Using Autoresponders is the way to go for streamlining any online business.

I get it, you have no time to waste. You want to get your information product out in the world and see some money rolling in ASAP. I know that, and I want to help you get things right from the get–go, especially when it comes to putting something as valuable as your email list to work. That is exactly why I think you should invest 20 minutes to go over this article and then the one about sequencing your affiliate emails – you’ll learn how to automate your email marketing and how to design your email sequences for profit using autoresponders.

Let’s start with the basics – how to get as much value as possible from every single email campaign you’ll send.

Top Email Marketing Tactics for Successful Campaigns

Email marketing is vital to the success of your product release and also, ongoing income growth. There are a LOT of different companies that provide email marketing services to be able to automate your email delivery. My favourite ones that I personally use are:

Sendlane – built by marketers FOR marketers especially good in the internet marketing space, or ‘make money online’ type offers and comes with a 14 day free trial. They have a lot of pricing options as your email list grows – and lots of training for every level, with drag and drop options for campaign setting, making email templates etc. This is what I use for my main mailing list provider.

MailChimp – this is a good option if you don’t plan to build your business too big. They have a free entry level, but once you get to that level you need to pay – and the other platforms have a lot more you can do regarding segmentation, but yeah, only use this if you are just doing Internet Marketing as a hobby.

GetResponse – these guys have good deliverability and a very user friendly interface, you can also set up campaigns which let you move leads from one campaign to another based on triggers etc, so when you DO want to dive into some really nifty segmentation and make the most of your list, this is a good option.

Aweber – Aweber is one of the first autoresponders that made it big, they are pretty reliable, can get most emails delivered (as long as your content is good – useful to the subscriber etc) and have also added a lot of the functions that GetResponse and SendLane have, with tracking and segmentation, campaigns etc.

You only need one account, so choose which one is best suited for you and you are ready for the next bit!

By using autoresponders you’ll unlock a special superpower – getting more done in less time. You’ll be able to email people at the right time, delivering the right content, while you enjoy your vacation or focus on different projects.

I’m not going to break down the ‘how to’ on using the platforms themselves, there are a lot of tutorials at each of the sites mentioned above. What I want to do in this article is to point out a few of the important things to think about when starting, for your businesses future growth and some strategies for the email content you put together.

It’s probably pretty obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway… make sure your emails have value. That doesn’t mean they always need to have some kind of teaching/content type thing, but you need to give them a reason to open it and read it – it needs to be relevant to what they subscribed to and enough to make them want to stay subscribed.

The tricky part is making sense of all the tactics and strategies you should use, to make email marketing super effective. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered and it will only take you a few minutes to go through the most important aspects of highly effective campaigns.

using autoresponders

#1 Plan for segmentation.

A database – or “a list”, as we marketers call it – is super valuable when it can be segmented. This will allow you to send different messages to different people, depending on their consumer behaviour, location, past orders, affinity for various products you’re selling, their goals, etc.

To make it easier for yourself, or for your hired email marketing specialist, make sure you start collecting key data for segmentation early. This will impact the way your opt-in and lead capture forms will look like.

If you’re starting with a list that contains no other data than the actual email addresses, all is not lost, you can send out different campaigns and start segmenting your list based on opened emails, clicks, conversions, later date calls for profile updates, etc. but this will take time and you might miss great opportunities in the process.

Keep in mind: Think ahead what types of messages you’ll want to send to your audience and plan for collecting the data you’ll need down the road.

#2 Pay attention to the length of your email subject line.

When using autoresponders, there are two ways you can approach this and it really depends on the objective you’ve set for your email campaign. If you’re going for a better open rate you should keep your subject line under 50 characters. This is especially useful if you want people to open the email to see the latest products you have on sale or to get people who are already familiar with your business and your products to act quickly. This tactic worked perfectly for Barack Obama’s online fundraising campaign from years ago. His team used short subject lines like “hey” and “two simple words”.

NOTE: Don’t overuse this, Barack’s team didn’t mail with this every day – it would lose it’s effectiveness. 

If you’re going for a better clickthrough rate, which will be the case when you’ll start emailing our affiliates, you should use more descriptive 70 characters long subject lines.

Keep in mind: Short subject lines lead to a better open rate, longer ones to more clicks back to your websites.

#3 Keep your email on top.

If your emails keep getting hidden between or below other marketers’ emails, your messages risks being deleted or just sent to trash. If this happens, it won’t matter how valuable your offer is because it won’t be noticed. A tactic some marketers are implementing is to avoid the hours most marketing professionals are sending their own emails. Being the last one to send your email campaign, your message will be the one on top, the one people will see every time they look at their phone or check their emails. The easiest way to do this is to send your email after 8 PM or by sending it right after the email rush hours like 9 AM or 10 AM.

You can figure out what the rush hours in your niche are. Just subscribe to every email list relevant to your field and observe the times when the rest of the marketers are sending their emails.

Keep in mind: Choosing the right time to send your email campaigns can help you make sure people are seeing your messages in their inbox.

Sendlane has a feature that tracks previous messages sent to each email subscriber on your list and can then send it based on when they are most likely to open your emails. If the content you are sending isn’t time sensitive this is a VERY good way to make sure your emails get popped on top and get seen/opened more frequently.

#4 Don’t go overboard with personalised emails.

The key here is to build meaningful relationships with your subscribers, and using their name in the first line of your email won’t necessarily do that. They know email marketing services offer this option, so they’re not really imagining you wrote them a personal email that nobody else is receiving. What you can do instead is to use personalisation to show them you pay attention to what their needs are, like listing the name of the product they just bought, offering them a discount code when an autoresponder delivers them your best wishes on their birthday.

Keep in mind: Email personalisation goes beyond a *|FNAME|* tag. You should focus on building meaningful relationships.

#5 Optimise for mobile.

There are all sorts of studies and reports, but you need to try really really hard to find one that states that less that 47% of internet users open emails on their smartphones. You need to be aware of this when you’re creating your email campaigns. A great email that doesn’t display correctly on a mobile device is worse than not sending an email at all – the recipient can’t read it and it also makes a bad impression.

If you want to make money online, you don’t afford the luxury of expecting consumers to wait until they get to a desktop computer to be able to read your email.

Keep in mind: Send mobile-friendly emails to make sure people will be able to read them even when they’re checking their inbox on a mobile device.

It will depend on your target audience, but most autoresponders let you track whether your people are opening it in mobile or desktop (if they don’t you can use a service like Google Analytics to find that out).   If you are getting a lot of mobile opens, you might want to consider using an autoresponder service built specifically for mobile marketing, like Text Deliver together with your email autoresponder. This will land you a lot of extra clicks.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, if you would like to learn how to sequence your autoresponders for getting affiliates to promote your product click here to read more.