Aweber was one of the very first auto responder systems available, and has grown in popularity over the years. They use a “double opt in” policy for all accounts. Meaning: Your subscribers must “confirm” they requested to be on your list.

Double opt in is very important for 2 reasons: 1) Spam complain reduction — subscribers can’t be added without requesting AND confirming, thus, “spam traps” cannot be added to your list, without a confirmation. 2) Subscriber Engagement — if a subscriber goes through the trouble of confirming their request, you can be assured that they REALLY want to hear from you (it was not an impulse decision that they’ll forget about), thus, your sales process is more likely to convert.

The service is very inexpensive and very simple to use. At $19.95 per month, you really can’t go wrong with this solution. (NOTE: They offer a FREE 30 day trial.)

The setup process uses an easy-to-understand, step-by-step wizard, and you can (a) create a list, (b) create a webform, (c) create a confirmation message, (d) create a “thanks for confirming subscription” message, and (e) create your follow up email messages in minutes. It’s very easy, and straight-forward.

Aweber has been known for years as a great AutoResponder service, but over the years, this service has grown to a full-fledged, full-featured email marketing solution –and I understand that more features are on their way.

In summary: Aweber is a GREAT Autoresponder solution, and when you need more features that are not available in simple “autoresponder-only” services, then you won’t have to move to another service provider: simply begin using the other included features found in your Aweber account.

Thus, you only pay once for the software, install it on your servers — and it’s yours. It’s fully customizable, and you have complete control over the interface that you see, and what your subscribers see.

LOADS of templates and step by step instructions make this really powerful software very impressive.

This is not just a simple autoresponder system, by the way. It’s a full-featured email marketing system, that has robust features in every area of email marketing — it just so happens to be extremely good at managing your autoresponders, too.

This software isn’t exactly cheap — but you get what you pay for. At $495 a single user license, this software is for professional websites or newsletters that want top notch “in house”, “hosted on my own servers” software.

Take a look at the video demo, and Interspire Email Marketer”>give this powerhouse “private labeled” email marketing / autoresponder software solution a shot.

Doing customer service with autoresponders is just as important if not more so, than doing it in person.  Obviously you can’t crawl through the internet and help your customers out and you certainly cannot go to where ever they are living, as most likely they are all over the country, if not the world.  So, no there is no way to deal with them personally, but what you can do is find the next best thing, and that is the autoresponder.

Doing good customer service with an autoresponder is really quite simple.  You set up a campaign in whichever autoresponder you belong to that does the customer service for you.  When your new customer places an order, your autoresponder automatically sends out a receipt for it.  Then if you are wise, it will also send out a “thank you” email and the information they need to download it.  Remember, this happens whether you are logged into your account or are on vacation in some tropical paradise!

The problem at that point then becomes what if the customer has more questions or problems and you are no where near your computer?  For instance, a customer is new to the internet and sees your product and thinks, “Ah this is what can help me.”  He orders and pays his money.  He even gets the receipt, the “thank you” email and the way to download it.  But what if it is in a PDF file and this person does not understand how to download it?  He does not know what “right click and save as” means?  He needs additional help and yet there is no one there to help him, he only has the autoresponder.

This is when you can go the extra mile.  Set up another customer service with autoresponder campaign, an make sure he has your support@autoresponder address.  When he writes to it, your autoresponder will kick in and send out an instant message.  It will say, “We have received your email message,” and will get back to you and then tell him when.  Most often this will give your customer the peace of mind he needs and he will wait the specified time for the assistance he needs.

You can see the problem if he emails the support address and gets no reply?  He will most likely become upset and possibly want his money back without ever even seeing the product.  This could mean the difference between making a sale and not making one.  Even if he didn’t ask for his money back, you still have a customer who is dissatisfied and no one wants that.

It is important that you think through the whole ordering process from start to finish and try to take care of any potential problems before they happen.  Your customers will appreciate it and probably come back time and again to purchase more from you.  Get an autoresponder set up with the messages that you want sent and when, and let you customer service with autoresponder address the problems for you.  You will find that your customers are more satisfied with your customer service, all because you took the time to have an autoresponder handle their problems right away.

In today’s world of online marketing, having an autoresponder is essential to being profitable. However you must be very careful how you approach your customers. Most people don’t respond well to a hard sale so you have to be build up to it. Plus most marketers agree that a prospect must hear a pitch on average of seven times before they actually purchase. So how does your autoresponder come into play? Well, its quite simple because your autoresponder will be used to get your message to your customers the seven times.

Many times, marketers make the mistake of pushing a hard sales pitch in their first autoresponder message. This does not work. The key is to slowly build interest by first giving information. You want to educate the potential customer on a topic related to your service or product. Then put a link at the bottom of the message to your service or product which will somehow solve their problem.

Then over the next few messages, start to build on the first message by giving more information on your product. You will want to start giving the benefits of your product and really showing them exactly how it will benefit them. Once you get near the last couple of messages you will finally hit them with the hard sale. There is an art to this type of marketing so don’t fret if you don’t get it right the first time. Keep it up and you will soon see how amazingly effective it can be.

If you are at a complete lost, check your email for messages you have receive from others about their products. See how they have written them and once you find some that you find are effective copy them into a file and call it your “swipe file”. While you don’t want to copy these emails word for word, it is completely acceptable to use them as a starting point for your own emails. Find what works and copy it!

So to wrap it up remember, don’t start off with the hard sale. Build interest by giving as much information
as possible. Show them how you and what you are offering can solve their problem. Then, if you have done this correctly, by the time they read the final messages they will be primed and ready to buy whatever you are selling! Good luck and happy marketing!

A classic sample of any Internet marketing strategy, using an automated email responder can help you reach a number of potential customers to help you make the sale that you’re trying to make. As a busy marketer, you can’t possibly have enough time to personally and individually send out emails to anyone who responds to your company, especially when it begins to take off, and you will need a little help. However, if you are smart about it, you can make the program work for you and make it an integral part of your Internet marketing strategy.

A common belief of marketing for many years has been that people will often need to hear a message as many as seven different times before they will purchase a product. This isn’t something that is easy to do on the Internet, as the customer has complete control over what they see and hear. With a smart Internet marketing strategy, however, your auto-responders will help you make the pitches that you need to make.

One thing that you absolutely need to be careful of, however, is not making a hard sale. When you push all of your information into someone’s face from the beginning, they are often turned off and have no interest in what you are trying to say. If you slowly introduce them to the idea of your product, however, giving them time to think about the idea for themselves, they prove to be much more receptive to the idea of buying from you.

This Internet marketing strategy, using auto-responders to begin to build interest, would want you to start slowly, making your first part of the pitch be something related to the topic of your product or the situation, which it could alleviate. Then, after giving the consumer a little time to think about what you propose, another auto-message can be sent out, giving a little bit of information about the product that you are selling, probably with a link to your website at the bottom. This can continue until you make a pitch for the product you sell and, hopefully by that point, the consumer will have decided to buy it anyway.

This type of marketing isn’t entirely easy, however. It will normally take a good amount of practice before one can really perfect how to make it work well every time. One of the best ways to learn to improve at this is to study how other Internet marketers use these strategies. By watching someone who can successfully pitch a product over time using an auto-responder system, you can learn a great number of tricks to help you in your next sale!