Autoresponder Basics For Newbies

Q:Tom, thank you for offering this service to answer affiliate questions. I appreciate your support. My site is [site deleted]. The site just went up today and I'm new to this so im hoping it all works out. I understand that one of the most important things you can do as an affiliate is to collect email addresses and follow up with your subscribers. I need a simple, inexpensive and effective autoresponder. Do you have any suggestions?

A: Thank you for your email. Yes, you are correct. One of the FIRST things any affiliate should do once you have a website up, is to place an opt-in (subscribe) form on your website and capture the names and email addresses of your visitors. This way, you can follow up with them and send them ezines, newsletters and special offers, by broadcast, by autoresponder, or both. Most people don't purchase on the first visit, but many purchase on subsequent visits, so if you collect emails and your competitors don't, then you will have the competitive edge.

This is especially important if you are paying for advertising such as Google Ad words. If you are paying for clicks to get traffic to your site in order to make product sales, you might as well be "buying" yourself an email list at the same time.

A lot of new affiliate marketers do not know how to set up a newsletter or subscribe form. Let me cut straight to the chase and save you months and years of frustration and lost money: DO NOT CUT CORNERS on your autoresponder! If I could do it all over again, I would have gone with a professional autoresponder, broadcast and e-mail list management service like AWEBER right from the start. I could write a 400 page novel about all the email broadcasting dramas (and nightmares) I have been thorough, from non delivery, to blacklisting and everything in between.

I've heard there are other good services out there (Get response, etc), but I use AWEBER Communications and I am completely satisfied with their service. They charge you based on the amount of email subscribers you have, and its completely fair because the more subscribers you have, the more income you can make from your list, so its worth every penny.

Two of the most important things to know about AWEBER are (1) you are largely protected from spam complaints, because aweber requires double opt in, and keeps strict accounting of time, date and IP address of the subscrition. (2) perhaps most important about is the fact that AWEBER will get your mail delivered and it will blast out fast. You would be shocked at how much of your email is blocked by ISP providers, corporate firewealls and spam filters.It's hard enough to get mail through as it is, no reason to make it worse by using a crummy e-mail broadcast provider.

When you sign up at AWEBER, there is a small learning curve, but it doesnt take long to get the hang of the control panel. Geting your opt in subscription form on your website is as simple as copying and pasting some HTML code onto your website. A 9 year old could do it, but if you can't figure it out, or if you just want to delegate, any good webmaster can help you.

Once you have your subscribe form on your site, the next question is, what the heck do you mail them? Well, you can send a "broadcast" anytime you want, but better still is the power of e-mail automation ("making money on auto-pilot, while you sleep!"). That is where an autoresponder sequence comes in. An autoresponder is software that completely automates your follow up by sending out your email automatically at pre-determined intervals that you choose.

Regarding autoresponder content, for now, you could always write your own, or for a quick start, pick and choose from my articles or use exceprts from my articles in the affiliate area, if any of this information suits your site and your audience.

Many affiliates have created outstanding e-mail autoresponder mini courses by selectively choosing from my content. Here are the web pages where you can browse our article library:

http://burnthefat.com/affiliate_area/articles.html

http://burnthefat.com/affiliate_area/Q&A.html

The one thing we do not have in our affiliate area yet is a pre-made autoresponder course, but we DO have that in the works. It will be a 6-part mini course about fat burning, and it will be very content rich.

Last but not least, this is just the beginning of email marketing. Advanced email marketing strategies will have to be the subject of a future column or one of our affiliate marketing tutorials.

There are many advanced strategies you may want to consider, including using a squeeze page and offering a "bribe" (a bonus) to entice visitors to opt in. This is important in this day and age of web 2.0 because most people are drowning in email and you have to give people a reason to subscribe to your ezine. Basically, you have to "sell your free stuff!"

Let me know how else I can help

- Tom Venuto, Author & Affiliate Manager,
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

Disclaimer: Burn the fat.com makes no promises, assurances or guarantees about earnings, commissions, conversions or income potential. Results of other affiliates are provided for informational purposes only and are no guarantee that you will do as well. Your participation in the Burn The Fat affiliate program implies acceptance of all terms and conditions of our affiliate agreement. Read the affiliate agreement and earnings disclaimer here:
http://burnthefat.com/affiliate_area/affiliate_agreement.html

Copyright 2007, fitness renaissance, LLC and Tom Venuto. Do Not Copy! Absolutely no reproduction of this article is permitted.