Streamline Your Business & Increase Your Profits with Autoresponders

Sometimes it’s tough to keep up with all your leads and customers. The great news is, there is a not-so-secret weapon that successful netpreneurs use..and you can use it too. Autoresponders not only make you efficient, they can also help you increase your recruiting rate and sales with constant follow-up.

What is an Autoresponder?

Simply put, an Autoresponder sends an automated response when someone sends a message to your email address. It can be just one message or it can trigger a series of email messages. Autoresponders can be personalized with people’s names and other information unique to that individual.

Autoresponders do not have to be impersonal, so banish that thought from your mind. You are likely a sole proprietor; think of autoresponders as your assistant that works for next to nothing.
How to Use Autoresponders in Your Online Business
-> Customer Follow-Up: When a customer makes a purchase through an online source, it’s easy to send an auto-reply that thanks them for their order.

But you can get more advanced than that and automate most of your customer service requirements. You can set up a whole series of follow up messages that show your customer that you are concerned with their satisfaction and even pave the way to further sales.
For example, send a thank you immediately after the sale, a day or two later to say the item was shipped and then a week later to ensure the item arrived in good condition. You can also send tips on how to use the product and subtly let them know about your complimentary products (more sales!).

Many Autoresponders are sophisticated enough that you can insert your customer’s name, what she bought and other information unique to that customer.

-> Support eMail Autoresponse: Many times people will email you to ask a question already found on your FAQ page, right? Include some of your frequently asked questions and answers automatically when someone tries to reach your support email. Often, her question will be answered before you even get a chance to look at the support request.

-> eCourses: Offer ecourses via email autoresponder. For example, set up an informative course on how to run a home business or how to create a baby scrapbook. Each day or each week (you decide frequency), your prospect receives a new informative lesson and is reminded of the business opportunity you have available.

You can put a sign up box on your website, offer the course in your email signature line or recommend that your downline sign up for the course. The possibilities are endless.

-> Potential Recruit Follow-up: When somebody requests more information from you about your business opportunity or affiliate program, what do you do? Call them, email them once and maybe follow up a few days later…if you remember? You can actually do better than that. Set up a whole series of messages to be delivered every few days for a couple of weeks giving your potential recruit more great information about your opportunity.

Your potential recruit is likely investigating a number of opportunities, make sure yours is always on her mind.

-> Automated Newsletter: When someone signs up for your mailing list, you can set them up to receive a series of pre-written emails. This means that "subscriber A" can sign up today and start receiving emails from the beginning of your series, while "subscriber B" and "subscriber C" can be elsewhere in the series.

By pre-writing your newsletter, you always have material to offer new subscribers and you can ensure all subscribers receive all of your great issues. Your newsletter doesn't need to be complicated, just some nice, short, sweet and to-the-point emails packed with some great tips (and of course topped off with some promotion of your company’s products) will do. When you have a sale or special announcement, you can easily send out special notices to your mailing list too.

How to Find a Good Autoresponder

Check with your company’s website hosting provider. They may already have some simple autoresponders available. Usually, these will allow you to send out a single autoresponse to incoming emails.
There are a number of good autoresponder products on the market that allow for sophisticated contact management and follow up. You can read autoreponder reviews on Internet Based Moms.

How To Setup A Successful Online Business In 7 Easy Steps

Do you want your own online business? No more than ever it is possible to start a business quickly and inexpensively. Below are seven steps you can follow that will help you start off in the right direction every time.

1. Find a product to sell. You can create the product yourself. You can sell an affiliate product on a commission basis, or you can find a private label rights product that allows you to edit and resell as your own product. The product can be an ebook in a pdf format, or audio format. Video or software could be the product as well. If you are enthusiastic about the product and believe in it, you will have an easier time selling it.

2. Register a domain name that fits your product. If at all possible, include the key words that relate to the product in the domain name. Since domain names are not very expensive these days register several similar names. The content would be basically the same in each one.

3. Find a web host that is reliable and affordable. Make sure the web host has an easy to use control panel so you can upload your web pages yourself. Many of the most popular hosts use CPanel which is very easy for you to master quickly.

4. Create a small website or have someone create it for you. Some websites are only one page long, although it's a very long one page. Others are only three or four pages of content. There are free website sales page templates you can search for and use in your site. When writing the content for the sales page stress the attributes of your product. Make sure your headline grabs the visitors attention and pulls them into the copy. If you include endorsements or testimonials make sure they are from real people. Ask for the sale more than once and include a link to the order page.

5. Set up a payment processor. PayPal is quick, free and easy to set up. There is a fee to process the transactions. This fee is taken right out of each sale so you do not need to keep records. Tell your visitors they do not have to have a PayPal account to use PayPal, they can use their credit card. You have access to your money and can withdraw the money nearly immediately.

Clickbank is another alternative. Clickbank takes longer to get your account approved and there is a fee to set up the account. Like Paypal, there is a fee per transaction and a percentage based on the price of the product sold through Clickbank.

