When most people think about how to get more traffic and sales with their autoresponder, they have a handful of good methods come to mind. Turns out there are quite a few ways to use an autoresponder to grow your sale, and you’re about to discover 17 of these proven methods. Take a look…
1. Follow Up After The Sale
Whenever you get a new customer, you should add this person immediately to your customer mailing list. You can then send a series of follow up emails to promote related offers.
For example, if you sell a social media marketing report to a customer, then you might follow up with a series of emails that are designed to sell an in-depth Facebook marketing course.
2. Teach People How to Use What They Purchased
Another good way to use your autoresponder is by sending out a series of emails that helps people make the most of the product they just purchased from you.
For example, let’s suppose you sell a meal-planning and fitness-tracking app to people who want to lose weight. You can then send out a series of emails which teach customers how to make the most out of the major features of your app, such as:
- How to use the app to count calories.
- How to use the app to balance macronutrient levels.
- How to use the app to calculate how many calories they’re burning with exercise.
And so on. Every email should teach them how to use a feature, and then encourage them to take action.
The reason for doing this is because when people take action and get good results, they’re naturally more satisfied with their purchase. This produces three benefits for you:
- Reduces product refunds.
- Makes it more likely the customer will buy something else from you.
- Makes it more likely the customer will tell his or her friends about your offer.
Next…
3. Distribute Ongoing Freemiums That Lead To Offers
The idea here is to surprise subscribers with unannounced bonuses that will keep them opening your emails with anticipation. They never know when they’ll get the next freemium, so you can bet they’ll open all your emails.
Now here’s the key…
You’re not just delivering a bunch of freebies to people. Instead, you’re offering high-quality products that naturally lead to paid offers.
For example:
- You might offer the “lite” version of an app for free. If people like what they see, they’ll upgrade to the premium version.
- You might offer one video module out of a training series for free. Again, if people like it, then they’ll purchase the entire set of training videos.
Here’s another idea…
4. Drive Traffic To Your Blog
What you do here is direct your list to your most popular archived, evergreen articles.
Here’s why: if you can get people to get engaged on your blog, then you have a chance to put various links and calls to action in front of them. This may include:
- Links and calls to action embedded right in the articles themselves.
- “Feature product” ads in your sidebar.
- Product ads at the end of articles.
Next idea…
5. Do JV Swaps
The idea here is to do ad swaps in your respective newsletters with your marketing partners. Here are a few ideas:
- You promote each other’s lists. In other words, you encourage your subscribers to join your partner’s list, and your partner does the same for you.
- You encourage your subscribers to follow your partner on social media (and your partner returns the favor).
- You promote your partner’s product, and they return the favor.
Next idea for making the most of your autoresponder…
6. Poll Your Audience
What you do here is use your newsletter to poll your audience and learn more about what they want. You can ask them questions to help uncover information such as:
- What are their biggest niche-related problems?
- What solutions have they tried?
- What are the shortcomings of these solutions?
The answers to these questions will help you send out content and offers that your newsletter readers really want, which will in turn increase conversions and sales.
7. Build Relationships
If you just blast your email list with one cut-and-paste promo after another, your conversion rate is likely to stagnate. That’s because your subscribers don’t know, like or trust you – all of which are essential to sales.
Point is, give your readers a chance to get to know you. You do this by:
- Sharing personal stories. It’s best if these are niche-relevant stories, but sometimes you may just drop in notes about what’s going on in your life, such as going on vacation or having a baby.
- Sharing case studies of what happened when you used a particular product or strategy. Be sure to share lots of data, but also share the personal side of the story, such as how you felt, which is inspirational and motivational.
- Allow real access. This means ask for feedback, and then answer your subscribers when they provide that feedback. You can also direct readers to a blog or social media platform to interact.
Next idea…
8. Train and Motivate Affiliates
This is a great way to use your autoresponder, but it’s something that a lot of affiliate vendors overlook. Check out these ideas for what to send in your autoresponder series:
- Send out a series of training emails that tell your affiliates exactly what to do to make money with your affiliate program.
- Showcase other successful affiliates to motivate inactive or inexperienced affiliates.
- Send out other motivational material to get inactive affiliates excited about promoting your products.
