AutoResponders 101 - What is it about. Why you need it.

1. AutoResponders 101 –What it is about. Why you need it. By: Sven Wolf

2. Well, what an AutoResponderdoes for you is to send emails. However, in comparison to normal email client where you have to send everything manually to multiple people at a time, and you always have to pick out which person you want to send an email to, AutoResponders can mass-send to a thousands of email addresses in just a few clicks. What are AutoResponders?

3. Also, with the use of AutoResponders, you can schedule every email to send out at a certain time. You can also use an AutoResponder in response to a newsletter subscription request to verify the opt-in or subscription cancellation or to indicate to the sender that a user comment was received. So in a nutshell,what an AutoResponder does for you is it ties everything you need in an email marketing tool into one nice, neat package -- so that you can communicate with people that are interested in the subject matter that you are sharing.

4. Which AutoResponders would work for me?” – You most likely will ask me this question next. I know there are a lot of different AutoResponders out there that are claiming to satisfy your every email marketing needs. True that. To choose the right autoresponder for you, you will need to assess what your needs are. Which Provider Should I Choose?

5. Now, it's not easy if you're new to this field. Because you probably don't know what you need. However, there is one that I have proven to be effective, and efficient – one that I would definitely recommend to those of you who are just starting up, or restarting your interweb businesses. The autoresponder that I use. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: GetResponse.

6. Okay. Firstly, I just want to make this clear – I am an affiliate with GetResponse and IF you were to subscribe through my link, I would get a commision. I AM actually using this tool, though. I wouldn't want to affilliate myself with something I could not stand behind or have actually tested and used. I want to let you know why I believe, GetResponse is one the best AutoResponders out in the market today, and why I choose to move from GVO Eresponder to GetResponse. Why Choose Get Response?

7. Now, I had a talk with my friend and partner David Wakeman. Who has more experience with different providers and here is his take on some of them. (By the way, David has also transcended to GetResponse for the various reasons stated below) Let me share an extract of that talk where David shares his experience with the different autoresponders.

8. I started off with the one that everybody and their brother talks about, which is AWeber. AWeber is a good Auto-Responder, it does great things. But the problem I had with AWeber is that it got costly. It got very, very costly. I mean, we are in the business to make money. Not to make money for ourselves. Not for others. You know, I don’t mind paying for a service that provides quality but at some point in time, you have to look at your budget and decide whether or not it is at your budgetary constraints and requirements.” I would like to add that we were not focusing so much on the other providers. Our talk actually focused a lot on what we like about GetResponse. David also talked about his thoughts on TrafficWave which is another provider with a little different approach. AWeber

9. “So I switched over to an Auto-Responder called Trafficwave. And I really liked it. I thought it was a great AutoResponder. It offered a lot of services. And a nice part about it was it was a fixed cost. No matter how any people you signed up -- you could have 10,000 or 50,000 – it didn’t matter. It was always going to be the same cost. And it had a great affiliate program and everything else with it. I was not really much interested in the Affiliate program as I was in the fact that it was a fixed cost. The thing that I found with Trafficwave that kind of made me have to look at another direction was, although it was very cost effective, it offered most all of the features that other AutoResponders at that time offered. Their advancements with the technology and with the changes in the technology that we see going on with the world today, were slow. Trafficwave

10. Okay? So, depending on how you are using an AutoResponder, Trafficwave had great functionality and had great basics. But they were very slow to react to the new technologies: being able to interact with smart devices, iPads and all other devices that are now being utilized by people throughout the world. So, I found that it limited me in the ability to make adjustments. And I was having to look for other tools, applications and resources in order to meet the needs that I had to be able to use mobile technology and things of that nature.”

11. Let’s talk about a provider I used: GVO (Global Virtual Opportunities). You got web hosting, 10-seat conference room, and of course, an AutoResponder for a fixed price using GVO. At first, it worked well for me. You got 20,000 subscribers and it was fairly simple to use. But it got to be a little limited. You were not be able to segment a list (we will talk about what this is about, hang on). There weren’t too many templates, if you wanted to build an opt-in form. The service actually started losing quality later on. It got slow, glitchy and sometimes did not even work at all. (Stability is important) So I left for GetResponse as a AutoResponder provider. GVO (Global Virtual Opportunities)

12. GetResponseis by far the best For me, it really was the best I used. Okay. Now that we’ve compared GetResponse to 3 other AutoResponders in the market, let’s delve deeper into it.

13. Of course, we always want to be cost efficient -- pay as little as much and get the most quality. AWeberprobably the most established in the market today. But I got the impression that its features are very similar to GetResponse. I will just compare them straight off. Which of the two is the cheaper one? GetResponse is twice as cheap. With AWeber, $19 per month for up to 500 subscribers. And then it jumps to $29 for up to 2500 subscribers… and so on and so forth. You get a $1 trial for your first month and I think that's fair if you want to try it out. Now, on the other hand. GetResponse has a Free trial first month, you pay $15 per month and get up to 1000 subscribers. That's pricing. Let's talk sboutGetResponse'sFeatures. Price

14. Just recently, they introduced AutoResponder 2.0. This will give you the ability to seamlessly automate your marketing message through multiple different platforms. So now we you don’t need to worry about whether or not it is going to look right on a mobile device. It will adapt your message automatically to the environment that it is going to be presented. A.Automatic Adaptation with Mobile Devices

15. To be able to survey your subscribers, and ask them “What you need me to provide you?” is one of the very crucial aspects in any business. And GetResponse has a survey function built in it at no additional cost. This to me was like, WOW! B. Survey

16. And another thing that I really liked aboutGetResponse is its integration with different social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. You can even set up Paypal, Amazon, etc. into your AutoResponder so within your newsletter, you can send out message and actually have people see those Click here, Buy Buttons inside that email. Everything is integrated. Soit makes it even easier for you to get more clicks and purchases. This is important because quite honestly, we are in it to generate an income. C. Integration with Social networks and E-Commerce Sites

17. There are a lot of tools out there right now to create fancy and interactive landing pages. Well, GetResponse got this, too. And it’s very easy to use with its Drag-And-Drop creation. You would not need to have prior HTML experience to do this. You would not need to outsource this work to an external expert and accumulate additional cost. There’s an additional cost for it. But think about it -- If you can take and integrate everything you got into one nice, neat package and do drag-and-drop creation of landing pages in a matter of minutes -- How cool is that? At this point of the article, Iwould like to talk a little about Segmenting and why it is the most important part of the whole AutoResponder system. D. Landing Page Creator

18. Basically, segmenting is dividing your list into different categories – which one is active and which ones aren’t. You would want to know which certain subscribers are actually attracted to your offers and which are the ones that are less attracted to you offers. Hence, you can learn and understand them and survey those people. Subsequently, you will find out what they really are interested in and know if your offers are appealing to them or not. Segmenting – It's About Economy

19. It is. We only have so much time in a day. And having to sit down and be there to send an email at a right moment is not always convenient. It is nice to be able to put something in auto-pilot, so to speak -- And not have to think about it. It is nice to know that now, there are options we can choose from that can satisfy our varying needs in our interweb agendas. Automatic is awesome

20. Alright, I have written a blog post series where we go deeper about AutoResponders. You will get to know better about this awesome email marketing tool. Click here to continue reading…

21. I hope you enjoyed. Good luck! Check my website below for more info. And check out my other presentations. http://www.WhoisSvenWolf.com