Autoresponders: The 24/7 Free Promotion Tool
| Category: Autoresponders | Date: 2002-09-02 |
Successful marketers and information providers will tell you how powerful autoresponders can be. Also known as mailbots and infobots, autoresponders work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to get your message out the door.
What is your message? It can be a brochure, price list, press release, newsletter article, or any other information which needs to be available to your customers when they want it.
An easy way to start your own autoresponder program is to sign up with a free provider. They'll give you an email address on their domain (e.g. yourname@theirsite.com). Next, you supply the text of the message that the autoresponder will send. When your prospect or customer sends email to that address, the autoresponder sends your message back to the prospect within seconds.
Free providers usually offer some combination of these features:
* PERSONALIZATION: As with mail merge, you can "drop" into the body of the message such details as the prospect's name and email address.
* FOLLOW-UP/REMINDER MESSAGES: You can set up a schedule of follow-up messages that keep your prospect interested and informed.
* PROSPECT LIST MANAGEMENT: Keep track of who's requesting information from you. The provider does this either by sending you a copy of all requests or by storing a list of prospect email addresses.
* SITE INTEGRATION: A form can be placed on your site so that prospects submit their request without having to open their email program.
* AD PLACEMENT: Unfortunately, ads are placed in your outgoing message. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
* UPGRADABILITY: Most offer ad removal and/or additional functionality for a monthly fee.
We evaluated four of the leading providers of free autoresponder services. Here's what we found:
WebMailStation.com (http://www.webmailstation.com)
A unique feature is the ability to use your own POP3 email address, rather than the default webmailstation.com domain address. This option lends an air of professionalism to your autoresponder.
WebMailStation's site integration is best of breed. This is the only provider that gives you the code for the form as well as the ability to control the response page that the prospect sees after submitting the form.
WebMailStation not only copies you on all requests, it saves the names and email addresses of all prospects to an editable list to which you can manually add entries. One cool thing: you can send "ad hoc" messages to your entire prospect list.
With the upgrade (about $50/year) you can remove the ads, download your prospect list and send email in HTML format.
GetResponse.com (http://www.getresponse.com)
Tops in personalization, GetResponse lets you include not only the prospect's name and email address, but your name, email address and calculated dates as well.
You can integrate a form onto your site, although the visitor is taken to a response page on GetResponse's site after the form is submitted.
Beware the annoying "Upgrade today" message at the top of EVERY account admin page -- a scroll is required to get to the business at hand. Can you say "usability"? A further example of such user disservice is the upgrade info page where you have to scroll down 17 screens to find out the cost of the upgrade.
I'll save you the trouble. The monthly upgrade cost is about $18, for which you can get rid of the ads, import a prospect list, send HTML mail, send quick messages to prospects, and attach files.
FastFacts.net (http://www.fastfacts.net)
It works, but FastFacts' features are run-of-the-mill, and its interface and admin screens are mediocre. Worse, a popup window intrudes every time you go to the home page. Outgoing messages contain not one ad, but several, at both the top and bottom.
For around $6 a month you can remove the ads, but you get no additional functionality. I might go with FastFacts if every other free provider went out of business. But hey, it's free and it works.
SendFree.com (http://www.sendfree.com)
SendFree's unique ad exchange program puts one of your ads in someone else's autoresponder message for every two that you send out. Not exactly tit-for-tat, but it's better than no payback.
SendFree allows you to have separate email addresses, so that different messages can be sent. This is great if you have different products or services to promote. The tradeoff is that there is no follow-up/reminder capability.
Home-grown Alternative
Before you leap into one of these packages, check with your hosting provider -- many packages allow you to set up autoresponders on one or more email accounts. Our hosting provider, Cedant at http://www.cedant.com, has a control panel that facilitates this process.
An advantage to this approach is that you look more professional having autoresponder email addresses under your own domain. However, you probably won't have personalization or follow-up/reminder capabilities.
Summary
Setting up your own autoresponder program will cost you nothing more than the time it takes to sit glassy-eyed through an episode of Survivors. If you don't already have an autoresponder program in place, start one today!
by Keith Reichley March, 2001
About the Author
Keith Reichley is webmaster for webthejoint.com, the web resource center for small business.
