Email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach out, promote your brand, connect with your clients, customers and followers or to sell products online. You don’t have to contact your clients one by one or be in a physical store. Instead, you can have a database that will help you sell your products online, connect with your followers and promote your business for you.
An autoresponder is the most efficient feature of email marketing. You can save a lot of time and effort compared to manually communicating with each one of your customers, clients or followers. With autoresponders, you can save a lot of time as communication can be done automatically by the email autoresponder (and ultimately, you can use this time to focus on other areas of your business).
Autoresponders are very important because of the following:
- Autoresponders are used to welcome new subscribers to your list and thank them for taking interest in joining.
- It can also be used to send ‘Thank You’ messages to your customers when they have purchased products or services.
- You can also use email autoresponders to send rewards to your customers. You can also send incentives to your loyal customers for subscribing or purchasing your products and services.
- You can use email autoresponders to send courses or ebook modules to your customers if you are giving away training or freebies.
- Send your customers emails informing them of updates on your products or services.
- Be friendly to them and send an email using an autoresponder to wish them well on their birthday or other occasions (i.e. Christmas, Easter, etc). This can also be connected with special offers or campaigns related to your niche.
- If you are a blogger, you can set up automatic notifications, so subscribers get notified when you publish new blog posts.
Autoresponders and email software have a big impact on the success of any marketing campaign. The programs and tools are easy to use; they are cost-effective as well as affordable. They can give an increased possibility to reach out to your target audience anywhere in the world. Using email autoresponders is also measurable. While you use these tools, you can have a clear insight of the effectivity of the campaigns.
There may be a lot of email autoresponders available for use, but not each of them can fully satisfy the needs of the entrepreneurs. Here is a list of some of the best autoresponders you would want to try for yourself.
1. Constant Contact
2. InfusionSoft
This is another email autoresponder that you can use. It is common to marketers and entrepreneurs especially those who have small and medium-sized businesses. It is one of the easiest to use with their drag-drop interface. You can easily modify the design templates to your own liking and you can send campaigns by using triggers and user actions. It also allows you to create landing pages if you are generating leads.
It has features that will enable you to handle the sale-quotes efficiently. It also has a feature called ‘sales-pipeline’ that will remind you to follow up on your leads. Its downside, the same as Constant Contact, is that this is quite expensive for most marketers. The subscription plans are not expensive, but the kickstart package that you need to purchase is the one that’s costly.
3. Get Response
Get Response is also a great autoresponder that entrepreneurs use. It is loaded with features that can help you to send out emails. This is one of the easiest email softwares that you can use especially if you own a small business.
4. MailChimp
MailChimp is free to use, but the autoresponder is available for paid subscriptions only. While it is easy to create an email within MailChimp, you can set the event to trigger the email autoresponder and choose the day and the exact time that you would want to send it to your followers. Their subscription plans also have different variations that you can choose one depending on the needs of your business.
5. AWeber
AWeber is used by the majority of small or medium-sized businesses and thus makes it one of the most popular autoresponders. While AWeber offers a free trial for 30 days, the monthly subscription is also cheaper compared to others mentioned.
Some of the features include a variety of impressive templates, feature-rich tools to create email designs, RSS to email, split testing and reporting, etc. In addition, AWeber provides a number of seamless integrations with landing pages, social media, CMS, shopping carts, and many others. Some of the popular integrations are WordPress, Paypal, Facebook and Leadpages.
If you are in the affiliate marketing niche, I would recommend you to consider AWeber as they allow affiliate marketing while some other autoresponders don’t. Please ensure you read the terms and conditions carefully before signing up to any autoresponder.
Email autoresponders are simply one of the most useful email marketing tools that you can use as an entrepreneur. It does not only help you reach your subscriber, but also be able to connect with them. It also helps you to save time that you can then dedicate to other areas of your business.
Please let me know if you have any questions and good luck in finding the right autoresponder for your business, marketing campaign or blog.
P.S. Please check the accuracy of the functions and features of your preferred autoresponder before signing up. It cannot be guaranteed that the information in this article is accurate when you read this, as companies often make changes and updates.
Some of the links within this post are affiliate links of which I receive a small compensation from sales of certain items. There is no additional cost to you. If you purchase through one of the affiliate links, you are helping to keep this website running.
Hi Edith
Thanks a lot for sharing this post about email autoresponder.
Lucky I stumble upon your post as I’m currently looking for an autoresponder to use for my website.
I think I’m going to test drive mail chimp since I can register it for free. My challenge will be to write content for the autoresponder.
Thanks for taking your time and put all these together.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks
Samm
Hi Samm,
I am glad you found this article useful. I have written another post about Email List Building Tips for Beginners. Maybe this can help you get started. Try to write content as if you are writing to a friend – this is a tip that I received and is said to help with conversions. Wishing you lots of success!
Edith
Thanks for posting but I’m at the beginning, I only have 14 subscribers; I use SendinBlue because it offers up to 300 emails free per day and always communicates the changes he make; I am happy with them; you may want to study it too; I also received a 15 pound voucher from her for feedback and answers to a few questions.
best regards
Carmen
Hi Carmen,
thank you for sharing information about SendinBlue – I will check them out.
Thank you!
Edith
As part of growing out my website, I am constantly being made aware of the need to create a ‘list’ and then as a natural progression, find an autoresponder.
These are definitely two areas I am beginning to look seriously into. I’ve seen plenty of comments and conversations about Mailchimp and very few about Aweber. Now, at least, I have some information to work with, as well as some comparison programs to compare with.
Although Aweber initially appears to be more expensive, I like the 30 day trial option, gives you chance really work with the program to see if it suits your needs.
Mailchimp offers the free package but that’s OK as long as you don’t need to use the ‘autoresponder’ which you may as well have if that’s the way forward. Their basic package does seem like a good deal though, certainly everything I would need and for less than the Aweber package.
Best I start building that list.
Hi Twack,
thanks for taking the time reading my post and leaving a comment. Good luck on making the decision to find the right autoresponder for your business needs. Be sure to read their terms and conditions before signing up, as some don’t allow affiliate marketing, for example.
All the best, Edith