Autoresponders and Affiliate Marketing – How does it work?

by Philip King

If you are into affiliate marketing then you probably already know how this marketing method generally works. You offer something to your potential customer for free in exchange for their opt-in to your email distribution network. Once you have their name, email address and permission to send them mail, you provide free information and marketing offers, i.e., you try to sell them something.

Essential Email Marketing Features

The following features form the core of an effective email marketing campaign.

Publish a Signup Form on Your Website

Looking to start or grow your email list? Most visitors who come to your website will never return, not because your website isn’t engaging but because there’s so many websites and so little time. A priority task if you’re going to create an email list is to start converting people coming to your website into subscribers.

Publish a signup form on your website, but remember, you need to give in order to receive. Give a FREE e-book or other offer as an incentive in exchange for their name and email.

To really grab a visitors’ attention some websites use "unblockable" hover forms. I don’t know about you, but this turns me off immediately. I regard unblockable hover forms as nothing more than pop-up windows and make it a point never to click on such forms. Moral of the story, be careful with the methods you use. Get it wrong and you will definitely loose your potential customer forever.

Create Autoresponders

Start building relationships with subscribers the moment they sign up. Autoresponders such as those provided by
AWeber
and
GetResponse
can welcome new subscribers, educate them about your products and entice them back to your website without any intervention needed from you.

New subscribers require special attention

New subscribers are eager to hear from you, that’s why they subscribed, but as they don’t know you as well as established subscribers they require special attention.

You need to contact your new subscribers immediately and regularly to build profitable relationships with them using a sequence of automatically delivered emails.

• Welcome new subscribers with a brief greeting.
• Guide them back to your website with follow up messages.
• Answer questions they may have.
• Deliver FREE downloads.
• Provide FREE product information.
• Build subscriber confidence and trust.
• Finally, sell your product or service.

Send Email Newsletters

Providing the content is engaging and relevant, sending email newsletters to your opt-in subscribers is an excellent way of keeping in touch.

If you create your newsletter issues in advance they can be scheduled to be automatically sent at a specified date and time. If you have the analysis, you can even segment subscribers based on who clicked and who didn’t click on your previous mailing, so potentially increasing your conversion rates.

Managing email lists

Managing email lists can be quite a task. If you only have a few people you can manually write the emails to each person, however, as your list grows to hundred or thousands of subscribers this would take far too much time, but as you still want to connect with your subscribers a new method has to be used. After all everyone on your list is a potential paying customer, so you don’t want to miss anyone.

So how do you talk to all of these potential customers and still have time left to run your business? With an autoresponder. An autoresponder will help you talk to your customers after they leave your website. Start with a message to welcome new subscribers, deliver it to them when they sign up. Then build customer loyalty by delivering follow-up emails to each subscriber. Use these emails to teach people about your product and get them interested in doing business with you. Send as many of these email as you want, as often as you want, at the time your want, on the days of your choosing, automatically.

After the emails have been delivered you’ll need to analyse who opened the emails and clicked your links so you can create more relevant, targeted emails in the future. Simply knowing who responded to your email isn’t always helpful so advanced tools like detailed email web analytics, activity based segmentation, geographical targeting and broadcast split-testing analytics can really make a difference in making email marketing work for you.

Conclusion

Selling online is no different to the techniques used a thousand years ago, only the technology has changed. Find a customer, persuade them you have the ideal product for them. Show them they are getting a really good deal. Finally, but most important if you want repeat business, build a trustful relationship.

You may also be interested in the following:

• Autoresponders – What are they?

• Autoresponders – AWeber Review
• Autoresponders – Why do you need one?
• Autoresponders and Affiliate Marketing – How does it work?