What Is The Best Autoresponder Service For Small Business?

If you’ve read any of the articles or reports from this website, than you will know that I am a strong advocate of using an autoresponder service as part of your overall marketing strategy

Autoresponder services allow you to prepare a follow up email marketing campaign that is set and forget. Once you have all your emails created, uploaded and spaced out at your desired intervals, all you need to do is convince people to sign up.

There are dozens (probably even hundreds) of autoresponders out there – but which ones are the best for a small business email marketing campaign?

There are two autoresponders that I would recommend to a small business owner, Aweber and Constant Contact. I have done individual reviews of both of these which you can read by following the links below.

• Aweber Review
• Constant Contact Review

In this article I’m going to compare the two, and talk about the strengths and weaknesses for you as a small business owner.

Aweber

Aweber is renowned as being the top of the pack in the autoresponder market – they are the preferred choice for many people who do a large portion of their business online.

One of the real strengths of Aweber is their low tolerance of spam – they have built a strong reputation in the industry based on this USP, and as such their delivery rates are considered to be the highest in the email marketing industry

They have achieved this position as a result of two key factors.

1. Their requirement that all people who sign on to your list must go through a double opt-in process. This is where they initially give you their email address, then immediately receive an email that requires them to click a link confirming they do in fact wish to receive emails from your business.
2. Their rule that if you want to import email contacts from another source, they still need to go through this process. This prevents people from buying dodgy lists of tens of thousands of email addresses.

So for some small businesses this may be a bit of a negative.

Many of the email addresses that you could potentially collect would be in-store at the time of purchase, or with a promotion you run that captures a prospects details when they are entering or leaving your store.

So does this mean a small business owner should rule Aweber out as an option altogether?

Not at all – you just need to weigh up where and how you are going to be collecting the majority of your email addresses. And even if you think this is going to be in your store, there are still strategies you can use to ensure a high rate of success.

For example, lets say you are currently capturing email addresses by running a competition, with an entry form in store. There are two ways you could go with this.

• The first option is to ask the customer to enter your competition at your website.

This has the advantage of pushing them to your online presence, which gives you a greater opportunity to market to them online as well as off.

The disadvantage here is that you are definitely going to get fewer people on to your list this way – its just human nature. Not everyone is going to remember, or be bothered to visit your site when they get home.

• The second option is to import the list yourself.

The key to doing this well, is to make sure that at the time they leave you their email address you let them know that they are going to receive an email from you that asks them to confirm their subscription to your list.

You also need to be clear in the subject line and ‘from’ email address of this confirmation  email who it is from to ensure they actually open it and confirm their subscription.

Constant Contact

If all this seems like it is going to cost you sign-ups then you are possibly right, and you may want to use an alternative autoresponder service such as Constant Contact.

Constant Contact allows you to import your email addresses without requiring them to confirm that they want ot be on your list, so for many small business owners this may be a better option.

The thing is, Aweber has slightly better delivery rates  so in the long run this will probably balance out.

And the larger your list is, the more important a high delivery rate becomes. So if you think your business has the potential to build a list of many thousands of people, this is a factor that you will need to consider.

So which one should you choose?

They are both good, and you can’t really go wrong either way. In many instances it simply comes down to a personal preference for the ease of use of the autoresponder service.

Both Aweber and Constant Contact offer risk free trial period, so maybe you could sign up for both, look at each interface and decide for yourself which one you prefer.

Craig

How To Dramatically Increase The Size Of Your List

I mentioned in an earlier article that one of the keys to encouraging people to sign up to your list is to offer them an incentive…what some people might call a bribe.

You want to give them something of value and in return they give you their name and email address.

It is entirely up to you to decide what you think would work best in this situation based on what you know of the needs and desires of your prospects.

Some examples of incentives you could offer include:

• Coupons: after they sign up they receive a special coupon that gives them a larger discount than they would be able to get any other way.
• Entry into a draw: people love to enter competitions. If you offer a monthly prize to anyone who signs up to your list it will not only encourage people to sign up, it will also make them more likely to open your emails, just in case they’ve won
• Free gifts: maybe you’ve got some excess stock that you could give away for free, or you can negotiate with a rep to get some of their promo stock.
• Your time: if you are in the service industry you could offer to do a free consultation or a free session. This is known as a soft offer – you can apply a value to it, even if you don’t charge that value. For example on this web site I offer business owners a free SEO analysis, which is valued at $200.

