How To Launch An Ezine Using Email Autoresponder
Autoresponders are one of the most widely used promotional tools on the Internet. They're also known as mailbots, automatic email and email on demand. They were derived from the very popular fax on demand and designed to automatically respond to any email message received with an automatic response.
Autoresponder programs vary from autoresponse messages set-up within an email program to a script that runs on a server. This script may run a web-based autoresponder system that utilizes a web page form or it may run with a pop email account on a server.
Autoresponders can assist you in automating many of your daily tasks including:
Customer Follow-up
Following up with your customers is an important part of providing good customer service. Not only is it an essential part of developing a good relationship, but it will also enable you to introduce new products.
Although sending out a personal message to each of your customers may not be possible, an autoresponder can provide them with the illusion that your message was personally sent.
Order Confirmations
If you're processing orders online, manually sending each of your customers an order confirmation can be very time consuming. By creating a standard letter and placing it within an autoresponder that allows personalization, you can eliminate the need to manually respond -- while at the same time, provide good customer service.
Articles for Publication
Writing articles and allowing them to be freely published, with your bylines, is a highly effective promotional strategy.
If you would like to enable your visitors to have access to your articles around the clock, place them within an autoresponder. This will enable your visitors to send an email to a specified email address and instantly receive your article.
Autoresponder Courses
In addition to the standard autoresponder systems, there are also autoresponders that can send an unlimited number of follow-up messages. These follow-up messages can be automatically sent out at predetermined intervals. In other words, you can set up your autoresponder to automatically send out a new message each day for as many days as you would like.
This powerful technology is currently being used by some of the top online marketers to reach thousands of potential customers. As you may know, it may take up to seven contacts with a potential customer before closing a sale. By setting up an autoresponder and offering a free autoresponder course, you can completely automate a portion of your marketing efforts.
Selecting a quality autoresponder service:
When selecting an autoresponder service, there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration to ensure maximum performance:
- Personalized responses - Gives the recipient the illusion that your message was sent specifically to them.
- Automatic follow-ups - Studies have shown it may take up to seven contacts before closing a sale.
- Unlimited text length - If you are inhibited by the amount of text your autoresponder may contain, you may be forced to revise a successful sales letter, ultimately costing you business.
- Free Unlimited updating - You must have the ability to update your autoresponders.
- Automatic Notification - You must have the ability to track your ad's performance. You should be instantly informed each time someone requests your information.
Although many web hosts provide their clients with one-time autoresponders, if you're planning on sending out follow-up messages, you'll want to use a more advanced autoresponder.
GetResponse http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=gr
An advanced autoresponder system that will enable you to not only personalize your messages, but it will also enable you to send an unlimited number of follow-ups. Cost: Advertising supported
SendFree http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=sf
A one-time autoresponder system with a unique advertising opportunity. This autoresponder is also an ad exchange that enables autoresponder owners to receive free promotion by exchanging ads. Your ad runs on other members' autoresponders and their ads run on yours. Cost: Advertising supported
AWeber http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=aw
AWeber provides an outstanding autoresponder system that will enable you to take complete control over your autoresponder marketing campaign. This professional autoresponder service provides you with all of the following:
Send HTML or text messages Subscriber signup via email or web form Easily import and export opt-in subscriber lists Automatic removal links within each message Unlimited message length Completely personalize your messages Advanced autoresponders with six follow-up messages Statistics and graphs
Autoresponders are one of the most widely used marketing tools on the Internet. Although they can't completely automate your business, they can certainly save you hours of valuable time, and increase your profits considerably.
Email Piracy, Email Privacy?
How much sensitive information do you send via email? Email piracy is usually not a major issue for small businesses online. If only because there's not enough *money* at stake for expensive industrial espionage and undercutting by competitors who beat you to the punch in launching a new idea because they worked out how to intercept your emails to a business partner.
I have signed fairly high-level Non-Disclosure Agreements and faxed them over non-secured phone lines and discussed them via email as we negotiate terms or propose changes to sensitive parts of a contract. I have discussed important decisions by email and brainstormed new ideas for incredible new internet businesses with start-up firms risking their financial future on an idea. Just a delicate idea, that if stolen, could mean financial ruin for a few individuals.
