Step 4: Email Automation & Management

If you want to keep in constant contact with your mailing list or your web site visitors, you will need a way to keep in touch with them.

There are many ways to do so but one of the most effective and popular way is via email. You can collect email addresses from your visitors, and send your messages to them on a periodical basis, to keep them informed of new updates for your Internet business, or web sites.

You can make use of an autoresponder service to help you automate the process of handling subscription and un-subscription of email addresses from your mailing list/database, to schedule email messages to be sent to your list automatically, to send email broadcast to your list via a mass emailing. The best part is you can also personalise your email messages to your recipients and track the deliverability and open-rate of your email messages through a centralized online system.

One of the most popular autoresponder services on the Internet can be found here!

One of the main benefit of having an Internet business is that you can automate your entire Internet business or at least majority of your online business processes such as collecting emails opt-ins, product delivery, payment acceptance etc.

And one of the key component to an Internet business is your autoresponder software. After researching and testing out a few free and paid autoresponders on the market, I stick to GetResponse because it is cheaper, easier to use even for newbies, availability of technical support from GetResponse.

Many people (myself included) may be tempted to buy an autoresponder software and install it on their own server and save more money in the long run. However, this approach will mean that you need to engage someone to install it for you or you do it yourself, you need to ensure that your emails can get delivered when ISPs block your mailing, you need to deal with spamming related issues etc when they arise.

In summary, you save more money but you also get more headache in the long run. So, I will suggest that you use a professional 3rd party autoresponder company so that you can focus your time on improving your online profits. Professional autoresponder company such as GetResponse usually participate in a number of industry initiatives, such as Email Service Provider Coalition (ESPC) and Email Sender Accreditation Program (IADB), which promote responsible, permission-based email marketing.

I am happy using GetResponse service. I hope you are too when you sign up here.

Important: I know what you are thinking now! Using a professional autoresponder costs money every month and I am starting new, so I can do away with having an autoresponder for the time being. You are absolutely wrong! Let me tell you why:

I spent 6 years considering if I should pay for an autoresponder service every month because I am so focused on paying the small cost of maintaining my online businesses with an autoresponder! This is the Most Costly Mistake that I have ever made for my Internet businesses!

Without an autoresponder, I was unable to fully automate the process of collecting opt-in email addresses from my prospects which is terrible! I cannot personalize my emails to my prospects and personalization is very important for online marketing! The worst part is that I have to spend so much unproductive time for the manual work of collecting email addresses, doing data entry to my email databases, manually sending out emails to my prospects.

Since I got my GetResponse autoresponder, the size of my opt-in list easily multiplied by 1000% (yes, 1000%, and I still think this is an understatement!) because I can now focused my time on driving traffic to my Internet businesses and watch my opt-in list grow exponentially! (Oh, BTW, before I forget, my online profits increased many times over too!)

Still not convinced that you need an autoresponder? OK, I respect your decision :)

Go to Step 5 >>