What is an autoresponder series?

I’ve been talking about using autoresponders here for some time. But I received an email from a reader the other day which went something like this:

“Forgive me for appearing dumb, but can you tell me what exactly an autoresponder series is?”

I’m the dumb one, for assuming everyone knew. So forgive me, and allow me to explain.

Your email service provider should be able to offer you three key services. Most bloggers make good use of the first two, which are:

Blog Broadcast

This is where a feed is taken from RSS to send readers a summary of posts you’ve written. You can set it to go daily, weekly or when a certain number of posts have been made.

Broadcast

You can broadcast an email to all your users. Often used for newsletters, or when selling something to your readers.

The third, and often overlooked option is the autoresponder series.

Let me pause for a moment to say the terminology I use here relates to Aweber, (aff link) because I both use and recommend them. But most decent email services will offer the same options, although some wording may be different.

The Autoresponder Series or Follow up

This is a series of emails which you can pre write, and then program to go out to people in a set order after they join your mailing list.

The first of these is always your “Welcome to my email list” email. The rest can be whatever you want, and you can have as many as you want!

So why do it?

A well thought out series of ARs can really add value to the subscribers, by guiding them gently through your content, offering them additional information, and giving them access to stuff you don’t want to publish to the general public.

ARs can also be a powerful selling tool, creating a sales “funnel” to lead people to purchase from you.

The benefit to the blogger might be sales, but for me the biggest benefit is traffic. Each autoresponder not only reminds the reader your site is there, but it can also lead to long term increased traffic.

The Secret

The secret to having a good AR series, is to carefully balance value to the reader against value to you as a blogger.

I try to follow a ratio of at least two to one. In other words, I’ll try to “give” the reader something of value them twice as often as I will ask them to do anything for me (like buy something!)

Anyone who has given you their email address is an engaged reader, who values what you say and do. And as such, they are much more likely to buy from you when you suggest something. But go too far in that direction, and you’ll lose them and that special relationship.

An Example

I’ll talk you through the early stages of my sequence so you can get a feel for it. Although the best way to see it is as a reader, so please subscribe if you haven’t already:

Day 1– Welcome, thanks and tell me a little about you.

Day 7 – How to get the best from the site. Links to posts and search and RSS.

Day 15 – Blatant self promotion. You should buy Beyond Blogging!

Day 22 – Free book, Dale Carnegie.

Day 29 – Explanation of how to get best from an email list (!) with Aweber affiliate link

Day 35 – My tips and strategies for getting the best from Twitter (links to all my Twitter posts)

Day 44 – Series of links to some really useful stuff from my archives, “buried treasures.”

Day 52 – Post asking readers to reply with their blog details, so I can look and comment

Day 62 – Free book, Napoleon Hill

Day 71 – List of the tools I use for blogging

It goes on much longer than this, but you get the idea, I’m sure.

Now think about the effect of all this. I’ve had two days fairly recently where more than 50 people joined my subscriber list (that’s unusually high for me).

That means that 15 days later, 50 people will be told all about Beyond Blogging. A few of those will buy from me. A couple of weeks after that, the same 50 people will read all about how to get the best from an email list from me, and again, a few will use the link to buy Aweber. A couple of weeks further on, and the same 50 will get the email about all my Twitter posts, and I’ll get a traffic spike to those and a raft of new comments.

And on it goes. So, as you can see, the subscribers get value from the series, and I benefit from sales and traffic. And my only input is to write a new one every 10 days or so, and add it into the system.

It’s got to make sense, hasn’t it?

Not related in any way, but worth a read:

1/ Volkswagen and constant improvement for bloggers

2/ Is Posterous my biggest productivity tool? Guest post from Chris Garrett

3/ How sell social media consultancy to businesses