Publishing your own eZine is one of the most powerful tactics you can employ for your strategic online positioning. Gold is in your mailing list, they say, and one of the best ways to build up your mailing list is by offering your prospects something they'll find difficult to refuse: the information they need. And this information is best conveyed through a digital magazine format that is an eZine.
But publishing your own eZine is not as easy as writing and formatting an electronic newsletter. That is the easy part, quite actually. The process of placing the right gears in the right places to ensure an automated system that will allow you to milk your mailing list for a long, long time with minimal labor on your part is the first goal you should aim for.
And the heart of a highly efficient mailing list is an excellent autoresponder service.
What Is An Autoresponder Service?
If you’re going to send an email to 5 or even 10 people, then manually doing the same won't be a problem. But if you're going to send an email to hundreds, if not thousands, of recipients, then such will be a laborious task that will take a day or two to accomplish.
Since you're expected to build up your mailing list to as many subscribers as possible, you don't have the luxury of manually sending out issues of your eZine.
The solution? You have to enroll with an autoresponder service.
Not just any kind of autoresponder service, mind you, but the best one you can ever find. The reason for this is simple. An autoresponder service is your business partner. Since your mailing list will play an integral role in determining the degree of success you can gain in this industry, and since an autoresponder service will make your mailing list possible, you need to join the best one available.
An autoresponder service automates the entire process. It picks up the contact details of your prospects, stores them in a database, and allows you to pre-load and pre-schedule the delivery of your messages. This way, it is possible to have a year's worth of messages ready for delivery even before you start accepting subscribers.
Things To Look For In An Autoresponder Service
An excellent autoresponder service should have the following characteristics:
- Allows you to create as many mailing groups as you want. You'd need to transfer subscribers from one to group to another depending on how well they respond and how much they have purchased from your enterprise.
- Allows you to personalize your messages automatically by using the details submitted by your subscribers. People respond more when they are referred to by their given names.
- Has excellent customer care service. You wouldn't want to be bogged down by technical difficulties in the middle of a very important campaign.
- Will protect you against spam complaints. Spam complaints are sometimes unavoidable despite your best efforts to avoid the same. Your autoresponder service should be able to protect you at times like this so as not to jeopardize your email marketing strategies.
Price Or Features, Which Is Which?
Often, I've been asked which is more important in choosing an autoresponder service: its applicable fees or its abundance of features. The ideal answer is: both.
But it can't be helped that the more powerful and reliable services come at a steeper price. We get what we pay for, after all.
In choosing an autoresponder service, the features should take precedence. An autoresponder service is one of the primary investments you can make for your online business, and it should never be compromised least your success in this field will be jeopardized.
My autoresponder of choice is GetResponse. I can create as many mailing lists as I want, can copy subscribers to and from those lists, and can set up as many autoresponders as I want for the list. I have one client who has over 400 autoresponders attached to one subscription list.
Contact me if you have any questions about autoresponders. They are a great tool for automating your subscription process.
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