Automating with Autoresponders

Automation is an important part to any business. The less time you devote to doing small redundant tasks the more time you will have to devote to primary business activities, such as: product development, advertising, customer service, and list building. Or, you may want to have more time for enjoying other things in life other than working, so the more you automate your business the more time you will have available to spend on whatever you desire.
Putting an online business on autopilot is not very difficult and much of it can be done by simple using autoresponders to do many simple tasks for you. An autoresponder is a software program that you pay usage fees for, or that you buy and put on your own hosting account’s server. It is a program that responds to email inquiries from other people with whatever you program it to send out. And it can also easily be programmed to send out email messages that you enter into it at whatever time you want. Therefore an autoresponder, abbreviated AR, can be used for many purposes to assist in handling business communication activities.
An AR can be used to promote your products or services and to get people to visit your website. Just type or copy and paste your sales or informational message into your AR and have it sent out to whoever you have entered into the AR. Then, when a person receives your message and visits your web site and makes a purchase you can have your AR setup to deliver another message to them. The message would thank them for their purchase and then deliver their product and receipt to them.
You may also program it to give your customers detailed instructions on how to go about obtaining their products and describing other products you have to offer that they may be also be interested in purchasing. In this way you have the ability to promote more products and possibly make more sales. You can also program your AR to send out follow-up messages a day or two after a purchase to ask customers if they are satisfied with their purchase. This assists in building strong customer relations and also gives you another opportunity to promote more products while saving your time.
It will also allow you to make more “back-end” sales by using follow up messages every few days. It is advisable to always include some meaningful and relevant information in your follow up messages so your messages do not appear to just be blatant sales messages, which most people do not generally like or appreciate. The beauty of all this is that you can be off doing something else while much of your business communication activities are being handled automatically by your AR.
Autoresponders are great for training and teaching purposes. Many college professors who teach correspondence courses set up their lessons in an AR and then send them to their students at specified times throughout the semester. And, because the courses being taught often do not vary much from semester to semester, or from year to year, the lessons can be set up one time and used over and over again with only minor adjustments being needed.
ARs are great for providing training lessons to all types of groups. For example, a 12 week training course can be written in advance and then scheduled for deliver when the time is appropriate. The lessons can even be set up to be delivered to different groups at different time intervals. ARs are great for keeping members of an organization informed of upcoming events, deadlines, and special offers or promotions.
Promoting products for sale is one of the most popular uses of autoresponders in online business. But when using an AR to promote your sales just realize that most potential customers do not like the direct “hard sale” approach and it has been documented that on an average a potential customer must hear from you at least 7 times before a sale is made. It is usually best to contact potential customers in the first 2 to 4 messages with valuable information that is interesting for them to read or use in their lives. It is good to give away something of interest and value and to thank them for subscribing to your email newsletter or ezine.