6. Be sure to set up product delivery as instant and automatic. Doing this serves your best interest as you do not waste a lot of time emailing the product or download link to the customer after they have paid. And it serves your customer's best interest since they do not have to wait to download their product.

7. Drive targeted traffic to your website. You can use search engine optimization and keywords research. One fantastic approach is article placement in ezine directories. You can participate in discussion forums. And one of the newer marketing methods is social bookmarking.

True these seven steps do not go into any great technical, this is because to much detail would only slow you down in the beginning. There will be plenty of time later to learn the technical side of everything. For now, just get started.

New Internet Marketing Opportunities Through RSS

When it comes to new internet marketing opportunities for your business, RSS just might be the answer you were looking for. Here are just some of the new opportunities it can provide you with ?

1. Podcasting and Videocasting

Podcasting (delivering internet audio content) and Videocasting (delivering internet video content) allow you to communicate via rich media messages, not only making your content more attractive and powerful, but also enabling a more personal ?conversation? with your audiences.

Up until know, the internet was predominantly a textual channel. Adding audio and video to the mix, delivering both via RSS, goes beyond the basic capabilities provided by ?traditional? internet content delivery channels.
Rich media personalizes the internet experience and gives your company a distinguishable face, while at the same time providing you with a media platform to convey your message so that it is easier to understand, see and feel.

Think about ...

1. Delivering press releases in audio or video
2. Sending your customers a personal video message from the CEO
3. Doing audio interviews to expand your reach and provide more content to your visitors
4. Delivering video demonstrations of your products
5. Using video and audio to demonstrate how your customers and readers can easily resolve various issues that you are helping them with
6. Delivering important messages to your readers, customers and business partners via a more personal audio experience, instead of using impersonal e-mail communications
7. And so on ...

In addition, Podcasting and Videocasting form the basis of new business models, giving you the opportunity to expand your product base to include these formats with higher perceived value.

Customer education & support are improved as well, since you can now demonstrate key product usage points via online video  providing customer support content in a format, which can easily demonstrate everything you need to convey to your customers.

2. High Frequency Content Updates

High frequency content updates, even on a daily or hourly basis, are now finally possible with RSS. No more need to hold on your important messages, news and other content for a week or even a month to include it in your e-zine --- with RSS you can update your content as often as you want/need, and your subscribers won't mind.

3. Appcasting

Appcasting goes one step further, giving you the ability to deliver critical software updates and patches to your existing clients, without them having to visit your web site every week to see if the much needed update is already available or not.

4. Product News, Releases And Updates

Product news, releases and updates are now finally possible in an easy-to-consume way. Using RSS, you can provide your customers or prospects with simple tools to create their own ?product feeds?, through which they'll be immediately notified when new products that precisely match their interests are available.

As soon as your product portfolio changes, so does the content in the RSS feeds that your customers are subscribed to.

Just think of the following possibilities ...

--> The search tool is one of the most often used in larger web stores, giving your visitors an easy way to find the products they are interested. But the same search results can be delivered via RSS as well. Imagine your customer doing a search for one of your product categories, and then also receiving a link to the RSS feed for those very same search results, to find out immediately when a new product matching his terms is released or available for order.

--> This works for complex searches as well. If your customers are in the habit of searching for specific product categories, but only in a specific price range, you can deliver those very same results to them via RSS, but with a small twist ---> as soon as a new product matching their terms, including the desired price, is launched, they are notified about it via RSS instantly. No need to visit your site again to do the time-consuming search; the release comes directly to them.

--> Of course, the same approach that many are already using for e-mail alerts can be used for RSS. Give your visitors a simple form using which they enter their criteria, and then give them access to an RSS feed bringing them product updates based exactly on their criteria. Why not just use e-mail? Because no one really wants more e-mail messages in their inboxes and no one wants to give away their personal information, while RSS is anonymous, doesn't require an e-mail address and is read when the customer decides he has the time.

5. Personalized Content Services

Personalized/customized database listings are quite similar to product updates, but relate to any kind of complex information you provide to your visitors, such as ?

1. Job listings
2. Dating
3. Real estate
4. Etc.

Using RSS, your visitors can decide exactly what kind of ?content? (in this case, an individual content item could be a new job listing) they are looking for and then have that content delivered directly to them, via their own personalized RSS feed.

And yet, all of these are just some examples of what you can do with RSS. The possibilities for new content delivery & business development models are quite endless.

For example, some companies are already giving their visitors the opportunity to track their FedEx, UPS and other packages via RSS feeds. Yet others are creating new services that allow you to receive critical information from an RSS feed to your mobile phone via SMS (such as getting an SMS notifying you that a new job matching your criteria is available). Yet again other sites enable you to keep track of when you need to return your library material, and even when your holds are ready and when they are about to expire, all this using RSS.

All of these are new business opportunities made possible with RSS, and each of them in a way improves lives of end-users, without placing a larger burden (more e-mail messages) on them.