What Is An Autoresponder And Do They Work?

Many people in marketing are starting to question the power of email marketing, but we are here to say it flat out still works if done properly. In this episode “Digital Dave” does a simple illustration of a short autoresponder campaign and funnel, and the type of open rates and purchases a well-configured autoresponder can generate.

Episode Transcript

Digital Dave: Hello, everyone. This is Digital Dave back for another episode of Where Marketing Meets Technology. In today’s episode, we’re going to learn about the autoresponder. What is an autoresponder? Do they work? How do you configure an autoresponder to get people to purchase from you? This is really what we’re going to be covering in today’s episode.

Now, a lot of people are confused about autoresponders, and what they are, when you use them, and their power, and so I’m going to walk through a quick tutorial today on how to set up an autoresponder based on someone opting into your list for a very specific topic. Say, for instance, you have a lead magnet out there on your website, an ebook, maybe a free ebook, or some for free DIY information or whatever it is, and you’re gathering names so you get these people on your list. You have options. Obviously, you’re going to put them on your main mailing list and you’re probably going to drip on them with some type of ongoing emails on a regular basis. However, for generic emails like that, your response rates are going to be fairly low. You’d be lucky to get an open rate, if you’re lucky, in the neighborhood of maybe 15%, and from the open rate, even more lucky to get a large percent of people to purchase, maybe 2 or 3%.

What an autoresponder is used for is to put people through a process to increase the number of people that actually open the emails but walk them through a process to purchase [2:02]. What I’m going to do is show you here a autoresponder that we have set up, and this was for a campaign that we did for a short period of time where we were giving away a free ebook on a very specific topic. People signed up for that ebook and immediately got added to our autoresponder list for a period of time. This is kind of the results of what happened over this period of time after we put them into the autoresponder, and the response rates that we saw.

If you look down here, what we see is that an autoresponder is a group of emails that are kind of walking them through a funnel or process to try to emotionally get them to purchase. When you look at this on the surface, these are not huge numbers, obviously, because this was a very short campaign, but look at the response rates. We set up our first email here, and 31 people were sent the email, and 13 people opened it, so on the very first email that went out, which is the first day after they were added to the list, 31 people signed up, 13 people opened it. That’s almost a 50% open rate, so you can clearly see that by using a lead magnet that is on a specific topic and then putting them into a funnel like this really increases the interest, their interest. They’re interested. They signed up for that lead magnet for a reason and, now, you’re putting them into this emotional funnel to try to get them to the next stage, which is to buy something from you.

This was a quick campaign that we did that generated 31 people onto this list, 13 opened the first email, 12, second. You could see that it goes down as you go down over time, and this is going to happen because what happens is, is that they’ve either purchased up here in the earlier stages of the email funnel or the autoresponder funnel, or they have purchased by the time they get here. But even on the very last email, number seven, we’re still getting a 20% open rate, and, again, this takes into account that many people have already purchased what we’ve been offering in this particular automation that we’ve set up.

What’s important is that you understand when to use this as a tool [4:06]. Generally, it works the best when you are trying to move them to the next stage, which is to buy something from you. Generally, when you want to get them to buy something from you in the early stages, you want to offer them something that’s a very large value for a very small amount of money, something that just to make them buy something from you. Again, once they bought something from you, you’ve sent it to them, they’ve got all your great stuff with it, they’re happy with it, that’s when the know, like, and trust factor kicks in and your other marketing starts to respond even better.

The point of setting up this type of an automation is that you want to be able to get them into a very specific topic, then you want to be able to drip on them consistently. This was one day. This is all in the first day. Four days later, another email went out. Seven days later, and then, finally, the final email goes out on the ninth day, and we saw … this was again a very quick campaign … we saw multiple, multiple sales [5:46] from this from a very small campaign that we ran in a short period of time with very large open rates on the autoresponder emails. As I said, compared to a generic email that you might send like a newsletter or some type of reminder emails that you send out about your products and services, those get much less open rates than autoresponders do when they’re tied into a very specific lead magnet of some nature such as a very specific topic, ebook or DIY or a tips type of material.

I wanted to spend just a couple minutes walking through what an autoresponder is, what an autoresponder is used for, and why it’s very, very critical that this be added into your marketing because this really is probably the number one tool for getting people to the next stage in your funnel, which is to get them to purchase something from you as soon as possible so that they can then start to know, like, and trust you even more. This was the autoresponder. Again, this is Digital Dave from Where Marketing Meets Technology, and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.

About Stacey Riska

Stacey Riska, aka “Small Business Stacey” is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small business and rebuilding Main Street. She helps small and local business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients, MORE sales, and MORE money. Stacey is the founder of Small Biz Marketing Specialist, THE go-to place for marketing tips, techniques and strategies that get results. Stacey is also the creator of the Daily Deals for Massive Profits Training Program, an online video training program that teaches small and local business owners how to use daily deal sites like Groupon to skyrocket their business growth and get massive profits. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn’t!) and spending time with her amazing husband.