Anti-Spammers Need To Develop Better Manners

I sent my e-zine out last week and I received a copy of it back. It had been forwarded to me by a subscriber. In the subject line was a two word sentence; since most publications and websites frown upon vulgarity, obscenity, and profanity, I have spared you the exact wording. Be assured, however, that Miss Manners would definitely not approve. It is understandable the frustration that people feel when they are inundated with unsolicited commercial e-mail. I myself get more than my fair share. Despite my Internet Service Provider (ISP) enabling a spam filter and in spite of configuring my own e-mail program filters, I still get spam. However, the situation with my subscriber is different. He opted in and confirmed his subscription. I use an outside service to handle my mailing lists, in part, to protect myself from false spam complaints. There are a number of possibilities here. Perhaps my dear subscriber forgot that he subscribed and honestly believed that he received spam. Another possibility is that he didn't enjoy the content. The correct response when someone offers you something you don't want is "No, thank you" not "Expletive deleted". If you are offered dessert after dinner by your host and you don't want any, simply say "No, thanks." If you accept one piece of pie and then you're offered another, you may either accept or decline. My subscriber could simply have unsubscribed. Instead, he retaliated (either because he believes I'm spamming him or he doesn't like the newsletter). He said "yes" when he subscribed; he can always say "no" by unsubscribing. Again, "No, thank you" not "Expletive deleted". Related to this rudeness is the ignorance some America Online, Inc. (AOL) subscribers show. By ignorance, I mean that they may not even realize they are doing anything wrong when they report e-mail they don't like as spam. AOL makes it very easy for their subscribers to report spam. I would say they make it too easy. Just click the button "Report Spam". Unfortunately, there is no notation near that button that says "If you subscribed, just unsubscribe." No, simply "Report Spam." And they do. Rather than unsubscribe, some AOL subscribers will report your e-zine as spam. They opted in and subscribed. They confirmed their subscription by e-mail. Their name, e-mail address, IP address, and date and time of subscribing have all been recorded. But, they are reporting you as a spammer. This, to me, goes beyond rude, as it could affect the reputation and livelihood of the one being reported. I wish I could say that receiving obscenities or threats by e-mail is rare. Sadly, this is not the first time for me. Among the many messages I receive are some that say that the e-mail I tried to send (from some strange or nonsensical name at my domain) was undeliverable or blocked and is being returned to me. Of course, I never sent that e-mail in the first place. Occasionally, I receive rude (sometimes threatening) e-mails from people who thought I sent them some of these spoofed e-mails. This is the equivalent of swearing at and threatening someone who you believe allowed his dog to defecate on your lawn. The only problem is that the man doesn't have a dog. Again, I sympathize with those who are irritated by spam. I just wish they would direct their indignation at the spammers instead of me. In fact, Miss Manners would have reminded us all that there is never any excuse for rudeness.

All about Email Marketing

Email marketing and newsletters may be sent with more confidence for less than most of the competition. Emails are priced according to the quantity you purchase, so the more you get, the less they cost. Email marketing solutions when they need to: Make customer communication more efficient and to improve the productivity or their marketing resources Improve email marketing deliver ability—ensuring their communications are delivered to the highest percentage of recipients as possible Accelerate customer acquisition and conversion rates from their email marketing efforts Track the performance of their marketing efforts from communication to transaction—connecting campaigns to tangible return on marketing investment Leverage dynamic content for customized one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many email marketing communications Reduce their marketing costs while improving the performance and productivity of their marketing resources Make it easier and faster for customers to buy their products and services than any other marketing or sales channel Integrate voice, fax and sms text communications channels with their email marketing efforts Maximize Web analytics data to improve customer acquisition, customer retention and customer growth results. Marketing Marketing leaders across all industries—business-to-business and business-to-consumer—are using email marketing as their core channel for acquiring, retaining and growing customers. Bulk Bulk email hosting can be affordable and bulk email can even be free. Bulk email sender for email newsletters, targeted email campaigns and email announcements. Bulk emailer is easy to use mass email software, which is used to send bulk email. Quite apart from these practical considerations, there is also a strong argument which says that long-term successful email marketing relationships with customers and others can only work anyway if they're permission based. It's important to stress that anyone considering email marketing must read up on the subject of permission and spam. By offering value-added services to your existing clients with email marketing software, you can build indestructible customer loyalty, gain a sharp competitive advantage and increase the average order value per client.

