An interested visitor who has been strolling through your site, has finally come to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. It's a sunny afternoon, and her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the visitor's large fifty-year-old snow rose bonsai tree, suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.
In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and your sale is dust-unless you have had the foresight to utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her precious bonsai tree.
1. If you run an affiliate program you can publish a newsletter only for them. Inform them of current sales you are running and of promotional material that your affiliates can use themselves to increase their commissions. Include tips, advice and techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go out and promote for more business.
2. Use it to help distribute your articles. Writing and distributing targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business credibility, bring traffic to your sites and increase your sales potential. If your articles contain valuable information, many editors will print what is known as a resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and a brief description of your services or products. It can also contain your autoresponder address. Let's say you've written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder accounts and create a master list that contains the titles of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief description of them. Then promote your master list. Additionally, if you have affiliates include your publishing guidelines so that they can add their articles to your list, increasing the number of writers who are represented in your articles list.
3. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances of converting visitors into customers. For example, if you're selling a particular product, put testimonials about how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a detailed, enticing description of your products.
4. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that each lesson has quality content-not a sales pitch. Your content will do the selling for you, and will do it much more effectively. You can include tips centered on a different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product. Make sure to include a paragraph of two at the end of each lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a purchase.
5. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an idea of the type of information you can provide and the quality of your products and services. Make sure these reports are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a potential customer than gain a sale.
6. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software, membership, ect. People who are exposed to a little taste often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from your website. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain their free trial and then make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.
7. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request form for visitors to be notified of special offers or discounts in the future. This creates a very effective mailing list that contains the names of people who are already your customers.
8. Now that you have seen some of the ways that the autoresponder can be used creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant ideas of your own!
What kind of success have you had with autoresponders? Leave a comment about some of the things that you have tried.
copyright Dan and Deanna Finlinson "Marketing Unscrambled"
