Auto Responder
In email marketing you need to really learn how to offer good content to your list to build relationships with your subscribers so that they not only stay on your list, they buy whatever you recommend. And that’s exactly what you’ll learn how to do over the next several lessons, starting with this one explaining about setting up an auto responder.
Autoresponder Message
Creating an Evergreen Auto responder Series:
You may start creating your auto responder series today. However, your prospects may not join your newsletter and read this initial series of 7-12 emails for six months, a year or even more. And that means your content needs to be evergreen.
Just as the name implies, “evergreen” refers to content that stays fresh. You can think of it as proven, time-tested information. It should be as fresh today as it was last year… and it should remain relevant and useful in a year or two from now, too.
For example:
- Those who want to lose weight know that the basic principles include exercising and good nutrition. That’s evergreen. What’s not evergreen are fads like certain weight-loss pills (some of which eventually get pulled from the market).
- Those looking to learn about online business can learn about the business and marketing principles that have stood the test of time for hundreds of years.
This is evergreen. What is not evergreen are things like software products or social networking sites that may not even exist next year.
Now look at your own niche information. What topics are evergreen? If you wrote about them today, would they still be useful next year? If so, that’s a topic you might want to include in your initial auto responder series.
The second thing you need to consider is how you write your emails. If you refer to specific events or anything else that can “date” your emails, your prospects will realize that the information isn’t fresh.
See, even though the information is time-tested and evergreen, your prospects still want to feel as if they’re getting the latest information.
Thus your emails need to sound as if they were written yesterday so that your prospects trust your information.
Here are examples of what to do and what to avoid when you want to write emails that sound fresh…
- Avoid mentioning events. For example, don’t use phrases like “Christmas is almost here,” as your prospect might get the email in July.
- Avoid mentioning anything that dates your emails. For example, don’t refer to a popular current event, such as “Last year when [name] became the president of the [country]…” Or “The third anniversary of [event] is coming up.”Don’t even mention things like your own age, as sites like Facebook make it easy to check these facts.
- Do use phrases that indicate the content is fresh. You can say something like, “yesterday I saw a dog at the park that was jumping all over his owner.”
It seems fresh because you used the word “yesterday,” yet the phrase in no way actually dates the email, because it’s vague.
Just keep these points in mind as you write your autoresponder series. Read through each email to see if there’s any way a reader could know when you wrote it.
Then toss in a few phrases like, “I just [did some activity]” or “Yesterday I [saw something]” just to make it more fresh.
That’s it for this time in this auto responder session. More relationship-building tips to come!