welcome Email” is just a short note welcoming them to your list as well as (and this is the important part) making sure they do indeed want to sign up and that you have their permission to email them.

The reason why this extra step is required is because anyone can enter anyone else’s email address into a form to get something, and you don’t want to email people who haven’t expressly given you their “digital consent” to do just that. Not only would it sour your reputation, but emailing someone who didn’t give you permission and isn’t interested in what you have to share is about as useful as nailing Jell-O to a tree.

The Welcome Email

Now, as soon as the user subscribes, this “Welcome Email” goes out. If they elect not to confirm, no harm done — they won’t become subscribers. If they do confirm that you have their permission to email them (for them, the process is as easy as clicking on a link in their email) then comes the actual autoresponder part.

The Autoresponder

From this point on, you can set up emails to go out at certain time frames after they’ve become a subscriber. This is great for content that doesn’t change often So, for example, you could send them tips on how to organize their schedule more effectively, or recipes for easy, healthy meals that kids and teens can make at home, or 10 basic greetings in Japanese. Whatever it is, this first email begins the process.

One day after subscribing, an email goes out introducing them to what they can expect and how it will help them.
One day after receiving email 1, email 2 goes out introducing them to the process, the first recipe, the basic words, and so on.
Subsequent emails can be sent out at different time frames for as long as you’d like. And keep in mind, because this is an autoresponder, it all happens automatically – without you having to do anything else. All you do is set it up the first time, and schedule the time frames that you want the messages to go out (once every day, twice a week, or whatever you choose).

And that’s all there is to it!

Creating Multiple Lists

Once you’ve created your first autoresponder, you’ll likely start to think of all kinds of ways that these versatile email marketing tools can be used. Entire courses can be delivered this way and there are many paid mailing lists where the users pay a fee every month to get exclusive things that regular subscribers don’t get.

All email marketing services allow you to create multiple lists, and the autoresponder process is identical for all of them. You may decide to stay with just one list, and that’s perfectly fine as well. But it’s very likely that once you create your first autoresponder and its supporting content, that you’ll think of ways to improve and tweak the process.

The great thing about email marketing is that you can always go back and make changes and revise along the way — your autoresponder content is not “set in stone”!

And, as new subscribers come on board, they’ll get the content that you created, according to the time frame that you set. So you may have created something a year ago. If someone subscribed yesterday, they’re getting Day 1 content today, and you don’t have to lift a finger to do anything.

As you can see, this can create a mailing list that’s very engaged and interested in what you have to share. But choosing the right email marketing provider is one decision you won’t want to make lightly. It’s a good idea to choose one that you can grow with (and that grows with you).