Then there is the information product.

I believe this is one of the most effective incentives you can offer…and the best thing is that it costs you nothing to give it away

Over the next couple of articles I’m going to be giving you some ideas and tips on how to go about creating an info product that is valuable enough that you could sell it if you wanted to…but you will more likely give it away as an incentive to join your list.

An info product will generally take the form of a digital ebook – but can also include audio and video files that are easily downloaded from your website.

No matter what industry you are in, it is almost a certainty that your customers and prospects will have questions…and your info product can provide the solution

• A gardener could offer a free report that gives 7 tips for setting up a veggie garden.
• A personal trainer could offer a recorded interview with a dietitian talking about the strengths and weaknesses of all the fad diets that are currently popular.
• A hairdresser could have an ebook that offers tips on maintaining healthy hair
• An accountant could compile a list of the answers to their most frequently asked questions about end of year tax reporting.

I could go on and on – once you realise the potential you’re options are only limited by your imagination

Now at this stage there are probably a couple of questions floating around in your head:

• If you could sell it, why would you want to give it away?
• If you’re not a writer how can you create a book?

The answer to the first question is simple – in the majority of cases you will earn more from the person as a subscriber on your list, then if you were to sell them your info product.

Your info product gives you the opportunity to gain their trust and makes them more likely to become a repeat purchaser in the future

As for the creation of the product, I’m going to be giving you some simple strategies you can use to do this yourself, as well as showing you how you can get it done by someone else without having to pay a fortune.

So what you should do between now and the next article is start thinking about your target market – what problems do they have that need to be solved?

Can you give something away for free that solves that problem in exchange for their email address?

Craig

Constant Contact Review

Constant Contact is an autoresponder service that specialises in small business email marketing. They have been steadily improving their service over the past few years and are now considered one of the top autoresponder services available.

Unlike Aweber, one of the strengths of Constant Contact for a brick and mortar small business owner is the ability to import your emails from any other source and slot them straight in without having to get these people to confirm their subscription.

This makes it much easier for you to collect emails in-store via promotions or value-added offers.

Strengths Of Constant Contact

Use Of Templates

Constant contact makes very good use of templates to help you in the design of your email newsletters. You can simple use one of the templates provided, or you can take a base template and make simple modifications to it to customise it more to your liking.

Customer Service

Constant Contact have excellent customer services systems in place. Their staff are knowledgeable and are generally quite quick to resolve your problems. If you are new to email marketing this is definitely a plus

Creation Of Surveys

One of the key selling points that Constant Contact use on their website is the ability to add surveys to your email marketing campaigns. This can be a very powerful tool you can use to gain a better insight into your customers and prospects, which then allows you to tailor and improve your marketing to satisfy any unmet needs.

Weaknesses Of Constant Contact

The major weaknesses of Constant Contact are not really applicable to almost every small business owner. These weaknesses are related to such things as in depth analysis of statistics and subscriber management

For a small business owner these aren’t really issues – you’re just looking for a simple to use service that covers all your needs, and Constant Contact definitely delivers on that

60 Day Free Trial

Constant Contact has a 60 day free trial period where you can import up to 50 email addresses and test out their service risk free.

Click here now if you’d like to take advantage of that 60 free trial offer.

If you have any questions about this Constant Contact review, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Craig Crooks

4 Killer Tips To Boost Your Email Open Rates

I don’t know about you, but I probably get sent somewhere between 50-80 emails a day…not including the spam.

I’m a bit of a list whore – I’ll sign up to any one’s list if they can convince me they offer something of value…and I’m generally not that hard to convince.

Here’s the thing – I don’t actually read every email that comes my way. And I’m sure you don’t either

So the question is…if you’re sending emails out to your own customers, how do you give yourself the best chance of getting them opened and read?

There’s a statement that gets used with email marketing which holds some truth.

“Your ‘From’ address gets your email opened, your subject line gets your email deleted”

Tip #1 – Use A Recognizable ‘From’ Email Address

The best way to do this is to make sure the address is associated with your business, and continue to use the same address for your entire email marketing campaign

From: James_Smith@Fitnessplus.com.au looks much more professional than
From: Jimmy666@gmail.com

Over time as your customer gets used to receiving emails from you, your email address will hopefully be enough for them to be interested in your email.

Tip #2 – Create A Powerful Subject Line

Your subject line should contain no more than 50 characters, and should compel the reader to open the email – it’s kind of like an advertisement for your email.

