Email Marketing Tips | An unflinching look at the world of email marketing

Most people with email come in contact with autoresponders quite often, they just don’t know it. The most basic example would be:

“Thank you for contacting Jon Smith, CEO of partyfavors.com. I will be out of the office until Friday, but I will make every effort to contact you then. In the meantime, you can contact my secretary, Jane Doe, at (555) 555-5555.”

But autoresponders for email marketing campaigns are far more flexible and robust than the example above. Autoresponders can be used to:

• Confirm a customer purchase
• Upsell a customer when they’ve shown interest in a certain product
• Confirm that a customer comment is received
• Confirm that a customer has signed up for a newsletter
• Confirm that a customer has filled out a service or tech support request

For instance, suppose you own a site that sells party favors. You send out an email to all your customers asking them to purchase a new type of plastic party hat. While some customers may simply open the email, not open it, or just delete it, other customers will take the bait and happily purchase a dozen of those new-fangled plastic party hats.

That’s when your autoresponder comes in.

As a business owner, you would create a text email that’s set up to be sent to the customer just seconds after they purchase those party hats.  The autoresponder might say something like this:

“Thank you for purchasing our party hats. Please visit our site for other products you might be interested in.” 

Or it might say something like:

“Thank you for your purchase. Partyfavors.com is processing your order and will send you a confirmation email within the next 12 hours.”

The best thing about email marketing autoresponders is that they’re automated. If you set them up correctly, you won’t have to worry about your customer receiving them. If a customer makes a purchase or signs up for your newsletter at 3 a.m., they will still receive the autoresponder at 3:00 or 3:01 a.m. even if you’re off in snooze-land.

Here are some other examples of autoresponders:

“Thank you for signing up for our party favors newsletter.”

“Thank you for commenting on our site – we welcome your feedback!”

“Thank you for filling out a service request. Our service department will contact you within the next 24 yours.”

You can also set up multiple autoresponders that “activate” once a customer responds to your email. This is commonly known as a “drip” campaign, a subject we’ll tackle on a later date.

In the meantime, here are a few tips on creating great autoresponders:

Keep it short and simple
Keep your autorespond messages short and to the point. Don’t over-explain, don’t over-word your autoresponder. Customers already wade/scan through mountains of emails each day and you want your message to get its due.

Write compelling, grammatically correct copy
Make sure you bring your “A” game when it comes to copy. If it looks funny or sounds “off” when you read it out loud, there’s probably something wrong with it. Find someone who has a great grasp of grammar and writing and have them read it before you send.

Have other people read it
Before you send your autoresponder, ask your friends, family members or co-workers to read it first. If your autoresponder is meant to upsell to customers, have other people read it to see if it fulfills its purpose.