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In
today's business world emails are essential to the success
of any business. As your business grows so will the number
of emails you will receive. The bad news is that people
expect prompt replies to their email inquiries. Unless
you can figure out how to work continual twenty-four hour
shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming
emails (while they're eating up your revenue), you have
a problem. Before you reach the point of exhaustion trying
to keep up with answering the mountain of emails that
threatens to bury you alive every single day, you need
to learn about autoresponders.
What
is an autoresponder? It is an inexpensive - or even free
- method of quickly responding to emails. Autoresponders
are programs that automatically respond to your emails
without you so much as having to click on your mouse.
The way these programs work is they automatically respond
to incoming emails as soon as they are received.
There
are a number of positive was you can use an autoresponder
besides just answering your email. For example, autoresponders
can be used if you need a way to send information about
your services or products, price lists, or if there are
repeated questions asked across large numbers of emails.
Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus
of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles. All
of this can be handled by an autoresponder. Additionally,
you can advertise your business and then build stable
relationships with your customers by using autoresponders.
Some
autoresponders can do more than simply send out standardized
messages. They can send out an unlimited number of follow-up
messages sent at predetermined interval of time. For example,
you can set your autoresponder to send out a new message
every day for as long a period as you desire.
There
are several Autoresponder programs available from ones
that will run with your current email program to a specialized
script that runs on your web hosting company's server.
This kind of script may use a web page form or simply
operate with your email account.
There
are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free of
charge. Your website hosting company often provides autoresponders
as a free service. If this is not the case with your web
hosting company, there are numerous companies who offer
this service for a small fee, or free of charge, providing
you attach an advertisement for their company to your
emails.
Once
you have your autoresponder chosen make sure to set up
your website to contain different email addresses for
different contact requests. Each address can then be set
up to different autoresponder series of emails to answer
the specific request of the inquiry. For example, use
info@yourdomain.com for information requests, or sales@yourdomain.com
for questions about sales. It's a good idea to set up
one for the owner, such as president@yourdomain.com. This
presents your company in a personal, approachable light
and insures that direct contact is provided.
Autoresponders
are an effective and powerful marketing tool, allowing
you to make contact with thousands of potential customers.
This is an invaluable asset considering how many potential
customers you usually have contact with before you make
an actual sale. Essentially, an autoresponder allows you
to automate part of your marketing campaign.
If
you are finding out more of your time is spent answering
emails, how are you supposed to run your business? The
answer is simple: use autoresponders.
Copyright
2005 Chris Stirling
About
the author
Chris Stirling is the owner of http://www.stirls.com
and his internet marketing website is designed to help
other people achieve their goal of having their own work
at home business.
To
sign up for his newsletter "Marketing Strategies
that Empower Success" visit http://www.stirls.com/newsletter
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