Quite simply, it's a piece of software that enables you to send emails to people automatically. What it means is that you can set up a sequence of pre-written emails that are sent out to the prospects in your list at regular intervals. You can use an autoresponder to send emails out to your prospect list, even when you're not at a computer. Then you can set the intervals for the emails to say, once a day, and each day feed them more information about what you have to offer. In short, you write your marketing emails once and each new contact that is added to your list will begin receiving your entire email campaign automatically. It doesn't matter if you're online, with another client, asleep, or on vacation. With an autoresponder, all the work is automated.
Autoresponders are used by individuals and websites that need to send any type of message automatically. For example, an individual may use an autoresponder feature on their email account to inform people that send him messages that he has gone on vacation. Marketers gain the most benefit from autoresponders. With autoresponders they completely automate their entire online marketing efforts and are able to prequalify their leads. They know which contacts have opened their emails, which links they clicked on, and the marketer is easily able to identify which contacts are hot, as well as, what things they are interested in. Churches use autoresponders for evangelistic work and giving out bible study guides. Companies even use autoresponders to train new employees and notify them of policies and procedures. Giving a person too much information at once can be overwhelming and cause a person to forget important points; if they even read the long message. An autoresponder lets you slowly feed people information and concentrate on one point at a time. The uses of autoresponders is endles. With time more and more people will find creative ways to increase their sales and automate their business through autoresponders.
Autoresponder software can either be purchased as a monthly subscription to a site, or as software that is purchased and installed on your own site that you manage yourself. Unless you are an advanced user, or are happy with poor delivery rates and limited features, it's usually best to go with a monthly subscription. With software that you purchase you still have to set it up on a hosting account, so there is still a monthly fee. Also, you will need to install the software on the site and setup databases. In addition to that, if you want good delivery rates you will need to sign up for feedback loops, setup email authentication, and may even need to pay high monthly fees for email certification . If you are planning on sending more than 200-500 emails per hour you will also need to get a dedicated server. With a monthly subscription to a site you don't have to worry about any of these things. A site that offers an autoresponder as a monthly subscription can have you up and running in minutes.
When shopping for an autoresponder, some features that you will want to look for are the ability to see who has opened an email, who has clicked on what links inside of the emails, the ability to setup multiple lists, and the ability to import your existing list. Many autoresponders are bundled with contact management software and allow you to setup appointment reminders, flag contacts, etc. Advanced autoresponders even allow the contacts in your list to be transferred from one marketing campaign to another automatically (Exa: A person makes a purchase and they are automatically transfered from a pre-sales list to a list that on day one sends them a thank you message for their purchase, days two through five sends them tips on using the product they purchased, then on day six tries to upsell them on accessories). Many autoresponder subscriptions include access to pre-written content and email templates. Another important thing to consider when choosing an autoresponder is how well they deliver to the inbox (and not spam box) for different types of email accounts. We recommend using webmarketingtool.com as we have all the features we covered; plus we are constantly adding more features.
The beauty of an autoresponder is it saves you money and time; and enables you to keep in touch with all your prospects without having to do anything. Autoresponders can be used for marketing, training, evangelistic work, entertainment, and basically anything where you want to continually feed people information. There is no doubt that autoresponders are helping numerous business maintain clients and create new customers daily through the use of their automated features.
