Have you ever heard of autoresponders? They are well-known to be software that saves you a lot of time and can be used in numerous ways for your business, specifically your email marketing.
An autoresponder is software that automatically creates a predetermined answer to each email sent to a specified destination such as your subscribers on your mailing list. They work according to the rules you employ such as time and what type of emails they will receive. Basically one of the biggest assistants in your email marketing that makes your life so much easier.
As you read on, you will see why this is important and how much it can help your business!
What are Autoresponders?
The words “auto” and “responder” pretty much explain the potential helpfulness of this thing. This means you will not have to lift a single finger to attend to your e-mail marketing, or maybe just one finger. This is an email service that responds to received e-mails naturally.
Think about it this way, you have a business. Now, for every email, your business receives, your autoresponder will respond with either a welcome email or a thank you email, or any email according to your rules, time design and etc.
So imagine this, you(your email) are poked by your friend#1(the customer or subscriber), and your friend#2(autoresponder) will poke your friend#3 back. So you can think of autoresponders as a “poke back” tool to help you let them know that you are acknowledging the action they performed on your business or website.
Did you ever experience time subscribing or interacting to a certain website and then immediately after pressing enter, you received an email that welcomes you or that ensures you that you are subscribed or you interacted with this certain product or service and etc?
If you did, those are the email autoresponders. The moment you performed an action such as sending your email and you immediately receive an email, that is an autoresponder.
Doesn’t it feel good to receive it, even though it isn’t a literal person sending you an email? It gives a sense of security that the action you performed is acknowledged and that you do not have to wait for hours to know what’s the status of the transaction you’ve performed.
Types of Email for Autoresponders
There are several types of autoresponders that you can choose from, triggered depending on the action of the users.
1. Welcome Emails
These types of emails are typically sent to first-time subscribers or sign-ups. This email is sent by autoresponders right after the visitor performs the action. This type of email most of the time contains:’
- First, and foremost, thank your visitors. Make sure that they feel valued and appreciated.
- Introduce your business more, and let them know more about what you do.
- Cascade through the emails what they can expect from your business.
- Show them incentives, to encourage them to do more with your business.
- Promote our social media accounts from different platforms.
- Stay in touch with them by putting in your contact information.
Your welcome emails should make the users feel welcomed and valued and they should see more about your business and let them know they did the right decision choosing your business!
2. Email Course
This type of email is usually when users or visitors join or subscribe to a course. A set of lectures that are sent to students by email over a specific time frame constitute an email program. By demonstrating how your item or service may assist your clients with the specific topic or issue that the email course concentrated on, you can extend an invitation to buy from them at the conclusion of these classes.
3. Upsell and Cross-Sell Emails
Upselling is the process of persuading customers to buy a product that is equivalent to but more expensive than the one being considered, whereas cross-selling encourages shoppers to order related or additional goods. Both have unique advantages and can work well together, despite being frequently used interchangeably.
An E-mail with upselling and cross-sell offers are instantly delivered to users once a buyer makes a purchase. Depending on the choices of the recipients, this kind of email may include recommendations. For instance, if the consumer bought white shoes, this kind of email might also include recommendations based on the customer’s most recent purchase. Something along the lines of “you might also be interested in.”
4. Abandoned Cart Emails
Have you ever experienced adding items to your basket and forgetting about them? And then you suddenly receive an email about your items in the basket letting you know that everything is still available and you can still perform the purchase anytime you want. These are Abandoned cart emails!
You may have forgotten it, or you do not want it, or you are waiting to have money to buy the product and etc. but whatever reason you have, these types of emails are here to remind you that you can still do your purchase whenever possible for you.
This type of email is delivered to the consumer after they add items to the shopping basket on the website of the business to notify them that the chosen items are still available.
There are different types of emails to be sent by your autoresponders, it will always be according to your rules and time. You are still in control of the contents and the “when”, but autoresponders are your senders!
Why are Autoresponders Important?
The weight of receiving the right emails at the right time for the customers is extremely important. Receiving the right email for the action they performed at the right time will build credibility. That is why autoresponders are the best thing for that.
Most of us might think at first, how are autoresponders important when most people don’t even want to receive or read emails unless it’s from their boss or workmates? Why are they so important if most people do not even want to lay eyes on them?
Here are the benefits that Autoresponders can give your business:
Subscribers can see the right messages at the right time
Imagine you are a customer and you just performed let’s say a purchase from a website. Now, you did not receive any email. Even though you know the business is legitimate and you just completed a safe transaction, there is still a void in your head thinking “did the purchase go through?” or asking if there is something wrong with the transaction until someone responds and emails informing you that everything is alright and your product will be shifted to you as soon as possible.
But when you perform an action and you immediately receive an email, confirming every action you have done, isn’t it putting your mind at ease?
Whatever happened, there is an email that corresponds to the actions you have performed, you have something to show as proof. Even though most of the customers do not really read those emails thoroughly, the fact that they received it in the first place makes them feel at ease and at peace that everything went well and everything is confirmed.
The fact that they wouldn’t have to wait for email confirmation for a long time to see if everything is good, it’s such a plus point!