Take a little extra time and put some thought into your subject line – it can make a huge difference to your email open rates.

Some good strategies to use include:

• Generate curiosity – ‘You won’t believe what we’re giving away this weekend!’
• Be specific – ‘15% off everything until Sunday’
• Use scarcity – ‘The first 10 people who respond to this email will receive xyz”
• Highlight Your Offer – ‘New stock discounted for next three days only’

Over time you will learn to look at your email statistics and see which emails get opened the most.You should always be testing and tracking what works for your business.

From this analysis you will begin to gain a better understanding of exactly what the best triggers are for your readers.

Tip #3 – Make Good Use Of The Email Preview

In the majority of email accounts, the first couple of lines can be seen in your inbox without actually having to open the email. You need to capitalise on this build on the good work you’ve done with your headline to encourage people to read the full email.

Further expand on your offer, stress the limited time/quantity, build more curiosity etc. Do whatever you can to convince your reader that your email contains some wortwhile info that is really going to be of benefit to them.

Tip #4 – Start Looking At Which Emails You Open And Why

If you’re getting a lot of email yourself, you might as well use them to generate some ideas you can use in your own email marketing. If you come across a particular subject line that really grabs you, see if you can adapt it to suit your own list.

You could even go so far as to jot any ideas down on a note pad for later use to make sure you don’t forget

In Conclusion

So when running your email marketing campaign, remember that getting people to subscribe is only the first step.

You then need to maximise your email open rates by getting your subscribers into the habit recognising your email address, and generating curisoity and interest through the creation of good subject lines and opening paragraphs.

Craig

Email Deliverability Tips & Tricks

One of the real problems with email marketing is email deliverability – getting your message past the spam filters.

There’s not much point in having a list wth hundreds and thousands of people on it if you’re emails get rejected before they’ve even had a chance to be read.

What exactly are spam filters?

As email became a popular method of marketing, there were many people who abused the system and would use software programs that scraped email addresses from thousands of sources across the Internet

They would end up with a list of tens, and even hundreds of thousands of email addresses and they would then proceed to send out mass emails to these addresses promoting products, hoping to make a quick buck.

So email services got wise, and started creating their own software that detected certain words used commonly in these spam emails.

Some of the most common spam emails have to do with sex, pharmaceuticals and making money, so words associated with these topics are good examples of words that will often trigger spam filters quite easily.

So how do you make sure your emails get through.

Get Subscribers To Whitelist Your Email

The first thing you need to do when someone signs up to your list, is ask them to whitelist your email address. This is the process where they notify their own email provider that they wish to receive emails from you.

A good way to encourage people to whitelist your email address is to recommend it in the very first email that you send out to them.

You also need to make sure that every email you send comes from the same email address.

Scan Your Email For Trigger Words

As mentioned above there are certain words that are more likely to trigger the spam filters

To minimise this what you can do is download the free software available at Spam Assassin, which analyses your email and tells you whether you are going to have trouble getting it through the filters.

Be Consistent

If you have a weekly newsletter that you publish, sending it out on the same day of the week at roughly the same time can serve to reassure email providers and ISP’s that you are not a spammer. Spammers are erratic and have no set schedule.

Remove Bounces From Your Subscriber List

Have you ever sent out an email, and you immediately get a reply that looks something like ‘MAILER-DAEMON@xxx.com?’

That’s known as a bounce and occurs when your email doesn’t get delivered. This could be because the email account is full or the address is incorrect.

If you come across an address on your list that gets bounced a few times, delete it. It will eventually be considered spamming if you continually attempt to send emails to an address that doesn’t work.

Use Third Party Autoreponder Services

One of the best ways to achieve the highest possible email deliverability rates is to use a third party autoresponder service such as Aweber, or Constant Contact.

These autoresponders use a double opt-in process where anyone who signs up to your list has to confirm their registration before they are added as a subscriber.

These services also have a tool much like Spam Assassin that will immediately let you know whether your email contains too many trigger words that may set off a spam filter.

Craig
Strategic Web Marketing
craig@strategicwebmarketing.com.au

P.S If you’d like to find out more about Aweber or Constant Contact I have done review for each as well as a comparison of the two.

Aweber Review

Constant Contact Review

Autoreponder Service Comparison

P.P.S If you missed out on our three part course on email marketing you can sign up below

Small Business Email Marketing

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