:To contact Keith online see details below.
keith@webthejoint.com
http://www.webthejoint.com
What is your message? It can be a brochure, price list, press release, newsletter article, or any other information which needs to be available to your customers when they want it.
An easy way to start your own autoresponder program is to sign up with a free provider. They'll give you an email address on their domain (e.g. yourname@theirsite.com). Next, you supply the text of the message that the autoresponder will send. When your prospect or customer sends email to that address, the autoresponder sends your message back to the prospect within seconds.
Free providers usually offer some combination of these features:
* PERSONALIZATION: As with mail merge, you can "drop" into the body of the message such details as the prospect's name and email address.
* FOLLOW-UP/REMINDER MESSAGES: You can set up a schedule of follow-up messages that keep your prospect interested and informed.
* PROSPECT LIST MANAGEMENT: Keep track of who's requesting information from you. The provider does this either by sending you a copy of all requests or by storing a list of prospect email addresses.
* SITE INTEGRATION: A form can be placed on your site so that prospects submit their request without having to open their email program.
* AD PLACEMENT: Unfortunately, ads are placed in your outgoing message. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
* UPGRADABILITY: Most offer ad removal and/or additional functionality for a monthly fee.
We evaluated four of the leading providers of free autoresponder services. Here's what we found:
WebMailStation.com (http://www.webmailstation.com)
A unique feature is the ability to use your own POP3 email address, rather than the default webmailstation.com domain address. This option lends an air of professionalism to your autoresponder.
WebMailStation's site integration is best of breed. This is the only provider that gives you the code for the form as well as the ability to control the response page that the prospect sees after submitting the form.
WebMailStation not only copies you on all requests, it saves the names and email addresses of all prospects to an editable list to which you can manually add entries. One cool thing: you can send "ad hoc" messages to your entire prospect list.
With the upgrade (about $50/year) you can remove the ads, download your prospect list and send email in HTML format.
GetResponse.com (http://www.getresponse.com)
Tops in personalization, GetResponse lets you include not only the prospect's name and email address, but your name, email address and calculated dates as well.
You can integrate a form onto your site, although the visitor is taken to a response page on GetResponse's site after the form is submitted.
Beware the annoying "Upgrade today" message at the top of EVERY account admin page -- a scroll is required to get to the business at hand. Can you say "usability"? A further example of such user disservice is the upgrade info page where you have to scroll down 17 screens to find out the cost of the upgrade.
I'll save you the trouble. The monthly upgrade cost is about $18, for which you can get rid of the ads, import a prospect list, send HTML mail, send quick messages to prospects, and attach files.
FastFacts.net (http://www.fastfacts.net)
It works, but FastFacts' features are run-of-the-mill, and its interface and admin screens are mediocre. Worse, a popup window intrudes every time you go to the home page. Outgoing messages contain not one ad, but several, at both the top and bottom.
For around $6 a month you can remove the ads, but you get no additional functionality. I might go with FastFacts if every other free provider went out of business. But hey, it's free and it works.
SendFree.com (http://www.sendfree.com)
SendFree's unique ad exchange program puts one of your ads in someone else's autoresponder message for every two that you send out. Not exactly tit-for-tat, but it's better than no payback.
SendFree allows you to have separate email addresses, so that different messages can be sent. This is great if you have different products or services to promote. The tradeoff is that there is no follow-up/reminder capability.
Home-grown Alternative
Before you leap into one of these packages, check with your hosting provider -- many packages allow you to set up autoresponders on one or more email accounts. Our hosting provider, Cedant at http://www.cedant.com, has a control panel that facilitates this process.
An advantage to this approach is that you look more professional having autoresponder email addresses under your own domain. However, you probably won't have personalization or follow-up/reminder capabilities.
Summary
Setting up your own autoresponder program will cost you nothing more than the time it takes to sit glassy-eyed through an episode of Survivors. If you don't already have an autoresponder program in place, start one today!
by Keith Reichley March, 2001
About the Author
Keith Reichley is webmaster for webthejoint.com, the web resource center for small business.
:To contact Keith online see details below.
keith@webthejoint.com
http://www.webthejoint.com
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