Saves you a lot of time and energy
Imagine, staying in front of your laptop and the email just to wait if someone finally performs an action and then replies to them. What if your PC jammed? Or if you have bad internet? And if they did the action at midnight and you are sleeping at that time?
In this day and age, if you still reply manually to your email marketing, you are the problem. There should be no excuse as to why you still aren’t doing it unless you really have no idea this type of software or program exists. Autoresponders are free, easy to employ, and extremely convenient.
Imagine how much time and energy you will be able to save if you have autoresponders. Crazy right? You will not need to type, search, change the script according to their action manually and etc. You will not have to be up and guarding 24/7 just to send response emails to your customers!
Increase the number of new subscribers
Email autoresponders provide a great way to stay in touch with new online users. In such email series, marketers make tempting incentives to persuade readers to enter their contact information and names. In return, consumers can obtain intriguing incentives, like free reports, trial deals, neither advice and therefore more.
The more incentives they see, the more subscribers/potential customers! Giving them good deals will surely boost their desire to avail or subscribe. This leads to making their decisions firm and continuing on doing so.
Create lasting, committed relationships with your customers
With the aid of email autoresponders, businesses can generate automated messages and set specific dates for sending them to their subscriber lists. As a result, customers receive frequent communications from the organization and looking for more. A special link between a company and a potential customer is formed as a result of this expectation.
Having autoresponders means consistency. Think about your existing clientele now, your email list, now when all these emails consistently receive updates, emails about new deals, giveaways and etc, basically receiving emails about your business and notifying them that something is happening from time to time will eventually help hugely in creating and building a good customer-business relationship.
For example, if they need something, they will no think about getting it from another store or website because hey know they have you in their emails, emailing them from time to time and giving them updates.
Maintain ongoing advertising without adding new employees
Email autoresponders handle the regular distribution of marketing emails to clients and prospects. Additionally, it is not necessary to hire new workers because the procedure is fully automated. A company thus incurs no more costs and realizes a higher rate of investment return.
Saves you money from hiring employees to manage email marketing for you or the sending at least. Imagine even when your business device is off, you are replying to your customers and you are sending emails. Who needs an employee for sending emails now?
Provide prompt follow-up
The best customers to sell to are the ones who already availed from you. By sending them (your email list) emails consistently through autoresponders, none of them will receive and everyone will get a good follow-up. This implies to the customer that you see them and you know their needs, and you can give it to them and your business is present anytime to give them whatever they need.
A business can persistently pursue clients using email autoresponders without forgetting any of them. Since these messages are sent automatically, there is no chance of ignoring clients or potential clients who have been on the email list.
Boost repeat sales
Email autoresponders guarantee regular contact with current clients. With autoresponders, you can definitely have repeat sales and utilize cross-selling according to their recent transaction. Businesses utilize upselling and cross-selling to encourage recurring business.
Helps in the promotion of your brand
To guarantee that the business’s goods or services are highlighted to potential consumers in their email messages, businesses can trademark them by including their slogans, logo, home addresses, and telephone number. Every email that is sent by your autoresponder must be stressing the brand identity of your business.
How to use Autoresponders
Here are tips on how to use autoresponders for maximum benefit according to how much you know your target market:
Move subscribers from different autoresponders to another
According to links that are clicked by the users, you can make them switch from a different autoresponder to another to match their intent.
For example, if the customer buys a product and completes a purchase, they now get an upselling and cross-selling email. Now, the email the recipient can contain links so for example, in the email, there are two choices, click a particular ink if they are interested in a certain product for example, or click the other link if now. When the user clicks the YES link then the autoresponder she will be moved to will send emails that are endorsing a new product she might be interested in. And if she chose the NO link then she will be moved to an autoresponder that says thank you for the purchase, enjoy it, and will receive an email after a year about a warranty or new collection.
This type of feature of autoresponders helps your business send emails in a highly targeted way which means that you will match what the customers like and stop if they are not interested.
Upselling
Upselling is a sales promotion strategy used to get clients to buy a more pricey, improved, high-quality version of the selected product. And as your email list starts to increase in number it becomes laborious to send emails to each one of them. Why not leverage the birth of marketing automation tools such as autoresponders for generating more sales? Upselling emails!
Be clear with your upsells, customers are not always aware that they have options. If your upsell proposal persuades the buyer and adds sufficient value, they will be motivated to pay extra for a superior, almost similar product but better. If the offer doesn’t appeal to customers enough, they won’t take you up on it. As a result, you must make analyzing your consumers’ habits an integral part of your whole sales process.
Specifically in online marketing, pressure sales don’t perform well. Plain old advertisements don’t produce a lot of interaction, much like with social media. When making the upsell deal for your clients, you must be inventive. To maintain your audiences intrigued, you need to be both educational and interesting. Getting overly forceful in your upselling emails is something you should prevent.
Send emails based on the subscription date
You can make this one an opportunity for sales and showing incentives. For example, your customers subscribed 1 year ago today. Your autoresponders can send an email first of all greeting the customer happy anniversary and that you are glad that they are still with you and that it has been a year since they purchased or subscribed to your business.
