Email Autoresponder Service Strategies - How to Choose the Autoresponder That Best Meets Your Needs

By Elisabeth Kuhn

Do you really need an autoresponder? You do. An email autoresponder service that helps you build and automate your mailing list will be at the heart of your online business. The question is, which one should you choose?

First, you need to decide between your two major options:

Shopping Cart System versus Straight Autoresponder

If you have any plans at all to sell digital products now or in the future, you may want to get an integrated shopping cart system that includes an autoresponder, such as 1shoppingcart, that you can upgrade to provide space for all of your products and hook them up to a payment and delivery system. You can even set up an affiliate system with it eventually (for an upgrade).

Almost anyone can benefit from such a shopping cart system - even if you only need the basic version, you can just stick with that and that'll be a fairly inexpensive solution for you. You get up to 10,000 contacts before they charge you more than their basic fee. That's a lot of customers! And no extra charges for numbers of different mailing lists -- or numbers of mailings.

If you have an offline business, on the other hand, and you don't believe you will ever want to sell digital products, there is another choice, and as an autoresponder it's even more user friendly than the shopping cart: Aweber, a company that provides outstanding autoresponders all by themselves.

However, depending on your budget, you might want to know that Aweber may be less expensive initially but it also may be best if you don't expect your list to grow very big because they start charging quite a bit more fairly quickly, and they also count names more than once if they're on multiple lists. With Aweber, if one name is on five lists, it will count as five names towards your maximum for any given level. With 1shoppingcart, you can have the same name on 10 different lists, and it will still just count as one name.

Other autoresponder options

There are other autoresponder service options, including Getresponse and iContact. Here are a couple of questions you should ask if you consider them:

Will you be able to have people sign up for different mailing lists, for example if they purchase multiple products that each come with their separate follow-up system? That could be an issue with Getresponse, which works great for capturing leads (and is quite inexpensive) but may not be the best option if you want the option of having the same person on multiple lists. It also has less flexibility than either of the above options.

Do they charge extra if you send out a lot of big mailings? This can be an issue with iContact, which gets much more expensive very quickly as your contact list grows and you send out bigger mailings.

And last but not least -- can you track open rates, and if so, how difficult is it? The easier it is to track, the better you're able to adjust your email marketing campaigns for best effects.

Either way, if you're not sure which one to choose, you should give several of the options a whirl to see which one you like best. The one thing to remember is this: You must have an autoresponder, and preferably a reputable one.

Because if you don't and attempt to send those emails from your own server, you're not only making lots of needless work for yourself, but you're also courting big trouble. A few spam complaints, and you're out of business. Professional autoresponder services basically force you to set things up correctly, so you're at much less risk.

Last but not least, there's the deliverability issue: All the reputable autoresponder services have an excellent deliverability record. And in the age of spam filters, that's a key asset. After all, what good is the best email campaign when nobody sees it!

Ready to try out an autoresponder? Here's a 30-day FREE trial for the best integrated shopping cart system to get you started And for more great tips, tricks, and how-to advice, check out Elisabeth Kuhn's FREE e-courseInternet Marketing Step-by-Step with lots of info on affiliate marketing, article marketing, and more on Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elisabeth_Kuhn

Building a Huge List Lightning Fast - The Top 5 Insider Secrets

By Steven Rohrer

Aspiring professional Internet marketers should understand that building a big list is the key to financial success. It's the difference between becoming an Internet marketing "hobbyist" making a few hundred bucks per week, and a professional Internet Entrepreneur who makes a comfortable full time living from home in his or her pajamas.

As a seasoned 6 year full-time Internet veteran and mentor, I have selected 5 of the most powerful, most up-to-date list building secrets my top students are using to build huge lists at lightning speed. Use these secret techniques in your own marketing campaigns and watch your list and your bank account grow like wild vines in the springtime.

Secret #1: Define your target market
Before spending one minute of your precious time driving traffic to your website, you should first write down who your target market is and what characteristics they might possess. From there, you can quickly determine where these people might shop, eat, live and most importantly, where they surf on the Internet. I'm sure most people would agree that selling porn to a priest, marketing a multi-million dollar home on Craigslist or running a "drug free" campaign in High Times magazine would be a complete waste of time... in most cases!

Secret #2: Give Crack Samples to the Information Junkies Via Auto Responder
Most of your clients and customers must have three things before they will buy your product(s) and services(s). They must be salivating at the mouth for more of your information after you've given them a sample, they must have some sort of urgency to buy your product and they must have M-O-N-E-Y. Don't market to people who are broke!

In the heart of the information age, it's no secret that most people are eager to exchange their name and email address for a free sample or a "snipit" of useful information via your auto responder. In fact, every day there are tens of millions of people surfing the Internet in search of useful information on everything from how to fix a broken toilet handle to how to get mega rich on the Internet overnight. If you sell information products (which you should be), all you have to do is write a few great articles or a "top 5" list (or "top 10") like this one and then give it away for FREE through your auto responder. If your article is written correctly i.e. if your free crack sample is good, most people with money will gladly pay you for more.

Secret #3: Follow the "Relevancy Rule"
It still amazes me how many Internet marketers get this wrong. For example, you simply cannot give away a chance to win a free IPOD in exchange for someone's information and actually believe these people are interested in anything you are selling. If you are running a contest for people that have already signed into your list, then this is fine... but in most cases this technique will not produce results on the front end. You might end up with an enormous list, but 99.9% of these people will never respond to anything you send to them in the future, and a lot of them will even mark your future email(s) as spam, which is not good.

Secret #4: Become an "Editor" and not a "Writer"
Throughout the years, I have noticed that a good percentage of Internet marketers are NOT good article writers. But most people can take someone else's articles, emails, sales letters and press releases and put their own "spin" on them to make them their own. Even some of the most skilled writers would rather edit someone else's work rather than write their own stuff from scratch. This saves hours of valuable time... and time is just as important as money.

Secret #5: The "Horizontal Mambo" Usually Happens "After" the First Date
Just because you are able to drive targeted traffic to your website with a nicely crafted landing page that captures people's information in exchange for a free e-Book or other free information does not mean you are going to "score". And if you do score on the first date, it still doesn't mean that you are done. As Sir Mix-a-Lot once said "Some punks like to hit it and quit it, but I'd rather stay and Play." If a customer buys something from you immediately, just think of all the other great stuff they might buy from you over the next several years!

In order to make sales in the future, or if you didn't score on the first date, you should make sure the messages in your auto responder are well crafted and provide a call to action. It's your job to provide some sort of urgency to get your prospects to do whatever it is you want them to do. Some suggestions would be: one-time-offers, coupons or discounts, special events (webinar or in person), "limited time only" offers, etc.

Keep in mind that you also need to have a delicate balance. You cannot send a sales letter every day to your list for 3 weeks. You must provide information and then ask for the sale. Provide more information and then ask for the sale and so on. In other words, you have to create the need for something and then show your customers the solution to that need.

Steve Rohrer has taught 1,000's of internet marketers how to become wildly successful with a step-by-step Blueprint. Do you want Free, Dyno-mite Online marketing tips? Go to The Internet Marketing Training Blog to get your Free Training.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven_Rohrer