A Beginners Guide to ISP Inbox Delivery

We’ve discussed blacklisting, I wanted to spend some time looking at where the rubber hits the road for email delivery: the ISP inbox. Let’s be very clear about this for consumer facing campaigns there are 4 major ISP’s that manage the majority of consumer inboxes. • MSN/Hotmail • Yahoo Mail • AIM Mail • Gmail What Does this Mean? Basically unless each of these mail platforms relays your message to the primary folder, your email campaign is far from optimized. What Causes mail to be delivered to a bulk/spam Folder? All of these ISP’s allow their users to report spam with a “report spam” button. The ISP uses this feedback to create a profile for your mail. If users are reporting your mail as spam you will run into problems. What Can I do to make sure I do not create ISP Spam complaints? AOL recommends keeping spam complaints below 1-3 percent of traffic, depending on volume. This figure is unique to AOL's user base; it's too generous when applied as a general standard. Be at or below the range of one complaint per 6,000 to 8,000 messages, or 0.013 percent. Minimize Complaints Minimizing complaints always starts with practices used to collect e-mail addresses. It should be obvious by now sending unsolicited e-mail only gets you in trouble. Mailing lists with the lowest complaint rates are either confirmed opt-in or properly managed single opt-in. If you have a solid permission-based list but still find incoming complaints are higher than the optimal rate or are rising, consider the following: • Brand your subject lines. Mail systems with spam complaint buttons offer it at the inbox level. A recipient need only to scan subject lines and decide which messages not to delete immediately. A subject line such as "Exciting offers for you, Bob!" will surely be marked as spam. Consider using your company or newsletter name in brackets at the beginning of your subject lines. • Consider including unsubscribe instructions at the top of your e-mail, in addition to the footer. Some users use the "report spam" button as an unsubscribe method and won't scroll through an entire message to find that link. • Include instructions for users to whitelist your domain. This prevents a user-based filter from mistaking your message for spam and either diverting it to the spam folder or prefixing "[SPAM]" to the subject of the message. • Provide a preference update page. Disclose how your organization will use a subscriber's e-mail addresses, and how often. Allow subscribers to select preferences on the opt-in form, and link from e-mail to a preference or profile update page. • Avoid spammy looking content. Try not to use garish, bold fonts; large, red letters, and the like. Avoid images with poor compression quality. A clean, readable design isn't as likely to be mistaken for spam. • Don't over e-mail. If recipients expect to receive a few informational e-mail messages each month from your company, don't suddenly start sending two or three each week. • Don't send unexpected e-mail. If subscribers opted in to receive your "Trends & Tips" newsletter, don't send them your hard-sell e-commerce messages, unless they clearly requested them. • Include opt-in information. If possible, add to your e-mail admin area information, such as the subscriber's e-mail address, date of opt-in, and how she potentially subscribed (product registration, white paper download form, sweepstakes entry, etc). With many subscribers receiving dozens of commercial e-mail messages daily, it's easy to forget signing up for your newsletter -- and then to file a complaint. What Can I do to test my ISP deliverability? We recommend you use a service like EmailReach. Their trial is free and let’s you know where you stand in about 5 minutes. http://www.emailreach.com/default.aspx Following these guidelines should help you to avoid being bulk foldered by the main ISP’s.

8 Advantages Of Using An Email Marketing Software

If you decided to use email marketing to promote your business, then let me congratulate you on this very wise decision. You might have read over the internet the buzz created by this type of marketing, and I’m sure you have already learned that “The money is in your list” – this is 100% true. Even though email marketing is a very powerful way to transform leads into hungry buyers many people are discouraged to use this technique because of the time they need to invest in it. A recent study has showed that about 75 % of people who use email marketing need between 15 and 50 hours per week to handle it. If you’re like me, then you’re a very busy person who can’t afford to spend that much time just on email marketing. So this is why I decided to make a list of the great advantages brought by Mailloop 7.0. , the best email marketing software on the net. 1. You get an opt-in form template which comes with full instructions so you can easily add it to your site. 2. It automatically stores every email saving you precious time and headaches. 3. It e-mails new subscribers a welcome message just moments after opting in. No more preparing and sending e-mails to hundreds, even thousands of subscribers manually. 4. Mailloop gives you attractive looking templates to use for your newsletter so that it looks friendlier to your subscribers. 5. It keeps your e-mail safe from spam complaints, blacklists or filters so that it doesn’t get trashed. 6. You can schedule your promotions so that you can go on your vacation without worrying about interrupting campaigns. 7. You can use as many autoresponders as you need, create as many campaigns, write as many emails as you wish … the sky’s the limit. 8. Manage all of this from a complete user-friendly control panel.

Affiliate Network - Do I Need One?

