In a world where there are over 4.3 billion email accounts and more than 205 billion sent and received emails each day, you’d expect it to be rather difficult to separate yourself from the masses when marketing your products and services via email.
And you’d be right about that.
When looking at the statistics provided by the Radicati group in their latest email statistics report, we can see a steady growth of 6 or 7% each year from now until 2019, which means you better find something you can do to get your reader’s’ attention.
Enter autoresponder.
Known by marketers around the world by many different names, such as drip marketing, drip campaigns, auto email campaigns, automated email marketing campaigns and so forth, autoresponders have become a hit in the recent years.
Why is that you might ask, and I shall tell you.
There are many different tools you can use to create autoresponders (and no, Gmail is not one of them) and you should compare your options carefully.
ClickFunnels recently released Actionetics which allows you to build out your autoresponder too, you can find more details about Actionetics here.
Other options include tools like Emma, Mailchimp, Aweber and GetResponse and many, many more.
All of these tools can be used in creating an efficient and well converting email marketing campaign that is automated from start to finish.
Forget the age old problem that comes with newsletters not promoting your past content to new subscribers automatically, because you can take care of the problem with autoresponders.
Create any types of drip feeding campaigns that automatically get sent to your new subscribers and keep running for the pre-determined amount of time until it ends.
With proper tools you can have the autoresponder series behave differently depending on the actions of the subscriber, which is an excellent way to separate quality leads from the guy who just subscribed because other people think he should.
But, without further delay, let’s get started on those frequently asked questions you want to know the answers to!
Q1 – What type of content should my autoresponder include?
A1 – There are no limits as long as the content type fits your niche.
Anything goes from blog posts, cheat sheets and whitepapers to full blown eBooks. There’s really no limits to what you offer in those emails, but do keep a few things in mind.
First I want to remind you that the average adult’s attention span is eight seconds, less than that of a goldfish.
And I’m not joking.
What makes things even worse is the culture of multitasking in today’s world where you should be able to work efficiently on multiple things at the same time.
But, the truth is that only around 2% of us are good at it. That means your readers most likely only quickly scan through your emails, if you’re lucky they might read the first paragraph.
So what should you do with your autoresponder then, at least content wise?
Keep it short and sweet.
Sure, you can include a full eBook in the series, but make sure the subscriber has opened at least one of your autoresponders before sending them an eBook that they won’t even bother reading.
Instead, you should send them something nice and light, like a video intro or a link to an interview with an expert from your niche.
Whatever you do, don’t make the first email a novel like reading experience, because no one will bother with it.
The second point, which I almost covered in my first post due to my excitement about this topic, is to match the content types to your audience and their actions toward your emails.
If they open your first email, then send them something more immersive, but if they don’t open it you should try with something easy, quick and useful. So no eBooks when you’re trying to get them to open at least that one email.
Basically this question can be summed up like this:
Make sure you give enough value to your customer in the autoresponders, while packaging the content in an easy to access form that is specific to their actions.
Q2 – Do I need to write new content for the autoresponder series?
A2 – No, you do not.
Most readers and subscribers haven’t gone through everything you’ve ever written (sorry to burst your bubble if you weren’t aware of that), so you can easily use some of your blog posts that you’ve already published as part of the autoresponder and have them repurposed.
If you’re brave you can use already posted content for the whole campaign, but a more sensible option would be to pick ‘n mix some new and some old content and put together an autoresponder series with a little bit of both in it.
Q3 – How do you choose the topic of your autoresponder?
A3 – There are tons of different ways to choose a topic, just make sure it’s a fit for your niche.
Basically you have two options.
Either you decide it yourself or you listen to what your audience wants.
The first one is simple enough on its own, just write about what you think is awesome and relevant.
The second one can be executed in many ways and I don’t mean just different types of surveys, I mean analytics, social media and surveys.
By studying your most popular posts in your blog you can come up with a pretty narrow selection of topics that would be best suited as a topic for the autoresponder series.
And hey, why limit yourself to only one topic, make a course out of it!
That’s what Brian Dean does with his SEO That Works course, which is a collection of all his knowledge and teachings in one package, and that course was very smartly promoted before it was even opened to the public.
I received multiple emails that took me from an occasional reader to an addict for his wisdom, and before you know it, the autoresponder series ended and the course was opened officially.
Now that’s a proper email marketing campaign that gets people into your sales funnel.
Q4 – How long should an autoresponder series be?
A4 – Depends entirely on your niche and audience, as well as the type of autoresponder series
If you are looking to educate the subscriber with a course about your chosen topic, I would expect them to prefer something a bit longer than two emails, wouldn’t you?
When it comes to the attention span that I mentioned earlier, it might even be smarter to divide your content up into short emails that can educate and convince your subscribers quickly and efficiently, instead of sending out just a couple of thick and depressing looking emails.
Naturally, the only certain knowledge as far as the optimal length of an autoresponder series is only found out one way: Split testing.
Conclusion
Autoresponders are definitely a worthwhile addition to your marketing toolbox as you can see.
This was a very quick and light dive into the world of autoresponders and I tried answering the basic questions that many people wanted to ask, but it isn’t even meant to teach you everything about the topic.
Now that you’re thirsty for more information about autoresponders and how to actually go from not having any to having multiple different autoresponder series and everything in between, you should definitely checkout this excellent and extremely thorough guide from the folks at Zapier about drip marketing.
As always comments, questions and experiences are more than welcome in the comments section below!