What you can do is give a good deal such as 15% off for a transaction for them specifically, since it is your anniversary with them. Let them know that this deal is exclusive and only for customers who are celebrating one year with them. This will make them feel seen and will most likely persuade them to do a transaction since the offers sound good and sweet.
Autoresponders as Confirmation for every FInancial Transaction
Design an autoresponder for every single financial transaction. People nowadays are extremely careful with regard to doing transactions online. And as a business, you too should be mindful of how the customers will feel in doing online transactions involving money.
So leverage this autoresponder by designing one for the transaction that includes money. For example, a customer just bought a pair of shoes from your business website using a credit card. Usually, the email the customers receive only includes thank you for your purchase, your order will be there in a few days or something like that.
Now, autoresponders for the financial transaction you should include some things like “your financial transaction is successful” and something like “do not worry, your banking details are safe with us. we ensure that all our customers’ data are protected.” this should be sent immediately after the purchase so the customer is not anxious and worrying about being robbed online by hackers, being scammed and etc.
But of course, be true to your claim. When you say you protect their data, do it. This will also give the customers comfort and they will not worry about making transactions involving money with your business. Because there are consistent confirmations from you.
Little do you know you are building your credibility with your customers by doing this.
Free Autoresponders Softwares
Here are the top 10 free email marketing apps that can help you with autoresponders :
- Hub Spot
- Get Response
- Aweber
- Klaviyo
- Mailchimp
- ConvertKit
- Autopilot
- Constant Contact
- Omnisend
- SendinBlue
Do not be intimidated and be afraid to explore one of these free tools. You can navigate them by just reading the directions and descriptions in them carefully. You will be shocked at how it will make your email marketing so much better, easier and faster!
How To Set Up Autoresponders
Let’s use Mailchimp as an example since it is one of the most popular platforms for autoresponders.
- Log in to your MailChimp account or sign up if you do not have an account yet
- On the top right corner of the dashboard, click the create button
- Then choose “email” at the top left corner of the tick
- There will be 3 choices, regular ( for a single email campaign), automated (what you need) and plain-text
- When you click the Automated tab there will be choices such as tags, Subscriber Activity, E-commerce, date-based, and API
Under these choices are respective features, such as:
- Tags – Also known as labels. For example, in every single contact where you put a “3-month-old,” those are the only ones who will receive emails.
- Subscriber Activity – Under this feature, there are choices such as welcoming new subscribers, responding to new subscriber updates, and thank you pop-ups for subscribers.
- E-commerce – Under this feature thank first-time customers, reward your best customers, re-target site visitors, turn on an abandonment cart email, enable order notifications, follow up purchases, win back lapsed customers and so much more.
- Date-based – Here we have an audience-added date, birthday greetings, specific dates, and recurring dates.
Now let’s set up an autoresponder welcome email for first-timers!
- Choose “Welcome new subscribers” under the Subscribe activity tab.
- Add campaign name – only you or the person who sets up the campaign can see this
- Under the campaign, name tab select an audience, choose which ones you want to receive, and click begin
- Add the “from”, and “subject” add the content according to your liking(there are lots of templates), and then save. You can even add social media links, videos, images, header, footer and etc.
- When you are done with the content and all the other elements, on the top right corner of the screen, choose finish later or start sending.
You can modify everything according to your rules. For example, you can set the time when the customers will be able to receive the email. Whether it is after 5 mins, 1 hour, or even the moment right after completing an action. You can also choose the trigger of the email, the time and etc.
Explore the easy-to-use and understand tools of Mailchimp for setting up your autoresponders, it’s free and efficient!
Which One is the Best for You?
At this point, you might be wondering. Among the vast market, many types of emails can be sent, and many platforms are available to be used for this strategy. Which one is the best for you?
It depends on what industry you are in and what are your goals. It always varies, even the type of emails to be sent are different for everyone.
But if you are a business owner, obviously, the E-commerce autoresponders feature is the best for your business’ email marketing!
The E-commerce feature contains a lot of features that will help in engaging with “customers” and is built specifically for businesses, to help with email marketing of the businesses. This feature includes thanking first-time customers, rewarding your best customers, re-target site visitors, turning on an abandonment cart email, enabling order notifications, following up purchases, winning back lapsed customers and so much more. They are all aligned with the actions that customers take, therefore it aids in sending highly targeted emails to the right audience.
These features are all related to generating money for your business because they will all lead to reaching the target market and therefore result in higher sales.
In terms of platforms, the ones mentioned above are good for beginners and are first-timer friendly. They are not complicated and intimidating. Language is basic and icons are easy to identify.
But in the end, you will never know what’s best for your business if you will not try. Do not be afraid to explore and try until you get what fits your business best!
Conclusion
Consider autoresponders as customer service, making your customers feel at peace, valued and important! Treat it as your best friend for it will definitely help you save a lot of money, time, and energy. You have found your new best friend that will make your life (at least email marketing) so much easier!
Autoresponders is the best tool not just to make your business’s email marketing fast and easy. Also for the customers. For them to receive the right email at the right time which will provide them with the best experience!