Next up…
9. Offer Themed Emails
This is a good way to train people to open your emails, as well as build relationships with subscribers. The idea is to send out themed emails on a weekly basis that your subscribers can look forward to. For example:
- Question Of The Week
- How I _____ (e.g., “How I Quit My Job and Started a Six Figure Business”)
- Case Study of The Week
- Resource of the Week
Now here’s something else…
10. Boost Sales By Segmenting
The idea here is to create a very targeted lead magnet with the goal of segmenting your list. If your autoresponder has the tagging feature, you can tag everyone who downloads a particular product. If your autoresponder doesn’t have this feature, then you can send your subscribers to another list of high interest.
For example, let’s suppose you have bodybuilding list. You might create a lead magnet that’s targeted at the segment of your list that compete in bodybuilding competitions. You can then send highly targeted content and offers to this segment of your list.
Here’s another idea…
11. Use It For Webinar Registration
Do you ever do webinars? If so, then you can use your autoresponder for webinar registration. The benefit is that you can then follow up with your registrants to:
- Remind prospects when the webinar starts and how to log in.
- Send an offer a day or two before the webinar, especially one that is a good pre-requisite for the webinar. For example, if the webinar is about Facebook marketing, you might promote a Facebook report with basics to prepare viewers.
- Follow ups after the webinar is over to promote the item
that you mentioned within the webinar.
Next…
12. Create a Multi-Part Series Around One Main Offer
People rarely buy an offer the first time they hear about it. That’s why you’ll want to create a series of three to seven emails for EACH product you promote. Each series will consist of related materials, all of which promote just one product. For example:
- Five Ways To Retire With $1 Million In the Bank
- The Three Secrets of Fast Weight Loss
- The Four Steps To Setting Up a Successful Blog
Here’s another good idea…
13. Send Targeted Follow Ups To List Segments
Many of the major autoresponder services let you segment subscribers according to whether they’ve performed a specific action, such as click on a link or open an email. You can use this nifty feature to send ultra-targeted follow ups. For example:
- Send a follow up with a sizzling title to those who didn’t open your last email.
- Send an objection-handling email to those who opened the email by didn’t purchase the product.
Next…
14. Create An FTM Site
You don’t need a complex script to run a fixed-term membership site,
which is a membership site that runs on autopilot for a pre-determined amount of time (such as three months, six months, etc.). All you need is an autoresponder. Just upload the first month of materials, and you can start taking orders.
For example:
- Set up a 12-month site for winning bodybuilding competitions.
- Set up a four-month site that teaches people how to raise prize-winning vegetables.
- Set up a six-month site that shows people how to start their own business.
Up next…
15. Send Special Emails On Occasion
Here’s a list of simple emails you can send out from time to time to drive traffic and generate sales:
- Send out solo ads once a month or so to promote a particular product.
- Survey customers and get their feedback about how to improve your products as well as your newsletter.
- Ask customers to beta test new products. (This gets them involved and helps develop loyalty.)
- Invite subscribers to connect with you via other platforms, such as social media.
16. Engage In Testing And Tracking
The idea here is to use your autoresponder to track and test campaigns before launching them on a bigger scale. This includes:
- Testing the product itself to see if it will generate interest.
- Testing the product name.
- Testing the product offer.
- Testing the email itself to see if it gets the click through (here you pay particular attention to testing the subject line, opener, benefits, call to action, P.S., design of the email, and when you send the email).
Once you’ve got a good conversion rate, then you can roll out your campaign on a larger scale.
TIP: Some autoresponders let you set up a split test to send to a portion of your list, and then the autoresponder automatically sends out the winning email to the rest of your list.
And one more…
17. Warm Up a Cold List
Have you ever let a list grow cold from lack of activity on your end? Or have you noticed that even with active lists, certain parts of the list go cold? That means that the subscribers aren’t clicking on your links. In some cases, they might not be opening your emails.
So here’s what you do – send out a special autoresponder sequence to the “cold” portion of your list. This might include:
- A special high-demand, high-value freemium that you tout right in the subject line.
- Big discounts on popular products to bring people back into the fold.
- “Last chance” emails to stir up some urgency about opening your emails, downloading freemiums and taking advantage of sales.
So there’s the question of the day: which of the above 17 ways to use an autoresponder are you overlooking? Good news is that now that you have this information, you can quickly implement any method you haven’t started using yet. And that means more traffic, sales and cash are coming your way!