But nobody I've ever dealt with has even once expressed any concern that their email could be intercepted and read by a third party while in transit across the web. It's possible but improbable that corporate spies or simply your neighbors twelve-year-old may be able to access your email as it zips across the span of the back yard phone line past his bedroom window, via those little copper wires.
Well unless you are a criminal, a spy, or a brilliant scientist with a billion dollar idea - it's not likely you'll care if any of your email communications are intercepted in transit online. But if you do have reason to keep your communications private, say sensitive company information meant for clients eyes only or a letter of resignation for your boss or even that private conversation with a friend or lover, sit up and pay attention.
There is a simple, if time-consuming way to have your email encrypted for privacy and signed for authenticity that is rarely used. You might consider going through the process of applying for a digital certificate for your email client.
This encrypts those little personal information files and claims that your email is secure from any prying eyes in transit since it is encrypted and cannot be read unless the recipient has a copy of your "Public Key" as it is referred to. Your Digital Certificate that is saved by your email software to identify you to those you *want* to receive and un-encrypt your new private emails.
There is a rather long process to put you through with tutorials which show you how to set up either Explorer or NetScape to accept a "root certificate". This digital certificate identifies you as the *owner* of the account and allows your emails to be encrypted by your email software. Be prepared for anywhere between a half-hour to an hour to set this up for your new account.
Then you establish passwords and save a copy of your new certificate to removable disks so that you can keep a backup to be able to access your own mail should your computer ever crash or the information in your software become corrupted.
You can also do nearly the same process with either of several certificate issuing authorities online. Two related companies that offer these certificates are Verisign and Thawte, which is owned by Verisign, (go figure) at http://www.verisign.com and at http://www.thawte.com . The Verisign version costs $14.95 yearly and the Thawte version is free, with the ability to upgrade to a paid version they call the "Web of Trust".
Both of these certificate issuing authorities offer the same long process of setting up your account and send you emails to verify your address before providing usernames and passwords to access and "install" your new certificate.
When you apply for the Thawte certificate, you will have to swallow a big "trust-me" pill as they require extensive information about you, including social security number or driver license number along with five (yes, I said FIVE!) reminder clues to retrieve your password should you ever forget or misplace it. The application process offers some very long, if occassionally humorous text in the instructions and warns you sternly to "WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORD AND REMEMBER IT" or it will be very difficult to retrieve.
So if you're just in the habit of telling embarrassing personal secrets or gossiping to friends and family, it's probably not worth the effort and energy to encrypt and sign your emails. But if you are doing serious business online and need to email sensitive contracts, non- discolosure agreements or million dollar ideas, consider applying for a digital certificate.
The digital signature allows you to assert that you *are* who you say you are via email and encrypt your messages so they can't be read if intercepted by prying eyes or even nosy neighbors. Maybe you just want to be certain that it is your mother you are talking to and not a houseguest that signed on to the web on her computer and downloaded her email. The passwords and encryption take a few extra minutes and if you are using netscape, you'll have to go through an additional step to set up another user profile.
Can SPAM it's No UCE!
Ya Gotta love those scumbags! Those spammers who make a living encouraging everyone else to spam by selling CD's full of e-mail addresses they shouldn't have in the first place. I got an offer this week for a CD with - I kid you not - 57 million e-mail addresses! For only $149 I can make millions of people hate me and my business by sending Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) to people who don't want to hear from me!
To encourage me to become a lowlife scumbag, he offers me some simple math. I quote:
"Imagine selling a product for only $5 and getting only a 1/10% response. That's $2,850,000 in your pocket !!! "
You bet it is! And it will never happen in this life or the next. What will happen is that my Internet Service Provider will shut down my account and ban me from their service and I'll be tracked down by the law enforcement agencies in nearly every country I e-mail my information! The cat is out of the bag by now folks . . . it's no UCE spamming. That is the recommended course of action for almost every get-rich-quick scheme on the internet.
IF IT INVOLVES SPAM, CAN IT! Delete and forget those silly messages! My internet service provider offers a special address to forward all spam that I receive so that they can filter out the offending scumbags and I use it quite regularly. I've even been known to seek out the ISP of the worst offenders and attempt to have them banned from their own accounts. In doing this I've found several ISP's that cater specifically to spammers by protecting their identity and offering "secret" e-mail addresses which are "cloaked" and re-routed through other servers to hide the source!
