How to Set Up Your First Autoresponder
How to Set Up Your First Autoresponder
How to Set Up Your First AutoresponderIf you are new to internet marketing, and are just setting up your first autoresponder, there are plenty of things you have to consider. Your autoresponder or e-zine has to be not only profitable but valuable as well. Nobody's turning on the TV to watch commercials, unless they are obsessed with them, so you have to take into account that people will have high expectations in exchange for their name and email address.
Looking back into my first email sequences I sometimes feel like laughing all day, I ask myself: did I really think they would be just OK for my subscribers? Well, Wise Men Learn from the Mistakes of Others, I want you to be the wise one.
Don't worry, I have never met anyone who got their first autoresponder spot on, but I can help you avoid the mistakes most of us fall for.
What do you need for setting up your e-zine?
First of all you will need an autoresponder, of course. I am not going to be too product specific here, just make sure that you make an informed decision, shop around and research all the features before you sign up. I have changed autoresponders loads of times, making me lose subscribers' data, and subscribers. I had to re-confirm opt-ins every time I changed autoresponder systems, so be very careful with your first choice.
What is an autoresponder?
An autoresponder is basically a peace of email software that will email your message automatically to your subscriber list. As the process is automatic, (it doesn't do copy writing), the success of your e-zine or newsletter is entirely up to you.
You need to have a selected niche. Is there anything you love reading, or writing about? What do you chat about with your friends or on Facebook? Is there any particular area where you can say you have a respectable knowledge or know more about than the average person?
It's all you need. Then you have to check if there are people in that niche desperate enough to find a solution to their problems. You will be the one who gives them the answers in exchange for their details.
After finding your niche, here's one tip: Get out there and try searching for a particular problem and check if there is a market. If you see good quality websites set up around the same topic you will see that there is a need. For example: you are the one who knows a lot about origami. You have to check if there are people searching for origami designs. How do they search for it? Go to Google Trends and check how many searches have been made for the keywords you would like to build your e-zine about. It the statistics show decline for the last few months, I would advise you against choosing the particular topic. Look further or try to specify your keywords, maybe they are not searching for origami designs, but they are searching for modern origami designs and the trends are different for that keyword.
You will also need content. That's a hard part, but don't worry. If you are new to your niche, there are loads of resources you can study before you set up your own content. Here's a proven tip to meet your subscribers' expectations easily even if you are new to your niche.
Go out there and read articles, see what other people are writing about. Check for e-books, downloadable products, reports and discussion forums. It will enable you to write your own content easily, around the hottest topics and get a better sign up rate.
Useful tip: Check the market for product giveaways, PLR (Private Label Rights) or Resell Rights products, to get more content for your subscribers.
Last but not least you will need a lead capture page. This is often referred as a squeeze page. A capture page is a page that asks for visitors' name and email address as a minimum. You need to set it up around the topic your e-zine is about and make it create as much curiosity as possible to make people sign up. You will need some copywriting skills and creativity, but graphics and HTML are another story. If you don't like taking chances, you will use some proven and well converting templates to set up your capture page. And don't forget to copy and paste your autoresponder sign up HTML code into the page.
If you need some downloadable templates for a lead capture page check out the resource box for some whopping niche site templates.
You can always offer incentives for people for signing up for your list like: "free 5-day how-to training" or "giving away free report" or giving away a software package.
But you have to keep your promises. If you promise a free instant download, don't ask for S&H costs, or give them a link later.
How to set up your e-zine
Write all your emails before you start promoting your capture page. You will start getting too busy generating traffic in no time that you won't have time to write your emails daily. Also the campaign has to be built up as a whole and not on the ground of " one affiliate link a day"!
If you promise your subscribers a 5-day course, always set up the first email to day 1, so they will remember that you kept your promise. It is OK to send affiliate links within the emails, or links to your sales page once in the course of the 5 days, or in the signature line as long as they are related to the topic of the e-zine. But don't bombard people with sales letters during the first 3-4 days, they will need some time anyway to get to know you, and to trust you.
You can set up automatic messages for as long as 30 days, but I would advise you against sending out 2 emails a day, because it will only result in the unsubscribe rates to go up.
You have to find the right balance between content and advertising, in my experience after sending three content based emails you can send a promotion email for a low-cost product and it will not affect your list.
Also sending content-based emails and free reports to your subscribers will help you brand yourself and make them visit your website again. You can always send them a report, a link to one of your published articles you think they would find useful.
The importance of the first email.
Your first email is very important. Your subscriber just signed up and they have the highest expectations towards you, I can assure you. Nobody just throws in their email address unless they think the exchange will worth it.
In the first email you have to thank them for subscribing, assure them that you will not misuse their information, tell them to white list your email address, and inform them of the next steps. If you offered a free download on your capture page make sure that you send the direct download link in your first email again, who knows, maybe their computer just froze.
Traffic generation tactics.
Once you set up your automated system you just have to drive traffic to the front end to get sales and raving fans out from the back end. I don't have enough space here to go into details regarding to traffic generation tactics, I will only mention some ways to drive traffic to your capture page.
Ad exchanges
Link exchange directories
Forums
Your word press blog (Google loves new content, and you can also send people back to your blog)
Forum signatures
Finding joint ventures
Pay
Now Pay Close Attention --
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