As a business owner, you might have to build your email list for a long time. But how many leads do you manage to add to customer list? Well, it is a tough one right?
In order to convert your leads into customers, you need to nurture your leads so they stay connected, build their confidence, increase trust and finally become your loyal customer.
All this can be possible using email autoresponder series, as it is the most powerful tool to convert leads into customers. When used correctly, autoresponders can add serious value to your business. It creates perfect harmony between sales and marketing with reduced effort.
What is an Autoresponder?
An autoresponder is a sequence of email marketing messages that get sent to subscribers. First, you have to fix the frequency, order, and targeted content of the message. Once it is set up, choose a good email marketing tool to send all emails in automation.
Autoresponders are mostly triggered by a specific event, such as joining your subscriber’s list, browsing behavior on website or app, shopping cart abandonment, downloading a gated content on the website, or buying a product from an online store. It is like keeping your emails on autopilot mode. It means whenever someone triggers some event a predetermined sequence of email is sent to that person at the regular time of interval which persuades him to take further action.
A common example of trigger-based autoresponder series is welcome email series.
For e.g, When someone signs up for a free trial account of automation tool.
- A three-part series of content to boost engagement & revenue with automated email campaigns.
- A 10-day email course that guides people on how to set up email automation strategy step by step.
Why do you need one?
- Autoresponders save a lot of time and manual work.
- Autoresponders can nurture your leads to make better decisions.
- Autoresponders make your audience stay engaged with your brand and content, which can boost customer loyalty.
- Autoresponders can turn prospects into customers with the reduced effort.
- Autoresponders builds trust among your leads. This helps them to make purchasing decisions without pushing them towards sales.
- Autoresponders can boost your sales revenue.
- Autoresponders can create a good brand impression.
Follow these steps to create your first autoresponder series
Step 1: Choose your objective
Not all autoresponders are the same. Depending upon objective autoresponder series could be anything. Following are the most common examples of autoresponder series.
Welcome series
Nobody gets converted into your customer on the first day. To convert leads into customers, you have to woo them, make them engage with your brand, send them great content and show them what makes you truly great. This sequence is triggered when someone subscribes to your email list. In the welcome email series, you make customers become familiar with your content, brand, and products. You can further move these new subscribers to other lead nurturing autoresponder sequences.
Lead magnets
This autoresponder is useful when you are seeking out to add new leads to your funnel. You can attract more leads by offering gated content or educational material. Mostly this is done by offering a free course or training sessions. This course can be very effective when a person is new to your brand and had very less engagement with the brand. You can decide the number of sessions depending on the goal or objectives. Create an email sequence accordingly to achieve the desired goals.
Sales
Every marketer needs to push leads to a predetermined sales funnel. Depending on decision making cycle sales funnel can be as long as needed. Create educational content according to email sequence or you can also ask them to attend a live demo or webinars. The goal is to push leads slowly towards a purchase with email sequences.
You can also use it for a product launch, up-sell or cross-sell of the products etc.
Step 2: Plan out the entire sequence
Once a goal is decided then its time to decide email sequence as per your goal. In this step, you will draft an outline for your sequence, But first, you’ll need to figure out how long you want your sequence to be. How many days? How many emails? There is no thumb rule for how many emails you need to keep in your email sequence. The only rule is, it should be long enough to help you accomplish your goals.
How many emails and days?
This depends upon how much time subscribers need to move into sales funnel, how much fast they can learn which you want to teach them and the decision-making time required for purchase. If you are sending educational emails then the frequency of email sending is low compared to cart abandonment series. Don’t set your frequency too low otherwise subscribers will lose momentum and may drop out of the sales funnel. So unless you have a really good reason, don’t send multiple autoresponder messages in a single day. Provide value per email so that subscribers will not turn off. Also focus more on sending educational content, do not push for sales in hurry. It all about providing value to customers through each email.
Step 3: List Segmentation
List segmentation is the process of breaking your email list into smaller groups as per demographics, past engagement behavior or buyer personas. Segmentation of your email list is very important in order to achieve a better response to your autoresponder. You can divide your lists as per event triggered by each subscriber. This is the best way to present the most relevant content to the targeted audience. Segmentation process enhances the effectiveness of your series and helps to achieve your goal more efficiently. For more better results always keep segmenting your list from the very beginning when someone opt-in to your email list.
Step 4: Create Content for Your Audience
You have planned your sequence (What and when) and segmented your list, now its time to select content in advance suitable to your sequence. Always choose the best content available for email sequences. You can use any content form whether it is an article, video, infographic etc. Choose the best suitable as per targeted audience and their needs. Write very personalized, highly focused and provoking copy for your emails.
For content, you can share your story, offer a solution, ask questions or challenges, give free resources, share success stories or case studies.
The biggest advantage of autoresponder series is you can personalize every email you sent to a subscriber. Personalizing the content of your emails will make it infinitely more relevant and valuable to them.
The subject line is the most important copy you need to write for your emails. If your subject line is not enticing enough, people won’t open your email or completely ignore it. It is very important that subscribers open most of the emails drafted in your series. As every mail have an objective of pushing your lead slowly into the sales funnel. So, focus more on writing and A/B testing your subject lines.
All your efforts will go in vain if you don’t get enough open rate to your emails. The success of your autoresponder series is very much dependent upon open rate. That’s why this is the first thing you should focus on. If your subscribers decided not to open your message, there are greater chances that they won’t open the next mailers either. Make every possible improvement to get enough open rate.
Time at which you send your email is also an important factor. Not every personality is same so it is always the best thing to test sending of your emails at a different time of day, or at a different interval.
Write a clear call to action. Always test your call to action copy, position, and color for better results. Make your emails more interactive for better communication.
Do not send newsletters or any irrelevant email other than autoresponder emails on the same day. Plan and set up your sending schedule in advance. Offer real value in your emails.
Step 5: Set Automation
Once your sales funnel is designed and content is ready now its time to automate your series. To set your emails on autopilot mode, you need to have an email automation tool. Autoresponders are relatively easy to set up if you have the right strategy placed for your business. With automation tool, you can set triggers based on actions and behavior by subscriber like joining the email list, adding a product to cart, or simply visiting a specific page of your website.
Step 6: Test
Test if everything is working out as planned. Make necessary improvements based on the performance of your emails. Then, A/B test changes you made in order to ensure those improvements. You can tweak your series if it is required. Keep monitoring your performance for better results.
Our team will help you to set up autoresponders which will work perfectly for your business. Get in touch with us now.