What are Autoresponders and How Can They Help Your Business.

I have received inquiries from potential clients about Autoresponders and how they can expect this to be beneficial to their business. I've come across an article that really explains it and its benefits.

What is an Autoresponder? By Michael Cheney
Lots of people talk about autoresponders and how you can use them to grow your business online. But what actually is an autoresponder? Quite simply, it’s a piece of software that enables you to send emails to people automatically. This doesn’t mean that it writes the emails for you and it doesn’t involve spam or sending unsolicited email. What it means is that you set up a sequence of prewritten emails that are sent out to prospects on your database at regular intervals.

The importance of this cannot be underestimated. Time and time again internet marketing gurus tell you that the money is in the list. This is not by accident. The online marketing specialists know that this is fact. The more people you have on a mailing list that are interested in your products or services, the more sales you will make.

You can use an autoresponder to essentially send emails out to your prospect list, even when you’re not at a computer. What you do is you create, lets say, a seven part email course. Then you can set the intervals for the emails to, say, once a day and send them one part of the course each day. So you write the emails one time and then anyone joining that list will automatically be sent those emails for the next seven days.

This doesn’t matter if you’re online or if you’re away from the computer. They will get sent automatically. They also get added to the list automatically. And if they choose to unsubscribe, all of that is taken care of without you having to lift a finger.

The main benefit to using an autoresponder is connected to the fact that the majority of people need to be told about a product seven times before they buy it. So I want to ask you, how many times are you telling your visitors about your product? Chances are it’s less than seven.
They’ll land on your homepage or somewhere else on your website and they’ll look at your offering, but the majority of your sites visitors will disappear. So unless you can get them onto an opt-in mailing list, either a course or free information that is of multi-part format, the chances are you will have lost them forever. You can use an autoresponder to send these messages out to people with their permission convincing them and educating them about your product.

This is simply a form of permission marketing. People will give you their permission to receive emails in return for you giving them free, quality information. Do not load the messages with over-hyped sales pitches, but give them real quality information with a small mention about your product at the end.

What you’ll find is that people come to know you and grow to trust you over time as you send them more and more information. The longer you can maintain this relationship with them, the more likely they are to actually buy from you. The beauty of this is that using an autoresponder saves you the costs of printing, posting and packaging and enables you to contact and keep in touch with all your prospects around the clock without actually having to do anything.