Internet Marketing & Home-Based Business

Your email newsletter should not be some endless sales pitch. You need to give your readers something of value. Do this every single week, and they will be coming back for more. People subscribe to newsletters because they want content, not because they want commercial after commercial.

Fortunately, there’s a way to create valuable content once and then have it automatically delivered to each of your readers, on time, until you tell it to stop. This device is called an Autoresponder. All the best email newsletter services have them, and if yours doesn’t, find a new one. An autoresponder is a message that you write once, and then the system will send it out to your list at intervals you define.

That doesn’t mean the same person will get the same message every 3 days, but that the next automated message will go out when you say it will. I’ll give you an example. Say you have three autoresponder messages set up to go out to your list with 4 days between each message. Then “Ted” comes along and signs up for your newsletter on your website and gets autoresponder message 1. Four days later, he’ll get message 2, and then he’ll get the last message after another four days. Then he won’t get any other automated message until you write some more. He’ll never get messages 1 – 3 again, because he already did. Then when “Susie” signs up for your newsletter, the same thing will happen with her email inbox.

The Real Value of Autoresponders

Besides the obvious benefit of autoresponders being automated, there are two other benefits I would like to point out.

1) Write once, communicate a bunch. Each autoresponder message you write will go out to everyone on your email list. As your list grows, more and more people will read your content. You just write an article once, and it keeps working for you, time and time again.

2) Write a bunch, and keep the content flowing for a long time. I honestly don’t know if all email newsletter services allow for unlimited autoresponders (also called “Follow Up” messages), but the service I use does. This is beneficial because I can spend some time writing and have someone’s attention for years. For example, say I come up with 52 messages that are about two paragraphs long and give the reader a little nugget of useful information. I set each of those messages up as an autoresponder, with seven days between each message. I now have automated messages that will go out to everyone on the list from the time they sign up for one whole year. A year! That’s a long time.

Think of the potential of this. With just a little bit of work up front, you can have an automated system working for you for a long time.

It gets better, too. Some lists are more responsive than others, and like having messages sent to them often. With these people, you might be able to send messages every four days. You’ll have to experiment to find the sweet spot for your particular list.

Imagine what you can create — the trust, the following, your expert status — with a year’s worth (or more) of automated messages. And if even writing 52 messages seems like a daunting task to you, there are copywriters out there who will do it for a nominal fee. If you don’t have the time or interest to do this yourself, hire a professional to do it for you. Then you just take an hour to set up all the messages as autoresponders (or hire a virtual assistant to do it for you), and you’re good to go.

Don’t let this valuable tool slip by unused. Build up a solid base of autoresponders and send quality content to your list every single week. If you don’t have a list yet, or if you want to change to a really good provider, go with Aweber. They are the only service I use, and I highly recommend them.

Build up your autoresponders. Now.