What Is An Autoresponder And How Does It Work?
What is an autoresponder and how does it work?? This is a question we get and answer all of the time from our subscribers and followers. As email marketing is one of the key components to making money online, no matter what you are trying to promote and sell.
We will answer it two ways within this article, one answer will be the short answer and the other will explain it in more depth.
And the other more in-depth answer we will explain to you why, if you are not using an autoresponder yet, why you need to get started using one in your email marketing immediately.
What Is An Autoresponder?
So… the short answer is. An autoresponder is a software tool that allows you to collect people’s names and email addresses and get them on your “Email Marketing list” which is sometimes also referred to as a newsletter.
Through you adding an autoresponder form code or API key to your websites, webpages or blogs, this allows people to subscribe to get more information.
Once they subscribe through the form or API on your site, their information gets automatically stored in a campaign that you have in your autoresponder.
Then you can email your subscribers all at once with just the click of a button.
And as well, you can schedule these emails to go out automatically at regular intervals and you can schedule your emails out days, even weeks ahead- and even further if needed.
This could be hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of people, and even more over time as you build your email list in your autoresponder.
How Do Autoresponders Work?
An autoresponder does not just go out and hijack random people’s emails.
You or someone else connects your autoresponder form code or api into a webpage of some kind, that could be a stand alone webpage, or a full website or blog that has hundreds of pages.
This will create a form on your page or site that will look like this as an example.
Or here is another example.
Having this opt-in form on your website gives people visiting your site the ability to enter their email and name if they are interested in learning more about your product, service, or offer.
Not everyone visiting your site is ready to buy now, this allows you to be able to follow up with them anytime using your autoresponder.
This is the gateway of and the front end of your autoresponder.
Because what ever details you specify in the form to collect, that information then gets stored in your autoresponder because your website is connected to it.
So that may be.
- Just their Email
- Or Email and Name
- Or even Email, Name and Phone Number
- Depending upon your other methods of follow up, such as calling your new leads.
Also Read: How To Create An Email Capture Landing Page
Two Ways Your Leads Will Get Emails From You
Your leads (Also known as subscribers) are stored in your autoresponder permanently, usually in a certain campaign, depending upon if your marketing different types of products or services, you may have set up more than one email follow up campaign in your autoresponder.
These leads then can be set up to get follow up emails automatically from you for a predetermined number of days. Once you set this up, these emails go out literally on autopilot.
You can as well, broadcast an email to all of your leads anytime you want. This broadcast type email goes out to all of the leads you specify at the push of the send button.
You can schedule these broadcast type emails to go out at regular intervals and you can schedule these out days, even weeks ahead- and even further if needed.
You do not have to email them all individually..Does not matter how big your email list gets, it is automation at its finest!
You Already Get Emails From Autoresponders
Have you ever given Walmart or Sam’s Club your email address so that you can get their deals and coupons?
Ever punch your email in at the Redbox kiosk?
Ever buy something online that required your email address?
Then you, my friend, have experienced an autoresponder in action!
Autoresponders are used by everyone from small business owners, sole proprietors, sales reps, realtors, online affiliates, all the way up to Fortune 500 companies.
Yeah, the BIG ones we all know…They all use autoresponders to make money online, and so should you!
6 Key Reasons Why You Should Be Using An Email Autoresponder
1. How else you going to follow up with thousands of people at the push of a button?
2. Your Autoresponder works when you are sleeping, at the beach or even while your gone on vacation.
3. 90% of all money made online is done in the follow up process.
4. Using an autoresponder will let your leads and customers get to know you and your business. Helps you build, like know and trust.
5. Like, know and trust will build you repeat buyers, customers for life.
6. Allows you to scale your business to much larger masses of people.
Building an email marketing list is like getting customers for life as long as they remain a subscriber they will continue to get your emails (Your Offers)…Powerful stuff!
We have people who have been on our own email list for over 15 years, some of these people have even became some of our closest friends! We have even traveled the world with some of them.
How Much Do Autoresponders Cost?
The two autoresponders that we will be comparing today are Get Response and Aweber, these are two of our favorites.
The best part is that both of these two autoresponders have a free trial, although we like GetResponses free trial better.
As with most reputable email autoresponders the larger your list grows over time, the more it cost. You should of course be making a lot more money at each point of growth as well.
Here is Awebers Pricing model after free trial.
Here is GetResponse Pricing model after free trial.