The affiliate has a choice. They can either work with multiple merchants, or they can work with an affiliate network. So why should a marketer want to work with an Affiliate Network? I remember a friend told me a story awhile back. He had built a small website and had signed up to become an affiliate at a stack of different affiliate programs related to the topic of that site. A few weeks after he had set up the site including links and banners from multiple affiliate programs, he turned his attention to other business interests and lost interest in the site. A few months later, he noticed that a few checks had started arriving from the affiliate programs he had joined up with. Not large checks, but amounts for a few dollars here and there. That was his first problem – as he was living outside of the USA, lots of small amounts result in lots of bank charges. (Which makes me ask - Why can’t all countries allow affiliates to bank checks at NO CHARGE?) Nevertheless, the checks continued to come in, and although some of them were posted on his wall as they were so small he couldn't bank them, he wasn't complaining as he was making money he hadn't expected. It turned out that his site had ranked high up on specific keywords in a major search engine, and he was receiving a fair amount of targeted traffic for free. A few months after that he decided to log into all the affiliate accounts he had registered with, and noticed that some of them had not paid him as the amounts were too small, some of them hadn't paid although they should have, and some even showed that they had sent him amounts that he didn't recall receiving checks or EFT or paypal or any other payments for! So how does working with an affiliate network prevent this from happening, and is this the only reason to work with an affiliate network? A good affiliate network has a number of different offers which the affiliates can promote, and nearly all the affiliate networks consolidate the amounts the affiliates earn from the various campaigns. This means that the affiliates receive a CONSOLIDATED payment rather than many smaller ones. It also makes reconciling the payments easier, as you simply log into one affiliate network, and can see a summary of each of the campaigns you have promoted, how much you have earned from them, a summary of how much you have earned overall, and how much the affiliate network has paid you to date. Also, once you work with one campaign in an affiliate network, the other campaigns work in a similar if not identical way – the tracking is the same method, the place you pull the creatives from is the same, the way you check your stats is the same – and nearly always, all of this can be achieved by logging into one backend site rather than many different sites. So now you are working with one log-in, where you can really get to understand the system. However, even with the best of affiliate networks, things go wrong – but with an affiliate network, you would be allocated an affiliate manager, who will help you sort out any issues you encounter. Not 50 different affiliate managers – one for each campaign you are running, as would be the case if each merchant was a standalone merchant with their own affiliate program – but one affiliate manager for all the campaigns. And by building up a relationship with your affiliate manager, when you do need answers, you have one person to turn to. Of course, once you become a professional super whaling affiliate (the type that lies on the beach while the money pours in – HAS ANYONE REALLY ACHIEVED THIS? Watch this space for a future story about the affiliate beach goers!), you'll need specific campaigns to promote, and that is why, even the best of affiliates belong to multiple affiliate programs and affiliate networks. But this presents even more problems. So my advice when starting out is to choose one or 2 affiliate networks, become familiar with their system, build up a relationship with the affiliate manager, test out the different campaigns they have, and let them help you achieve the success and results you want to achieve.

Affiliate Profit: Are you losing money?

