Why Every Website Owner Should Have an Autoresponder Service

September 5th, 2009 · No Comments

An autoresponder service is all about one thing—relationship. Voluntarily getting the name and email address of your site’s visitors is one of the most important things you can do to build a website that thrives. Whether the site is a non-profit one trying to update its members, or an online business that is selling the solution to someone’s needs, having the name and email address of an interested party is crucial.

A good email autoresponder service will do more than make it easy to get someone’s contact information, it will make it a snap to continually stay in touch with them. If we relied on people bookmarking our sites and returning when they had time, we would have very few return visitors. Instead, if we stayed in touch with them, kept them informed on the topic that brought them to our site in the first place, we will build a relationship with them.

The power of an autoresponder service is that once you have written the emails, upload them with a single click, they work on auto-pilot for each individual. Whether someone signs-up for your mailing list today or next month, they receive the same welcome email from you instantaneously. Then, 24 hours later (or whatever time-frame you tell the autoresponder), it sends email number two, and another mail will be sent to them after four days. The autoresponder does this automatically, even if you’re out of town, sleeping, or doing another thing. It even includes their first name in the email making it more personal.

You don’t have to use the delayed feature, though. You can type up an email, personalize it by inserting each person’s first name into the headline, and clicking “Send” like you would in your favorite email program. Instantly it will be sent to everyone in your list. A great autoresponder service can even tell you how many people opened the email!

There are numerous autoresponder services available on the Internet, but I have found AWeber to have the most features and, by far, the easiest to configure. It’s about building relationships, and which are made deeper by autoresponder services.

James Michael has become somewhat of an autoresponder expert. He moderates the site AWeberReview.com and has an autoresponder tutorial site called MoreAweberUnleashed.com.