Studies have shown that an average person needs to see an ad seven times before they are motivated to act. This could create quite a problem if you are relying on a website to promote your product. A potential customer visits your site, clicks on a few pages and leaves. The chances of that same customer returning to your website is quite slim. Your chance to make a sale is lost forever.
So how do savvy internet marketers avoid this problem? With the use of autoresponders. Autoresponders are used by practically everybody involved in ecommerce. Autoresponders allow you to follow up with a potential customer. Autoresponders do this automatically after you have set up your account.
How do autoresponders work? They allow you to send follow up messages to a potential customer after you gain their email address. You can continue to regularly contact that person for a year or even more if you feel like it. The benefit? Higher sales rates. Remember, a customer must be exposed to an ad over and over again before a sale is made.
The first step once you have your autoresponder set up is to grow your email list. But how do you obtain someone’s email address? There are many ways to do this.
You can give them a freebie. Have them enter their email address and you agree to send them a little gift related to your website. I’ll give you an example for a website I’m creating to promote my cookbook. A visitor to my website can provide me with their email and I’ll send them a free recipe. I can then follow up with more messages, asking for their feedback on the recipe and subtly pitch a sale at the same time. All this is done automatically through the autoresponder. You can periodically offer freebies to string their interest along until they come to the point of purchase.
Another way is to provide a free newsletter or training course. After providing their email address, they begin to automatically get lessons and tips that you have set up through your autoresponder program. An example of this is my ‘Home Business Opportunities’ website. I offer a free newsletter that sends out home business tips for over a year. You can see how this gradually allows the potential customer to put his trust in you. Before you know it, a sale is made. Again, my autoresponder program allows me to do this with little effort.
One word of caution. Don’t overload your recipient with message after message. We all have email inboxes crammed with SPAM, ads and sales letters. If you’re like me, my cursor is always hovering over the delete button, my trigger finger itching to send any annoying emails straight to recycle purgatory. Don’t let your autoresponder emails suffer the same fate. To avoid this, try spacing your messages so that your recipient only receives a message every three or four days. This allows your business to stay fresh in their minds without becoming a nuisance.
Yes, autoresponders are the greatest way to grow your customer list. Some internet experts claim the bigger the list, the bigger the success. Start growing your internet business today by checking out some great autoresponder programs.
Copyright © Robbie Fanucchi
