Lucid Marketing Blog – Plain & Simple Marketing

As an Internet marketers, or as someone who is seriously considering taking up the practice of Internet marketing, you likely understand the value of list building. It’s not hard to grasp the importance of building a list of interested prospects to whom you can send regular offers and updates about your products and services.

On the same note, it’s easy to see why you would want to place all of your paying customers on a special list. Doing this would make it super easy to contact a group of proven buyers whenever you have a new offer or an affiliate promotion.

I don’t need to go into detail about any of this stuff because you already know it’s important. But what I do want to emphasize with this article is the absolute critical importance of using the right tools for building and managing your mailing lists.

Professional marketers use special software for collecting, storing, organizing, and communicating with opt-in prospects. The general term for this software is “autoresponder“, because it can be used to literally automate much of your email marketing process.

You probably knew this much already. But please bear with me as I discuss the important factors to consider when choosing which autoresponder software to use for your email marketing endeavors.

What A Good Autoresponder Does

A good autoresponder will allow a new subscriber to register either through an online form, by sending an email to the responder, making a purchase, etc. Then, as the name implies, the responder software will send an automatic email that delivers whatever info is relevant to the subscription.

For instance, if your list is built on the premise of a free software gift, the welcome email would provide the download link for this gift. If you are offering a five-part course, the welcome email would contain lesson 1, and so on.

After the initial response, a quality autoresponder will also let you schedule as many follow-up messages as needed. You can and should set up a complete email marketing campaign that is delivered on schedule and on autopilot, to each new prospect who signs up for your list.

Ideally, you will be able to personalize your messages by calling each reader by his or her name. And you should be able to use other preset tags to insert other personal info about each prospect as needed.

Beyond delivering an automatic sequence, your autoresponder should allow you to send out stand-alone broadcast messages any time you like. You should be able to send these broadcasts on the fly, or schedule them for delayed sending.

In addition to these basic functions, it would also be nice if your autoresponder allows you to track sign-ups so you can easily tell which opt-in pages are working the best. And the ability to set up unlimited responders, collect unlimited subscribers, and integrate unlimited follow-ups is also important.

Hosting Your Own Responder Or Using A Professional Service

Opinions vary greatly as to whether it’s best to host a responder on your own server or rely on a good third-party service provider. There are benefits to either approach.

Personally I prefer third-party services for the following reasons:

1. I can rely on a professional server network to deliver my emails. This activity causes tremendous server strain so I prefer to outsource it.
2. I don’t have to worry about fighting false spam complaints. The service I use will tackle this for me, and they have the resources and experience to do so where I do not.
3. I can allow professionals in the field to insure email deliverability, proper database management, and so forth. This is very important work and I won’t take the risk of messing it up because I’m not an expert in these fields.

If you want to host an autoresponder on your domain that’s fine. But I strongly urge you to think this through; yes you can avoid a monthly fee by doing this but is $20 per month really too much to pay for the kind of peace of mind and reliability that comes from letting the pros serve/maintain your autoresponder for you?

Test Driving A System Before You Commit

I cant’s tress enough that your autoresponder will literally be the backbone of your list building and email marketing work. It’s crucial that you go with a service that gives you exactly what you need and feels right.

Therefore it’s a great idea to thoroughly test a responder service before you commit and begin to build your large mailing lists. Spend some time setting up a message series, and then sign up yourself to be sure everything works as it should; also try to get yourself a few dozen to a few hundred live subscribers and then monitor how many emails bounce back, how many prospects fail to validate, and so forth.

Once you find a system that feels good and works well, plan to stick with it long-term. Jumping from one responder to another is a bizarre, counterproductive way to work.

To learn more about autoresponders and where you can find a good autoresponder service please check out my autoresponder review portal now. I hope you’ll use this info when choosing the right platform for your email marketing needs.

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