Article Originally published in the Capital Region Business Journal - November - (note that the September 2008 - December 2008 issues of CRBJ were not posted online - this link will take you to their main page)
 

Title: Sequential autoresponders save time, get your message out

By: Jonny Buroker

So, you’ve been following the advice within this column over the last several months.  

You’ve brought more traffic to your site via search engine optimization and pay per click ad campaigns and you’ve taken steps to increase your conversion rate while people are visiting your site.  Now what?   

Consumer buying cycles can often take days, weeks, months and even years, so you need to keep a prospect interested and capitalize on their initial commitment to your company.  

Most customers need to see your marketing messages multiple times before they are ready to buy, so how do you get your company’s messages in front of these prospects?  

One approach is the use of sequential autoresponders.

An autoresponder is a software program that automatically responds to an incoming email from your web site, usually your Contact page where the visitor is requesting additional information or signing up for your newsletter.  

The autoresponder acknowledges that the request was received and will be acted on soon.  However, the autoresponder is a one shot deal.  

A more elaborate and effective means of communication is a sequential autoresponder that can be programmed to send a series of predefined messages to your prospects, keeping the lines of communication open, all while minimizing the actual time and effort of actively managing these prospects.

AN AUTORESPONDER ON AUTOPILOT

Consider the business that holds periodic seminars.  They’ve put together a series of marketing articles explaining the seminars and why people should attend.  

With an ordinary auto responder, the business would have to send the articles one at a time to each of the recipients and would need to manually track which article has been sent to which recipient.  While possible, a much more effective and efficient approach is to automate this process, freeing up management time for more productive activities.  

Sequential autoresponders can be sequenced, where the communications are sent in order based upon the date the initial request was received, or scheduled, where the same communication is sent to all recipients regardless of when the initial request was received.  

A good use of a scheduled autoresponder might be for a business that has a major event upcoming that they want people to sign up for.  

They could schedule a communication 30 days in advance of the event, another a week prior, and maybe a final communication the day before the event.

CONTENT IS STILL KING

Hopefully you can see the benefits a sequential autoresponder can provide to your marketing campaign.  

A major barrier to an effective campaign is writing copy.  It’s important that you invest the time to write compelling and informative emails and let the autoresponder software do a majority of the grunt work.  

Be sure to research the capabilities of the autoresponder software to ensure that it complies with the CAN-SPAM act and that your messages will be delivered and not lost.