ARTICLE
Why do you need an autoresponder?
You must have been told trillion times that the money is in the list. Is it true? Of course it is. You just came online and want to make the same money with affiliate programs or products like the big guys. And they all say you can. But they have 3-4 or 10.000 members on their list, they can mail to. So if they jump on a hot product they send out 1-2 emails and they get the big money. The brutal truth is (in case you didn’t know) that it is going to take loads of time and effort to build a list. And the quality list consist of ONLY double opt-in and real leads, who haven’t been “scammed into the list”. So you have to work hard, forget black hat methods! People are not dumb and know where to complain. Make sure you have a good autoresponder, that is reliable and you can broadcast whenever you want as well as setting up automatic messages.
How to get people to sign up
In any home based business the first step is lead generation. You can’t just go out there and think that everybody is ready to buy from you although they haven’t even heard of you before. You have to position yourself on the market and build long term relationship in order to create a “fan base” that consists of people who listen to you and will eventually buy from you.
Here is the easy process of lead generation:
You set up a website with several capture pages and make sure people sign up. You can give away information, software, ebook,s in other words: incentify people to sign up. But it takes at least 4-5 emails until you build up the trust and your prospects are ready to become your customers. That’s where auto responders kick in.They are going to make your prospects know you, and hopefully like you and trust you, up that part is really up to you. Autoresponders are not only for advertising, they are for building long term relationships.
The best leads you will ever have are the ones you create. Do some research in your chosen niche, use Google to look up the most submitted questions, visit Yahoo Answers, forums and niche blogs to get an idea of the problems your niche is desperately seeking a solution for. Create a squeeze page (a page that makes people so interested in your offer/information/solution that they will be happy to give out their email address and name as a minimum) which offers a solution to this particular problem and make them opt in to your mailing list in order to get their “fix”. Remember to always keep your promises. If you promise someone a 7-day mini-series you have to deliver, otherwise later they will never read your ads. This is your chance to build up trust.
If you promise them a download, make sure the return URL leads them to the download page, but do even more: send the link again in your first email to them in case they had problems with the download. Include your contact in the download page, so they will be able to let you know if something went wrong with the download.
In the first emails don’t start bombarding your prospects with promotional offers, or you will make them unsubscribe very quickly. In my opinion the correct rate between recommendation and useful content is 30%-70%. Also before setting up every messages test it on all your email addresses, making sure that it won’t get held up by spam-filters for any reason.
Build a Buyer’s list
A profitable list has ready-to-buy prospects on. If you are promoting your list with a free download or course, that’s fine, but try to set up some paid capture pages as well, (you can find some great products and capture pages if you check out the resource box to promote and test your niche. The truth is: people who already bought from you are much more likely to buy next time than “freebie hunters”.