You know that legitimate businesses would never resort to hiding.
Internetweek recently ran a survey asking companies if they ever use Unsolicited Commercial Email to market their business. The results were astounding assuming the respondents represent real, legitimate businesses! (How many spammers read Internetweek?)
"In fact, one in 25 of our survey's respondents said their companies' marketing efforts include the distribution of unsolicited e-mail."
And that is just those who ADMIT spamming! That is a very ugly percentage and something needs to be done. I am in contact with the Chief Privacy Officer of one of the largest email marketing companies on the web asking to be removed from the marketing database by domain.
That seems to be difficult. Why? I want my subscriptions to remain intact, I want my hosted applications to continue undisturbed, I want to request information from online companies and I want all of that while also wanting to stay out of marketing databases.
This seems like a relatively simple thing to do technologically. Internetweek recently published an article titled "Privacy tools emerge" at:
http://www.internetweek.com/ebizapps01/ebiz042301.htm
What makes the process of privacy protection so hugely complex?
Affiliated-Business.com recently added a privacy protection tool to our domain which protects our database from outside access and seems like a perfect solution to keeping our subscribers and site members information private on a shared server. We highly recommend it for those who value the privacy of their web site members.
This software allowed us to offer an iron-clad privacy policy. The trust of your visitors is far more important than any other feature you could offer. Immediately following the posting of our new privacy policy, we experienced an upsurge in new memberships unprecedented since the inception of our site!
Isn't it clear we all want a solution?
There are raging anti-spamming fanatics getting legitimate companies shut out of their ISP's by falsely accusing people of distributing UCE (when their domain is mentioned in an article published by *anyone*) by running entire newsletter through a service called SpamCop. This tool is abusive and should be shut down or discredited since it extracts every domain name mentioned in the newsletter and sends email to the host of those domains and endangers the owners of those domains with knee-jerk reactions by their ISP's. It is not uncommon that victims of these complaints are shut down by their web host without investigation!
"Guilty until proven innocent" is the attitude of many service providers since they are under constant pressure from everyone from their customers to their own providers to do something to prevent further complaining and end email abuses. This has caused a new backlash by innocents who have been threatened with the closure of their online business stemming from those spurious complaints.
If this anti-spam article were published in an anti-spam newsletter and the newsletter were submitted to SpamCop every domain mentioned within this text would be turned in to their ISP for spamming. How effective a tool is one that indiscriminately shoots at everyone? That is essentially the effect of anti-spam software used badly. It would shoot to kill all, including the anti-spam sites mentioned here.
Everybody is hot under the collar about spam but nobody is doing anything real to stop it legitimately. The government is debating the issue and threatening to pass stringent laws, but haven't figured out how to legislate the issue. Reference laws:
http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/summ107.html
Now there are fanatics on both sides of the issue and it is going nowhere but occassionally to the Realtime Blackhole List. This is one attempt to address the issue that creates more heat than light. Marketing companies want the Black Hole List shut down. Why? 24/7 media have recently won a court injunction to have their domain removed from the Black Hole list.
For info about the Blackhole List at the Mail Abuse Prevention System or MAPS visit:
http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl/
Is Spam destined to join religion as one of those things we avoid discussing in polite company out of fear of brawls breaking out? I recently attended a marketing conference where the topic of spam turned a roomful of reasonable folks into sharply divided camps raging loudly at each other across the conference table.
I've just joined a spam discussion list where many of the same emotions are raised in what seem to be otherwise reasonable folks. Everyone seems to agree there is a problem, but each have very distinct ideas about what should be done to address the problem. Comparisons are constantly made to core issues of freedom of speech, gun control, product liability, totalitarianism, and all the while, nobody agrees on a solution.
Marketers should take the lead and help develop technological solutions to unwanted email before they are hit with a massive public backlash and the complete loss of this valuable marketing medium due to public hysteria and government over-reaction.
I vote that DoubleClick, WhiteHat, 24/7 Media and their cohorts commit a bit of their thinning profits to helping solve the problem of spam before they get wiped out by the building tsunami of public opinion.
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