Email Autoresponder: Make It About Your Subscribers And Build Rapport

Email autoresponder – It’s an awesome tool that keeps email marketing alive. Not to mention, its so mistaken these days.

Many people think that one of the major benefits for the sender is “Money”. That’s why they say “the money is in the list”.

That’s not wrong. But that’s not the sole purpose.

From my point of view, list building should be done primarily for building relationship and rapport with your customers/readers and then you should also be making money out of your list by offering quality.

Now the biggest question here is which comes first – building relationships or making money using an email autoresponder?

The answer of course is NOT something similar to that of the famous question: Chicken or Egg? – But most bloggers mistake it for one.

I am sure it doesn’t work the other way now-a-days, given that people are fed up with sales emails and can easily smell you if you’re a sales person.

If people find that they can get value from you and if they come to know that you treat them in a special way, sure you won’t have problems in recommending stuff to them and making sales.

So it all comes down to a point where you should think about using email autoresponder for your subscribers’ benefit, instead of yours.

The basics of email autoresponders

Interacting with your subscribers is important if you want to keep yourself and your blog updated to suit their preferences.

However, if you are dying to reach a significant subscribers figure within a short period of time, then the temptation to exchange emails with the others’ list can become a serious issue.

Email marketing is also a very important part of your promotional/marketing campaign in general – say you’d want to promote a blog post or an offer at your blog and so on.

Effective email marketing requires a competent email autoresponder to work on the various aspects like list building, leads collection and email distribution.

It is actually sheer intelligence to use the various developed technological tools to ease these essential labors of blogging.

One of the shiny effective email autoresponders that I use is Aweber (aff link) (and the other one is GetResponse (aff link)). I’m so glad I’m using it.

You can try Aweber for free for the first month (fully functional account), by the way.

Or if you’re on the fence, you can read my honest review about Aweber and my comparison of Aweber with the other famous email autoresponder Mailchimp here

An email autoresponder can handle the work of providing your readers/subscribers with awesome information within a fraction of the time it will take to attempt it manually and in a more organized way, too.

You simply have to know of the handy ways that you can incorporate this efficient tool in your work process.

Here is a brief list of four simple ways to help you build rapport with your subscribers.

Designing helpful courses or products that you can offer via an effective email autoresponder

When your subscribers register for your email list, you must make it worthwhile for them.

It is true that this opportunity is primarily to market your business – as you would expect.

However, try to send in some extra nudge in their direction.

Designing an exclusive course related to your niche is a great idea to send out with your autoresponder emails.

You can also send in product referrals as well as suggestions with these messages.

You do not have to review these new products but refer the products related to niches that you think your subscribers might find interesting.

Using your email autoresponder for conducting surveys and polls

Use your email autoresponder to build a competent survey that your subscribers can take.

You can also arrange for contests and have your subscribers enlist through the autoresponder email.

This is an amazing way to build an effective customer list and encourage lead collection since there is a lot of room for receiving feedback from your customers.

When you take polls, surveys or even ask a simple question, they feel so special.

Whenever you are involving them in making decisions, it feels great for them.

They feel welcomed and so involved in your business and not to mention, feel connected too.

I often ask questions to my subscribers whenever I am planning to start a big project, or if I need suggestions regarding a new site or a new ebook – say, the design, the cover, the chapters to be included – you name it.

Not to mention, this also helps build buzz.

Helpful offers via the email autoresponders

You can use your email autoresponder to send out service offers for your product.

You can preferably offer free trial subscriptions so that people can use the product for a few days without any charges.

The best part is that the emails are a part of lead generation and you can build on your consumer relationship with future offers and subscription plans.

You don’t have to feel shy about promoting your product/service, given that it is an attempt to help your readers, of course.

In my case, whenever I talk about a particular problem, and if I provide a service I don’t hold back from mentioning it on my newsletter.

Review products/services for goodness sake

Yes I know, people run away from reviews these days, coz they’re only done in order to make a sale, these days.

It is hard to find genuine reviews that discuss both the plus and minus of a product, the practical difficulties/limits of a product and so on.

But if you write genuine reviews, you can not only make sales easily but more importantly, your list subscribers will thank you for helping them choose a particular product from the sea of other crappy products.

I didn’t realize myself how effective genuine reviews (or genuine product recommendations) work towards building connections with my subscribers.

In my initial days, I always used to think people will find me annoying if I recommend a product for which I am an affiliate.

But when I recommend something that solves their problem or when they are stuck with making a choice between two products and if I tell them what suits their case, they not only end up buying it, but more importantly they become a thankful fan of me 🙂

Building rapport using your email autoresponder

Email marketing had become a piece of cake with all the lovely tools around.

We have email autoresponder services that have many cool features – lovely templates, design, and many other technical features that make it super easy to maintain our communication with our list subscribers.

• Are we putting good use of the tools that are available to us?
• Are we misusing them?
• Are we effectively using them?
• Are we using them to help others?

Yes we can now type a set of, say, 10 emails in one day and set up an autoresponder series so that any subscriber to your list starts receiving those emails in a particular order and in a particular frequency that you choose.

You can set this up once and forget about it for the rest of your life.

And still your subscribers, no matter if they joined your list today or 5 years from now, will receive those messages in the order and frequency you set up.

How cool is this?

Instead of simply being a sales man/woman, make use of this wonderful tool to build rapport and long lasting relationship with your subscribers.

This is the bottom line: When people find that you are helping them out generously (without holding back) and if you can manage to connect with them, making sales is a piece of cake.

This is not the case of “Chicken or Egg?”. Its pretty clear. Its the connection that comes first.