Why You Need An Autoresponder

(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

It’s Saturday on Memorial Day weekend 2009! May Gray is giving way to June Gloom, in other words, Summer Has Arrived in the San Francisco Bay area. I’m slaving away this holiday weekend so you don’t have to.

Let’s talk about sales. Specifically, communicating with prospects.

There’s lots of ways to do this, including blog posts, forums, and emails. All are important, email is critical.

Easier said than done… managing a huge list of prospects is daunting. Which is why you need an automated email handling service such as AWeber.

Here’s how it works: Your prospects sign up for your email list, and their subscription information is handled by AWeber, automatically. AWeber provides a convenient interface for you to compose emails and develop marketing campaigns, and provides a huge array of handy reports so you can ensure your time is being spent productively.

Double Optin: AWeber’s Key and Critical benefit

The key, and in my opinion most critical benefit of AWeber’s service is double optin.

Double optin, also called “confirmed optin,” means that everyone signing up for your newsletter or email list must confirm their interest independently.

Is this a hassle for your prospect?

Absolutely.

Double optin is enough of a hassle that the direct marketing industry fought the whole notion. But AWeber embraces it!

But here’s the secret: if you provide something of value that people really want, they will move Heaven and Earth to get it. Everyone opting in to your email list is expressing interest in your products and services.

Double optin protects you as well. Because your prospect has to do a little bit of extra and conscious effort to receive your email, they have much less legal basis for lawsuit under the CAN-SPAM act which regulates marketing on the internet.

Many, many other benefits

There’s almost too many benefits to list, but here’s a few more that I find really helpful:

• Save time: “Followup” emails can be scheduled for sending far into the future. You can write a whole set of emails now, and have them sent at weekly intervals, automatically.
• Emails can be personalized to the recipient’s name, which has been proven over and over to lead to better results.
• Customer support is top notch. AWeber answers their phone, and they answer their emails. They are responsive on the their company blog, and interact with customers there regularly.
• AWeber is deadly serious about deliverability, to the point where they have lost business from customers engaging marketing practices they do not agree with. For example, please read this blog post and comments on why AWeber bans “noreply” addresses.
• You can hook your AWeber account directly into your RSS Feedburner statistics, and have each post to your blog automatically sent as an email to your list.

Get started today!

You will reap immediate benefits using AWeber to handle your email lists. If you know you’re going to need a list in the future, you need to start now… it’s easy to start simple… but learning to exploit the true power of the AWeber will take some time. Get a head start by getting started!

Tagged as: Autoresponder, AWeber