Steve Laba

How to use an Autoresponder To Build A Customer List

If you have any type of business odds are that you will always be looking for new customers.  One of the best ways to acquire and then stay in contact with your customers is with an autoresponder.

Autoresponders allow you to communicate with virtually an endless number of customers with very little effort. Once your customers sign up to your list, communication with them is a cinch.
OK so your wondering how exactly do I get and use an autoreponder. Well besides being the  best way to collect customer names and addresses from your website it is also inexpensive.

You first have to decide what company you will be using for your autoreponder. There are many companies that offer the service such as Aweber, iContact and Constant Contact. Currently Aweber is the most popular one and the 800 lb gorilla of autoresponders today.  
In this article I will tell you how an autoresponder works and what you have to do to set it up as it is in the Aweber world.
When setting up your autoresponder the most important item is your list. Within your account you will have to define your list. You give the list a name and then a description. The name of you list must be unique so it is not like anyone else-es  list name withing the whole Aweber world. 

Next you add your email address with your name or your companies name that will be on the emails you will be sending your customers. The best way to do this is brand your messages.  For example if your website is called www.bestwebsite.com you should use something like this,  contact@bestwebsite.com . 

This not only looks more professional but your email will not look like spam to the person and will have a better chance of not getting sent to the spam folder.

Another way to combat spam is by using the Confirmed Opt-in option. What this does is it requires the person that signed up to be on your list to confirm it since the request is sent directly to their email in-box. Anyone can use someone’s email address to first sign up but only the real owner of the email can confirm that they did actually want to be on your list. 

Most lists will have two default fields when you are creating it, the name and email of the subscriber. You can collect more information about your subscribers than just name and email address. Maybe you want to add some custom field to find out where they heard about your website or maybe their cell phone number so you can send text messages to them later. 
After the person confirms that they do want to be on your list the autoresponder will sent out the first follow up message. 

Since this is your first chance to make an impression on the the person you should extend a warm welcome to them. You of course have to create this message withing the autoresponder you are using. You can then follow up with a second message sent a few days later introducing yourself and  how your business or product can be of service to them. 
By sending messages once a week this can help to build a relationship and trust over time with people who may have otherwise just visited your website once, never to be seen or heard from again. These messages can be setup  to be sent out on any frequency your decide.  

There is one more item I need to talk about and that is the web form. This is where the potential customer enters there information such as name and email address.
This is the form that you will have to place on your own website so potential customers can enter their contact information like name and email address.
You can create this form in the autoresponder service you are using and they will provide the code that you will need to add to your website. You will have to know a little bit about HTML to insert this code on your website.

Well that’s about it. The best way to understand this is sign up and start using it today!

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