What Are Autoresponders?
(Continued from How
to Make Email Newsletters)
The differences between an autoresponder and a true email
newsletter are important. There are advantages and disadvantages
to each, which I will explain here.
What are autoresponders? They are programs that automatically
send out an email when a person fills out a form online. They
also automatically send out subsequent mailings according to
the schedule that the publisher chooses.
For example, on The Meditation Site .com, there is a subscription
form for the Meditation Newsletter. As soon as a visitor enters
his name and email address, he is sent a confirmation link. Once
he clicks that he gets the first mailing of the newsletter. Subsequent
mailings are sent out every week automatically. It may appear
to him as though I'm preparing a new issue every week, but in
reality I prepared them all years ago. I haven't written anything
for the newsletter in more than a year. I haven't even looked
at it to be honest.
Now, you can see some obvious advantages in this setup. Everything
is automated, so as long as the form is on my website subscribers
are handled by the software at Aweber (the service I use). They
sign up, get 43 issues over the next ten months, and then are
notified that the newsletter is closing down. I was able to create
the whole autoresponder series in a week of work years ago and
then forget about it.
This works very well for information that is not too time-sensitive.
Good candidates for this setup include a course on speed-reading,
or a newsletter on self improvement. But there are some disadvantages
too. If, for example, you have affiliate links in the mailings
and one of your affiliate programs changes or closes, you'll
have to search out every issue that has those links, change them,
and then reload those issues.
An autoresponder series is also a problem if your newsletter
contains news or information that is time-sensitive. I recently
noticed that some information in my Secrets Course is out of date. I could read
through all 75 issues and make corrections, but I would have
to do this regularly--defeating one of the primary purposes of
an autoresponder series. Probably by the time you read this I
will have converted the course into a true newsletter instead.
With a true email newsletter you are actually setting up each
issue to be mailed out fresh on whatever schedule you choose.
My Internet Income newsletter (the subscription form is
to the right), is on an irregular schedule. I just mail an issue
when I have enough interesting new information to convey. My
Brainpower
Newsletter is sent out at exactly 7 a.m. every Sunday
morning. Of course that means I have to create fresh content
for it--and for several other true email newsletters I publish--every
week.
Now you know what autoresponders are and some of the advantages
and disadvantages they have versus doing a true email newsletter.
If the subject matter will include information that is only relevant
or useful for a short time, make it a newsletter. If the same
information will be useful in five years without any changes
to it, set it up as an autoresponder series so you can do the
work up front and be done.
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