They also give great discounts when paying yearly instead of monthly, once on the Getresponse site, you can play around with list size and features and then compare directly to Aweber.
Also if budget allows yearly like we said, saves you a bunch of money.
We do like both Aweber and GetResponse, but for us Get Response wins out on features for us personally.
Some other people may like Aweber better, really comes down to personal choice and just getting started using one of them to start building your email marketing list.
Click here to learn more about Aweber
Click here to Learn more about Getresponse
Other Autoresponder Alternatives.
Are Autoresponders Complicated To Learn And Use?
No not really, once upon a time they were. Many years ago the first autoresponders were very complicated and you had to be a coder to put form code on your websites.
Now almost all website builders, page builders, and blog theme builders all have integrations built into them to aide you in this process. Basically all is just simply drag and drop, copy and paste.
All it takes is learning to navigate them a bit.
Autoresponders also have tutorials and follow along wizard set up as well, that will show you how to walk through step by step and create pages for your offers completely integrated without ever leaving their site.
All depends on how you want to use your autoresponders, but there are plenty of options that will aide you immensely through this process.
This blog you are on as an example, we have integrated with our Getresponse autoresponder, we used a theme builder to do so, and it was really easy to do.
These two reputable autoresponders are pretty much already built into most website builders, and theme builders and use a simple API connection to connect them.
What Is The Best Autoresponder To Use For Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing can be a sustainable and big source of income for those who are willing to put in the time and effort.
A good autoresponder service will make it easy for businesses and affiliate marketers to keep their email lists updated, send out promotional messages, and keep their mailing lists organized.
But not all autoresponders will allow you to send emails directly that contains affiliate links.
So you need to be careful, if you choose the wrong autoresponder, then you will not be able to send affiliate links in your emails.
Some autoresponders may even close your account if you do so.
To avoid this from happening to you, you need to choose a suitable autoresponder for affiliate marketing.
You need an autoresponder that allows you to promote affiliate links in your emails.
There are a vast variety of autoresponders on the market and available to you, but only a few good ones that really embrace affiliate marketing links and are okay to send in your emails.
There are two that really stand out from the rest. These two autoresponder companies were created originally with affiliate marketing in mind and both have been in the industry as a company over 20 years.
They both also include a variety of features and all the bells and whistles that other autoresponders have.
1. Full functioning API and traditional forms
2. High deliverability
3. List management
5. Set up full Email follow up Series
6. Broadcasting
7. Bounced message handling
8. Open and click tracking
9. Subscriber filtering
And the list goes on..
Two Best Autoresponders For Affiliate Marketing
1. GetResponse – Learn more here
2. SendShark – Learn more here
SendShark has recently launched a new model of their autoresponder, where they now offer 50,000 subscriber capacity for only $25 a month. It is kinda there re-grand opening special.
What ever your email marketing needs these two autoresponders will do the job. We have built large email list using both of them, and are open and click thru rates are excellent.
We have been doing email marketing for many years, and have used many autoresponders, these are two we always recommend for any business type. **On a side note we do not like Aweber for affiliate marketing.
In Conclusion
Just remember if you are not using autoresponders and email marketing in your business you are making a huge mistake, and leaving big money on the table.
One of the most popular and powerful ways to communicate with leads and customers is through email. So make sure and use email marketing in your business no matter what niche or market you are in.
Time to get serious about your business..and get started using them!
We hope this blog post was helpful and you walk away from it knowing what an autoresponder is and how they work..
Please leave your comments below if you have any questions, or just say hi.
Sincerely,
Your Friends And Partners
Richard and John Weberg
I like this article a lot, only one thing, if there is a example that will be even better,
The first step, showing how an auto responder collect leads?
The second step, After collection of huge leads, then what kind of email you send out first to start wave of emails?
Again I always like your posts.
Sam if you want very explicit instructions on how to collect leads and actually tie them into a page or website we can help you with that. What you email your leads varies depending upon what you are promoting and trying to make money with. Example: if you are selling dog training instructions, you certainly are not going to have the same emails as someone selling violin lessons. We have a course set up, that you can purchase and will walk you through every aspect of setting up a real business online. Including real guidance on the email marketing part, and learning to write emails specific to your niche my friend.
You can click here and get in the course.: https://emoneypeeps.com/get-started/
Sincerely,
Your friends and partners
Richard and John Weberg