Dear Affiliate, I have bad news for you: You are probably losing money and you didn't pay attention to it! Let me explain... When you joined affiliate programs you probably considered the following factors: - The commission - The conversion rate The profit formula looks like a child play: Commission x Conversion Rate = Your Profit In fact there are three big pitfalls here and if you don't manage them properly, your profit is at risk. Let consider them: - Price: A high price means a higher affiliate commission for every sale but it may result also in a lower conversion rate… If the product is too expensive, nobody will buy. You shouldn't be blinded by the promise of a very high commission. You should keep in mind that the best price is not the one that gives you the highest commission but the one that makes the highest profit. An optimized pricing that makes satisfied customers and satisfied affiliates is what you should look for. - Refund Rate: Refunds can kill your marketing efforts! What are worth the sales you see in your account if customers request their money back? A lot of sales mean nothing unless you keep the money! This is the whole responsibility of the merchant to keep refunds as low as possible. A site that sells well is good. A site that also keeps refunds very low is much better! There is only one way to keep refunds very low: To deliver very high quality services meeting customers' expectations or going beyond what they could expect! - Product Quality: Quality is king! Quality makes superior conversion rates! Quality enables higher prices and better commissions! Quality keeps refunds as low as possible! In a word: Quality should be your compass. Don't associate your business with low quality products or services. On the top of your list, promote only the very best. It will also keep your profit on top. How much money are you losing today? The money you earn and lose is significantly determined by the quality of the affiliate program you have selected as your top pick. The question is: How do you measure what is more qualitative and what is less? There is an objective criterion to use for answering this question and for optimizing your profit: The refund rate of your top affiliate program! A high refund rate express clearly that lots of customers are not satisfied with what they get and that affiliates lose money on their sales. On the contrary, a low refund rates indicates a high level of satisfaction among customers and safe earning for affiliates. If you get many refunds with your top affiliate program, you should understand that the quality of this program isn't sufficient for keeping these customers satisfied and it doesn't do the necessary job for securing your profit… You are losing money! What are good, medium and poor refund rates? Refunds can't be totally avoided. There will always be customers that are not satisfied even for the most qualitative product or service. So, expecting a zero refund rate on the long run is not realistic. You should wish a refund rate as low as possible in your industry. It's important to consider that there can be significant variations from one industry to another but as a rule of thumb you can use the following scale: 2% or less: Excellent 3% - 5%: Good 6% - 10%: Medium 11% - 15%: Poor 16% - 20%: Very Poor 21% or higher: Run away! With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your affiliate program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn't get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better affiliate program to promote. What is the refund rate of your top affiliate program? There are two ways to find the refund rate of an affiliate program: 1) Look at the stats supplied by your affiliate program Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760! You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all affiliates for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote affiliate programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of affiliates that promote an affiliate program. 2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program. The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs. The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank? As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discovering how much money affiliates can lose when promoting these programs: - SurveyScout: 16.2% refund rate! - Survey Platinum: 20.9% refund rate! - My Consumer Survey: 35.2% refund rate! To get into the details, on November 29th 2005 figures were as following: SurveyScout Affiliate Commission: $23.50 Average $Earned/Sale: $19.69 Refund Rate: (23.50 - 19.69) / 23.50 = 16.2% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,969 because 16 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! Survey Platinum Affiliate Commission: $23.50 Average $Earned/Sale: $18.58 Refund Rate: (23.50 - 18.58) / 23.50 = 20.9% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,858 because 21 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! My Consumer Survey Affiliate Commission: $40.84 Average $Earned/Sale: $26.43 Refund Rate: (40.84 - 26.43) / 40.84 = 35.2% Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $4,084. In fact you will get only $2,643 because 35 customers out of 100 have requested their money back! Remark: My Consumer Survey has a poorly designed site and a high price for buyers. We estimate its conversion rate to be significantly lower than other paid surveys programs. Despite its high commission, affiliates will lose the most money with this program. We learn three lessons about these paid surveys affiliate programs: - A lot of customers are dissatisfied. - Affiliates lose big money. - The quality of these programs is very questionable. What should you do to stop the bleeding? You have no influence on the quality of the affiliate programs you promote. Your only real influence is on the quality of your recommendation! Giving your top recommendation to a very professional affiliate program that delivers the utmost quality services to customers will keep your profit as high and as safe as possible. In the field of paid surveys and mystery shopping jobs, the most professional program available today is MaximumPaidSurveys.com. Maximum Paid Surveys is a premium database of paid surveys and mystery shopping jobs. It delivers a superior value to both registered users and affiliate partners due to its very high quality. How to identify quality in affiliate programs? Defining quality is a difficult job. In general, people can't define clearly what quality is but they recognize it when they see it. So what should you look at in affiliate programs? The most qualitative affiliate programs find the right balance between the value they offer to customers and the value they generate to affiliates: 1. Value to customers – It includes: - Rich content - Good looking website - State-of-the-art organization - Friendly functionality - Affordable Price for most visitors - Detailed documentation - Bonuses strengthening the main offer - Timely Customer Support 2. Value to affiliates – It includes: - High conversion rate - High commission - Low refund rate - Commission paid on time - Good affiliate support