How to effectively use Email Autoresponders to Impact Growth

Enhancing conversions towards delivering awesome customer experiences has always been a work-in-progress. An email autoresponder is a fairly new-found entity that has depicted its verve in recent times. Especially, for online marketers who have to deal with a longer sales cycle. As such, customer experience is an ever-growing concept that brings forth impressions, feelings, moods and perceptions on the table; right from the time an individual approach a brand. In other words, it is a singular touchpoint that staggers across the journey of a customer, from start to finish. While a majority of communication happens through email, autoresponder is one sweet spot for effective and functional email marketing.

Trust is of paramount concern

Autorepsonders, in essence, are a series of emails that are usually focussed on one single topic and have been designed in a way to deliver a particular message, in sequenced intervals. The process usually begins with someone subscribing to your email list or one can also create a list for a particular target group. On a base level, autoresponders deal with how-to-do and know who stuff, along with other offers attempting for a sell. However, to deliver it right, autoresponders will need to strike the right chord between informational and promotional content. On top of everything, the main target should be addressing the need and problem of the prospect with the benefits and solutions that your brand can offer. As one share useful insights about products and services regularly, autoresponders also help in perceiving the mindset of the customer. With the right kind of content in place, it is only a matter of time before you are in total control of your readership to open emails and turn to your website and indulge in business with you. In other words, repeatability ensues familiarity, which in turn builds trust, affecting sales.

Email Strategy That Works

While using autoresponders, it is important to identify email strategies that work for online businesses. Studies indicate welcome, birthday, transactional and thank you emails to be the most common ones to win hearts. On average, newsletters have an opening rate of no less than 20 percent compared to transactional emails resting at 50. Such statistics boil down to the fact that any email that’s being sent out, based on a particular set of customer actions, or is contextual is likely to report a higher opening rate, subsequently followed by clicks and conversions. With more than 49 percent of business resorting to using autoresponders, it’s a broader story ahead. For instance, one of the studies found how the most engaging and powerful autoresponder email geared towards a B2C retailer is one that talks about an abandoned or empty cart that reportedly has a click-through rate of no less than 40 percent.

The heart of an autoresponder

The key to a successful autoresponder series has a lot to do with the information it provides. Hence, it is crucial that you choose a topic that instantly taps your target audience, answering their pain points, offering a solution. While it’s not always an easy play, considering a few points is always worthwhile:

• Asking your customers
  Getting to know from customers about your brand is always a good idea. Start by making a list of your most loyal customers and present them with a set of questions to answer. Get on the phone if possible. You might as well consider running a survey on your site or via a social media platform using your company account.
• Social Media Listening
  There ain’t no market research tool like social media. Take a cue from high performing blogs to check what the industry trend is and what all content gets most shares and comments. Take note of the hashtags being used across each niche. Take help from question-answer sites like Yahoo or Quora for more information.
• Evaluate your standing with your content
  Learning from others is always a wise call, the idea for best autoresponder series might just crop up from your existing content. Make a note of all your posts which have done remarkably well. The number of shares likes and comments they matter the most. Use your analytics to run the math. Does your site have a search tool? Good. Dig into your search queries to find out what your customers have searched for.
• Keyword research
  When it comes to using the Google Keyword Planner, you won’t get lucky with results letting you know what all your customers want to know and read about. However, you can always check out the popularity for other keywords and accordingly figure out what might work in your favour.

Determining the length of the email

When it comes to determining the right length for your marketing email, there are no hard rules to play by. The wise approach is to not count the characters but make every character count. And, while settling upon the final draft, always ensure to edit it until you are assured yourself that it brings value to your purpose. When you add value to your purpose, your readership base shall also recognise the same and will read through, no matter how long your email is.

Nevertheless, there will be times when a handful of readers would blast their way through your emails. The choice is entirely yours; either the autoresponder can be a snippet of your actual content with a link to click or carry the entire copy itself. In case, you are planning on blasting a series over a short period, consider going with a short copy. Also, never hesitate to interact with your readers. Ask them what they like to know and make sure to include the same in your next emails. Try different copy length, to monitor customer reactions and plan accordingly.

Bottom Line

Given the fact, that there isn’t any waiting period to sell something to a prospect, email marketing can be a whole lot of fun and effective with autoresponders. When done right, it not only cuts off the waiting period to sell something to a prospect but also positively affect customer experience. As a matter of fact, it is one such befitting feature that makes the whole concept of autoresponder invigorating.