The basic
uses of an auto responder are enumerated bellow:
Any information that you want to make instantly
available to everyone (in this case your customer list) can be achieved through
an auto responder. What you just need to do is key-in the message and schedule
time and day, the auto-responder will take care of the rest. It could be
information about a product you are interested in. It could be instructions on
how to use or repair a product that you have. It could be an article about how
to make your own money from your site. Anything that can be put into text (and
with HTML email, pictures or drawings also) can be sent by
auto-responder.
Just as a brick-and-mortar business loves to build a
happy clientele that keeps coming back to buy again and again, so online business
want to build relationships with visitors as well as customers so they will
keep coming back. Physical stores may ask their customers to provide their name
for a store mailing list which alerts them to special sales, etc. The online
mailing list is even more important than the physical counterpart, because
there isn't an online equivalent to driving down the street and noticing a
"Sale" sign in the window of your favourite store. For an online
business to compete and survive, it is virtually necessary for the owner to
build an email list of people who have willingly given their names, with the
expectation that they will be advised about things they are interested in.
Building this list can be done several ways, but an auto-responder choice.
Now you have an opt-in email list started. What do
you do with it? A list of names isn’t much good unless you follow up with
them about your product offerings. Obviously the basic auto-responder function
of responding to e-mail messages isn’t of much value here. You need a function
that can send follow-up messages to addresses you already have. And that is one
of the additional functions of a good auto-responder. It is often called the
‘broadcast’ function for obvious reasons – a message is broadcast to all the
addresses in the list at once.
Studied have shown that you need to present your
product before a potential customer several times to increase the likelihood of
making a sale. To do that, you want to give the potential customer a good
reason to send his/her e-mail address. Since he/she may not have enough
interest simply to ask for more information about your product, you will want
to offer some incentive, like a free gift or service. Whatever the method, you
want to get the potential customer into your auto-responder message sequence,
then, in those messages, send your customer to your web site to make the sale.
If you are selling information products, you may
want to use auto-responders as the product delivery method. You can provide
after-sale support information such as FAQs (frequently asked questions),
thank-you messages, request for testimonials, etc. There is really no limit
other than your imagination to the uses that auto-responders can provide in
supporting your customer.