Autoresponders pt.2

So, let’s summarize the important features of a good autoresponder:

1. Pricing Policy

• Upfront purchase price (one time) or a Monthly fee?
• Free trial period? ( good vendors always allow this)
• Refund period - does this apply to one tie and monthly packages? (30 days normal)
• Technical support and for software you purchased, is there an offer to assist with installation?

2. Autoresponder  software/account limits

• No. of domains and no. of autoresponders allowed with license.
• Maximum number of subscribers to each list of package as a whole?
• Ability to support huge mailing list.

3. Does the autoresponder allow you to create web-forms for your website? (Essential)

4. Will the system allow subscribers to unsubscribe easily? (This is a legal requirement in some regions)

5. Manage Your Messages / Broadcasts

• Personalization features.
• Does the sign-up form creation area allow custom fields?
• Can you send attachments? How large? (1MB in normal)
• Can you send in HTML or text formats.
• Build-in message editor. (essential)
• Ability to create sequential and one-time broadcast messages.(essential)
• Customizable double opt-in subscribe system. (You really should use this)
• Ability to choose your own custom redirect pages for ‘thank you’ and ‘confirmed’ subscriptions.

6. Can you send yourself a test email to see what your message will look like in different email systems? I personally send myself a test to Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail and Mac mail.

7. Bounced Email Notification - if your emails are being sent to invalid email messages, you need to clean up these accounts.

8. Statistics

• Can you search for subscribers?
• Can you track open rates, internal link click tracks?
• Click-through link tracking.

What can you really do with an autorepsonder?

Marketing
Any marketer will tell you that collecting names and email addresses is one of the keys to running a successful business. Over the last few years the direct email sell approach has suffered as spammers have taken over our inboxes and forced all of us to consider using spam controlled mail systems.

With this in mind, the importance of collecting ‘opt-in’ email addresses becomes so much more important. When a visitor signs up for your information and then accepts a confirmation email from you, they have made a conscious statement to you that they are interested in what you have to say and are in effect qualifying themselves as a potential buyer. Any email you send from that point on must be well crafted and focused on helping the recipient solve a problem.

Technical Support
One of the most common uses is to simply let your website visitor know that you have receive their email and will respond as quickly as possible. This is really useful when an existing client is looking for technical support.

If you can reassure your clients that their support request has arrived at its destination and will be attended to when you are available, you will have gone a long way towards keeping them working with you.

Course Material
Are you selling a training course of some type? A regular, sequential broadcast can really help with delivery. One of the more helpful autoresponders is that regardless of when a client signs up for your system, your autoresponder will ensure that they receive your messages or course material in a predetermined sequence. For example, deliveries can take place as follows:

Day 1, 7, 14, 21, 28….etc, and every client will receive the broadcast with that day-spacing without you having to monitor these clients individually.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the above terms - send me an email, I’d love to help you through this maze.

Use Google Mail!

Google

Don’t waste another minute. Go now and register for a Google account.

Go on… I’ll wait for you though the rest of the universe may be wondering why you have not done this already and if your are worthy.

The preponderance of tools that come with a google account are staggering.

This is made even more remarkable when you consider that the entire suite is free.

Google Mail

As a former Outlook and CRM (Goldmine) user I have to say that moving to an online mail system was something that really gave me pause and I dipped my toe into this arena tentatively.

I began by adding my Google account to my desktop based Goldmine system* and ran everything using the imap protocol (Mail sits on the server and your computer, always in synch). It wasn’t long before I began importing all my contact into Gmail and began using the online interface for sending and receiving email.

Like many early users, I started by creating labels to mimic the folder structure I was using in my mail program. This worked for me but I found that I was spending way too much time tagging emails before archiving them and soon, I dumped almost all my labels and came to rely on the search/extended search function to find individual emails and conversations.

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Autoresponders pt 1

I have many clients that ask me about autoresponders.

• What exactly does an autoresponder do?
• What are the important features to look for?
• Which one is the easiest to learn?
• Which one is the most flexible?
• Which one has the best anti-spam tools?
• Do I always have to pay in order to do this?

This is a really interesting area and I will explain it with only as much useful detail as necessary….

Overview:

In it’s most basic form, an autoresponder can be something as simple as a previously setup email message that is sent out when an email arrives in your inbox…think vacation autoresponder. Anyone with a webmail account with google or hotmail will be able to find some variation of this in their settings area.

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Browser Wars

Ask any web developer what their biggest complaint is and 90% of them will tell you that it has to do with trying to get their latest deign gem to work properly in all web browsers.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), the worst offender tends to be Microsoft internet Explorer (all versions).

Designers are taught to keep their code clean and today, to make extensive use of CSS and XHTML for a bunch of very good reasons.

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