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 advantages and disadvantages 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 taking money off the table. By building a large list of prospects and taking care of them, you will be able to market 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 automatic reply to sell your products automatically? If you set up your autoresponder correctly, it will make the sale for you. For example, after someone 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 potential customer reads these tips, they will be more open to buying your product. Sometimes a potential customer can buy right away or on the 10th day. You can even set up your autoresponder to send a new suggestion every day for a year or set up multiple autoresponders to sell multiple products.
3. Monitor 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 1000 subscribers, you will 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 sent your newsletter to 500 subscribers 4 times a month, you will need a plan that caters for 2,000 subscribers. If you used Aweber, you will have to pay $ 49 each month.
2. Lack of delivery capacity
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, there is no guarantee that your emails will be delivered, you may receive spam complaints, or the business may close. You probably spent a lot of time and effort building a lead list, so why take the risk of using a free autoresponder service?
3. I cannot write effective follow-up emails.
It’s easy to put off writing autoresponder messages because it takes a long time to write them. If they are not effective, your customers may disconnect 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.