Autoresponders come in many shapes and sizes. There are a multitude of bells & whistles that are available. Many of which sound great, most of which will not be utilized.
There are 5 main features that a good Autoresponder will have:
- Ability to import your own leads
- Sending of HTML or Text messages
Importing your own leadsMany Autoresponders that are available will only allow the leads that they sell to be imported into the Autoresponder. These typically are overpriced leads. This allows the Autoresponder owner to control the quality of the leads being imported and also allows for them to have a higher profit margin. They are making a much higher profit on the leads than they are on the Auto responder.
Tracking your messages
In any kind of marketing you must know what is working and what is not. If you do not have some sort of tracking on each message How will you know the difference? There are two basic methods of tracking. The open rate of each message and the click thru rate.
Open Rate
One of the easiest ways of tracking when a person opens a letter is by using html in the message and including a small graphic in the letter. If the letter stays open long enough in the person's mail client then your server will log the download on the graphic. Then you can manually count how many times that graphic has been downloaded.With many mail clients automatically blocking html this has become a less reliable as it was in the past. Click Thru
A great feature to have in your Auto responder is a redirect link. When a person clicks on a link in your message they are redirected to your web page and the information that is recorded in your Autoresponder is automatically emailed to you. This way you not only know that someone clicked you also know exactly who clicked.There are several other ways to track your message if your Autoresponder has all of the other features and lacks this one. Merge Codes
Merge codes are pieces of code that are placed in your messages and when the message is being assembled the actual data is merged into the message in place of the4 merge code. This allows for a completely personal message going out to hundreds or thousands of customers. Decent Deliverability
This is a tough one and it is not easily determined what the deliverability is without actually trying the autoresponder.Many Autoresponder's have a free trial and I suggest you take advantage of the trial period so that you can check the deliverability yourself. One of the best ways to do this is to have multiple accounts. If you are serious about using an Autoresponder you should have at least one email account in all of the free email services. Once you have this you can send messages to all of your own accounts and see if they get there and where they end up. Spam Box or Inbox. Sending of HTML or Text
There has always been an ongoing debate of which one is best. I enjoy a good html message but many email clients will block some or all of the things that make an html message better. Text messages definitely have better deliverability but many people will not read them just because there are few ways to catch there attention with plain text. When HTML is used and used correctly it is by far the better attention getter. If you know everything about HTML for building a web page then you will need to learn even more about how to use that knowledge when making an email message. Many of the rules change and there are a lot of new ones that you must be aware of if you want people to actually view your message.
