Welcome to Day 18 of the Internet Marketing Makeover (#31DIMM for short)!

Yesterday, you designed an incentive item to encourage site visitors to join your email list.

The next logical step? Put it into play!

DAY 18 OBJECTIVE

Implement your autoresponder sequence.

DAY 18 ASSIGNMENT

Firstly, you’ll need an autoresponder service.

I do not, under any circumstance, want you to use some free Wordpress plugin, script you host on your domain or other workaround.  This is a service that is worth paying for.  Here’s why:

• When you start sending email from your domain (or server) and people mark it as spam, your domain gets blacklisted by ISP’s and your mail will not get through to people
• In addition, your IP address could be blacklisted as a whole by the ISP’s, which leads to NONE of the email sent from your server getting through
• Email sent from your server will not have as high a deliverability rate as email sent by a reputable autoresponder service
• If you collect emails on your own and later decide to transition to a service, you will not be able to import those old subscribers to the new service without losing about 90% of them (if not more) as they will be required to opt-in again, and most people won’t bother
• If you think that you’re legit, what you’re offering is legit and there’s no way people are going to hit the “Spam Complaint” button on you (and therefore you won’t have to worry about the first 3 bullets I listed) you’re totally, sadly, dead wrong.  You can double opt-in, remind people when and where they subscribed, give them an opt-out link in ever message – but there are still people who hit “Spam” no matter how honest and above ground you are.

Do yourself a favor and start off using a reputable and reliable company.

Who to use?

Most people will find Aweber to be the best fit.  What you’ll get with Aweber is high deliverability, great customer service, unlimited autoresponder lists and lots of cool tracking features (like seeing how many folks opened your message, trackable links to see how many folks have clicked your URL’s) and an automatic form builder that will let you create cool looking opt-in forms, from the standard in-line form (like what you see in the sidebar here) to popovers.  They also let you split-test your opt-in forms so you can design a few and see which convert best.

Aweber doesn’t do anything else, just email.

You might notice I’m using Infusionsoft for all my email now.  This is because I’m also using Infusionsoft for my shopping cart, and my database was getting too large to manage effectively in different services.  So with Infusionsoft, I have everything all in one place.  It’s extremely customizable, but with that customization comes a steep learning curve and a higher price that’s just not worth it if you don’t need all the features it provides.

(Another option you might be aware of is 1ShoppingCart, I was less that pleased with their email deliverability for the years I used them and as such, do not recommend them as an autoresponder).

All in all, Aweber will most likely work best for you.

They provide extensive instuctions on setting up you list, creating a web form, etc. so I won’t go into detail.

I will give you an outline of what you need to do, in whatever autoresponder service you end up using:

1. Create an account and create your first list
2. Load that first list with a series of messages set to go out automatically that encourage folks to check out yours or affiliate products
3. Remember to include in your autoresponder series the incentive you promised people when they signed up (in the 1st message is best)
4. Create a web form for people to subscribe to your list where you explain the incentive / benefit of subscribing clearly
5. Publish the web form on your site (Aweber popunders convert better than in-line forms, you can also use both like I do on this blog)
6. Test what you’ve done by subscribing to your own list to make sure it’s working right!

An autoresponder sequence is the most valuable investment you can make into your business.  It takes on-off visitors and turns them into prospects and then customers for life.

This is the single most important step you can make in turning a website into a real business.  Do it today!

ABOUT THE 31 DAY INTERNET MARKETING MAKEOVER

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Tagged as: 1shoppingcart, 31dimm, autoresponders, aweber, email marketing, infusionsoft, Internet Marketing