How to Put Your Business On Autopilot

If you are like most business owners, I bet the last 7 days have just flown by. You may even wonder what happened to the last three days.

Either you’ve been having so much fun (excellent!) or you’ve been stuck at work and have only just realised the days are gone and you have not achieved what you set out to do. Sound familiar?

Don’t despair.

Today we cover how autoresponders can help you simplify some of the mundane tasks, so you can concentrate on the important stuff, like promoting your business or having a day off to have some fun.

Have you heard of autoresponders? Sort of? Let me explain.

Email autoresponders work like a fax-on-demand system. Maybe you’ve seen the systems where you call from your fax machine and dial a certain code and you will get back a document in your fax machine.

Well, an email autoresponder works the same way. If you send an email to an autoresponder address you’ll get back a prewritten message.

Using a Sequential Email Autoresponder

Until just recently, you could only do a one-time autoresponder with one message coming back. But now you can set up a whole sequence of autoresponder messages going out on any day you choose.

For example, message #1 might go out immediately, then message #2 goes out 2 days afterwards, message #3 goes out on day 5, then day 8 comes another message, etc, etc.

Do you see the real beauty of this whole thing? It’s unbelievable.

And the best part is everything is done automatically for you because it’s triggered when a prospect submits their email address. So that means you can simply set up your system once and then it keeps working over and over again like a tireless moneymaking robot, making sure no prospect ever slips through the cracks. A sequential email autoresponder really turbo charges your follow-up efforts.

Here are a few important facts to consider and why sequential autoresponders can help counter these:

– A recent study conducted by Sales and Marketing Executives International concluded that 81% of major sales are closed after the fifth (5th) contact.

– 80% of people who inquire about a product or service will buy it within one year of their initial inquiry. However, more than 90% of the time, they don’t buy from the same company that they made their initial contact with.

Below is a part of an excellent article by Michael Fortin, explaining the importance of using sequential autoresponders.

How to Be Sequentially Superior.

Email is certainly an important aspect of marketing on the web. But a single email is never enough – and in fact can be more costly down the road. Like all marketing messages, it takes repetition in order to get people to first absorb the message, understand it and then take action. Naturally, some people will immediately respond while others need to see the message more than once before they even think about responding to the offer.

The reason for this is that each person, with each marketing message and for each different product, has a specific responsive behaviour. Virtually all markets can be divided into several, graduated segments based on such behaviours. They generally consist of five, which are:

1. Innovators
2. Early adopters
3. Early majority
4. Late majority
5. Laggards.

Innovators are risk-takers and venturesome and consist of about 2.5% of the whole market. They usually respond to new offers almost immediately and without giving them much thought. On the other hand, early adopters respond to new ideas early, taking action soon after the innovators do, albeit carefully. They represent 13.5% of the market. While the third and fourth groups (ie. the middle majority) constitute the largest segment, the early majority specifically typically respond to new ideas before the average person does.

The early majority represent 34% of any given market. The late majority, which consists of another 34% are skeptical, careful and slow. They take their time, usually shop around and need to see offers more than a few times before giving them any consideration.

The final segment (or the laggards) take action only after some time has elapsed – usually after everyone else has done so. They consist of the remaining 16% of the entire pie.

Ultimately, the important thing to note here is that the middle majority altogether consist of a whopping 68%. A marketer’s goal is therefore to effectively reach, persuade and incite this larger segment, which is often difficult to do with a single mailing.

Repeating your marketing message – and sometimes doing so more than once – is essential with this group. In the end, you will not only increase the response, but also multiply it.