The autoresponder series is arguably an online marketer’s most powerful tool for making sales. It helps you to successfully engage your email list, build relationships, and turn prospects into buyers.
The best part is, once you’ve created it, your work is done, so you can focus on the important aspects of your business.
An autoresponder is a sequence of emails that are automatically sent to a segment of people on your email list and is triggered by a specific event, such as joining your list, a certain browsing behavior, cart abandonment, downloading a PDF, or buying a product.
The content of an email autoresponder series is created in advance and set up to send at the appropriate time with the help of your email marketing software.
Every online business needs an autoresponder series for two main reasons:
They nurture your leads by providing valuable information and insights, as well as teaching them how to make better decisions through an automated onboarding process.
They turn prospects into customers by helping you build “know, like, and trust” before you ask for the sale. Then you can make your pitch at the best possible moment, and you can do it without being overly “salesy” or pushy.
So, how do you create a highly effective autoresponder series? There are 4 basic steps:
There are many different goals you could have for your autoresponder, but here are the 4 most common. Choose one (or a combination) of the below goals for your autoresponder series before you create it.
Send new subscribers a “welcome” sequence. This is the message that you send to people right after they subscribe to your email list. It could contain a link to your lead magnet for an easy download, a thank you for subscribing, or maybe a call-to-action to check out your most popular blog posts. Every email list needs a welcome email series: don’t miss this chance to “woo” your new subscribers and turn them into loyal fans. Check out How to Create a Welcome Email Series that Sells On OptinMonster University to learn how to create a welcome email series from start to finish!
Use it as a lead magnet/free mini-course. You can also use an autoresponder as a lead magnet to attract new subscribers to your email list. This is commonly done in the form of a free “mini-course”, or a free “challenge”, which promises to deliver a series of emails containing lessons (or other valuable information) over the course of several days or weeks. There is high perceived value with a mini-course or a challenge like this, which makes it a very effective lead magnet. Looking for the best LMS plugin for WordPress to deliver your course with tearing your hair out?
Make sales on autopilot. Creating a sales funnel out of an email autoresponder sequence is a widely adopted strategy used by information marketers, but it can also be used by software companies, eCommerce businesses, and service providers. For example, it could consist of a series of educational videos, a sales video, and follow-ups to sell your information products. Or, you could create a sequence of free educational emails, and then invite leads to a live or recorded webinar where you make an offer. For an online store, your sales sequence could include promo offers for products your subscriber has just viewed on your website.
Promote up-sells/cross-sells. You can even set up an autoresponder sequence for someone after they purchase and get repeat customers. Depending on the products you sell, you could offer an upsell, or cross-sell related products. For example, if someone buys a digital camera, you can offer to add a lens, a tripod, and other accessories to their order before it ships. Or, if you sell products that people buy frequently (like food or disposable items, like diapers), you can automatically send them offers for new items when you know they’re about due for another order.
Step 2: Map Out Your Entire Email Sequence
In this step, you will draft an outline for your sequence. But first, you’ll need to figure out how long you want your sequence to be. How many days? How many emails?
There is no universal rule when it comes to exactly how many emails you need to have in your email sequence. Your sequence should be long enough to help you accomplish your goals, no more, no less. So its length should be determined by its purpose, your segments, subscriber’s preferences, etc.
Next, you’ll need to figure out how far apart each email will get sent.
It’s okay to send an email once every two days for educational emails, and three to four emails in a single day when you’re running a huge sale that’s about to end. It depends entirely on the goal for your sequence (which is why you chose that in Step 1).
You need to find a healthy balance between your “value” emails and your “offer” (sales) email.
Kitchen Remodeling MarketThe exact number of emails you send doesn’t matter as long as you send more value emails than sales emails. This helps you keep your list from getting burnt out.
To simplify things, you can use the 80/20 rule: 80% of your emails should give value, while only 20% of your emails are about making a sale.
Next, write an outline of your sequence from start to finish, describing what topic(s) each email will cover and the call-to-action for each email. Your call-to-action could be to click on a link, share your blog post on social media, reply to your email, or buy your product.
Focus on the reader first. You should always write your emails to address the needs of your subscribers, not yours. Offer ways to solve their problems, don’t simply talk about your products and how great they are. Ask yourself, what are the biggest pain points for my subscribers? How can I solve their current problem in this email?
Use personalization. Personalizing the content of your emails will make it so much more relevant and valuable to them. Personalization goes beyond sticking your subscriber’s first name into the email. You need to tailor the actual content of the email to address their needs. For instance, an online retailer will find it much more valuable to read an email with the subject line, “How to build backlinks to your eCommerce store” than just a generic subject line, “How to build backlinks.”
Write great subject lines. David Ogilvy once said that 80 cents of your dollar should be spent on writing headlines. With emails, the subject line is just as important. If it doesn’t catch your attention, you won’t open it. So, spend the majority of your time writing and polishing your subject line. A great email subject line entices curiosity about the content of the email. It’s also personal, and highly relevant to the recipient.
Although it is mostly hands-off, an email autoresponder series is not something that you should create one day and then completely forget about the next. To get the best results, monitor the performance of your emails to identify areas that need improvement. Then, A/B test some changes in order to make those improvements.
Open rates. If your open rates aren’t where you want them, consider the following: Is this autoresponder relevant to your list? Are your subject lines as good as they can be? Are you sending your emails at the best times?
Click through rates. Once your subscribers have opened your email, are they actually taking the action you need them to take? If you think that you have a low click-through rate, perhaps your body copy is not as effective as it needs to be. Consider the following: Is the copy of your email relevant to the subject line? Did you offer real value to your subscribers in the email? Is your call-to-action clear enough? Is the link easy to find?
Unsubscribe rate. Unsubscribes are always going to happen no matter what, and that’s usually okay because those people probably wouldn’t have bought from you anyway. However, a high unsubscribe rate can indicate that you are losing potential customers. Check the following: Why did people subscribe to your list in the first place, and are you delivering on that promise? Is the content of your autoresponder highly relevant to the segment it is being sent to? Are you sending too many sales emails with too little value emails? (Recommended reading: 5 Reasons Why People Unsubscribe from Your Email List.)
Now that you can automate and target each of your email marketing campaigns, you can turn those campaigns into a sales machine!
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about email marketing. Some of this info has been covered in this very article but is presented here for those of us who want a quick reference. ?
Keep checking back because we’ll definitely be updating this FAQ.
How do I build a strategy following email marketing best practices?
This guide is a great way to build the best email marketing strategy and we encourage you to follow it! We also have a great post on how to run a successful email marketing campaign that you should definitely check out. Here’s what you’ll find:
There’s no hard, fast rule when talking about how often to send marketing emails, so we recommend that you ask your subscribers how often they want to hear from you. You can also do some A/B testing to see what frequency has the best performance.
