The advantages and disadvantages of autoresponders
Autoresponders are a great help in implementing email marketing strategies. On the other hand, if you’re just starting out, you may not want to pay the monthly fee for a professional autoresponder. Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of autoresponders to help you decide.
Advantages of autoresponders
1. Create and manage a large contact list
Any business that isn’t building a contact list is leaving money off the table. If you build a great list of prospects and take care of them, you will be able to market to them repeatedly throughout their lives. Autoresponders allow you to capture contact information from a registration form on a web page and automatically store the information in a database. The database allows you to broadcast a message to your list or send a series of follow-up messages to your list at predetermined intervals.
2. Sell products on autopilot
Did you know that you can set up an autoresponder to automatically sell your products? If you set up your autoresponder correctly, it will make the sale for you. For example, after a person signs up from your landing page, send a follow-up message every day for 10 days. Each message should contain valuable advice on how to use the product. At the end of each message include a link to the product’s sales page. When a prospect reads these tips, they will be more open to buying your product. Sometimes a prospect may buy right away or on the 10th day. You could even set your autoresponder to send a new tip every day for a year or set up multiple autoresponders to sell multiple products.
3. Control your success
Most professional autoresponder services allow you to track the open rates of your emails and also the number of people who clicked on the links within your emails. For example, if you sent a newsletter to a list of 1,000 subscribers, you’ll be able to see how many people actually read your newsletter and how many clicked on the links.
Disadvantages of autoresponders
1. Expensive
A professional autoresponder service will charge you a monthly fee. For example, Aweber will charge you $19 each month for 500 subscribers. This fee increases as you get more subscribers or send your newsletter more than once a month. For example, if you send your newsletter to 500 subscribers 4 times a month, you’ll need a plan that accommodates 2,000 subscribers. If you used Aweber, you will have to pay $49 every month.
2. Lack of deliverability
If you don’t want to pay the monthly fee for a professional autoresponder, you can choose to use a free one. The problem is that there is no guarantee that your emails will be delivered, you may receive spam complaints or the company may go out of business. You’ve probably spent a lot of time and effort building a list of potential customers, so why take the risk of using a free autoresponder service?
3. Unable to write effective follow-up emails
It’s easy to put off writing autoresponder messages because they take so long to write. If they are not effective, your customers may go offline and unsubscribe from your newsletters. Although there are some downsides, autoresponders are a necessary marketing tool that allows you to build long-term relationships with your customers and sell multiple products on autopilot.
