Lesson #8 Discover How To Keep Your Customer's Door Open
The Magic Of The AutoResponder!
The word AutoResponder doesn't real y describe what this function of email marketing actually does, because it's an old term that just has come to mean much more than it was originally conceived to do.
It was originally used to describe the automatic response of an email newsletter application to the addition of a new subscriber and was not very advanced.
But now email marketing has become very elaborate indeed
In fact I could create several entire courses around email autoresponders, so I'm not going to get into huge detail here.
We'll keep it simples, K?
Our AutoResponder will simply deliver evergreen educational content to our subscribers at regular intervals that we determine.
What Can An AutoResponder Do?
You can set up your email auto responder to do the following for example;
1. Send out a happy birthday or anniversary wish to recipients
2. Deliver best wishes at Christmas time and other holiday periods
3. Send out your best content from your blog automatically to new subscribers 4. Deliver course material to your email list just like I'm doing!
5. OR, the easiest way to get started, is to tee up your existing blog content to go out to new subscribers who haven't discovered it yet.
There are many other ways you can deliver relevant content to your subscribers using autoresponders and all that it requires is a little creative thought.
As long as the material is socalled "Evergreen", in other words, as long as it's continually relevant then it's good to use.
Also you can add to a series or edit it at any point in the future so as to keep it up to date or add new material you've created.
If you Want To Deliver A Course, Here's A Brief Way To Get Going...
Let's take the photographer who specialises in new born baby photography as an example once again.
The photographer has a proven process to get good results from shooting newborns. It's been tried and tested and it works well .
In order to build her course, she needs to break her process down into separate elements that she can easily explain in lessons.
This might sound like a daunting process but it doesn't have to be. I bet there's plenty of educational material written on your particular profession so al that's required is a little research.
1. Go online and see what's out there. Instructional material already written can give you great assistance in formulating your steps.
2. Go to the bookstore and buy a couple of books that closely resemble the subject matter you are covering.
3. Take a notepad and start to break up your process into sections.
4. Within those sections, start to break each one into steps from start to finish
5. Start by introducing yourself and what you are about
6. Move on to an introduction of the course and what the student can expect to achieve.
7. Then move into the lessons and break each lesson down into actionable steps that the reader can follow.
8. Do this for each lesson, take your time and you eventually will build out your course.
It doesn't have to be loaded with detail, just enough to provide good advice to people who want to learn what you know.
To Set Up Your AutoResponder In Mailchimp
Note; Automation is a Mailchimp paid feature so you'll need to sign up for a pro account. I reckon this is about $10 per month.
1. From your Dashboard, click on "Automation"
2. Click Create "Automation Workflow"
3. Then, click on "Select A List" Dropdown and choose the list that you wish to send your automated series to.
4. Next, select the "Workflow Type" you want to build. Learn more about Workflow Types here
The "Workflow"
Creating a "Welcome Series" "Workflow Type" should work well for you
Within the "Workflow" you can create any amount of emails you like. But first you need to add some info about the workflow.
1. Add the Workflow name, From name, and From email address.
2. There are a couple of check boxes for other settings, check these as necessary.
The "Trigger"
Next is the "Trigger" setup. The Trigger is a couple of settings that determine what triggers the workflow set of emails to begin sending.
1. Send workflow to subscribers and imported contacts
2. What day of the week should the emails go out
3. What time of day should emails be sent
4. What delay would you like to add (if any)
Next you'll add the emails. If you are taking the simple option for adding content, i.e. adding existing blog posts, one per email then all you need to do is cut and paste.
You will have to adjust the layout and have some reformatting to do as cut and paste rarely results in the content displaying correctly.
1. Click "Add Email"
2. Then click "Design Email"
3. Add the Email info fields, Email Name (give your email a name like Auto Email #1 ), Email Subject (the subject of each email), From Name (your name), From Email Address (your email address)
4. Click next and select the layout you want to use from the options presented.
5. Next, click design your email. Here's some further information to help you design your email
6. The email designer is drag and drop, so when you are happy with your layout paste the text from your previously published post, reformat to correct any errors and hit save.
you'll need to do this for each email in your autoresponder email workflow series. I'd recommend that you paste in the intro from your old blog post and include a link back to the original.
This makes it easier for you and also brings traffic back to your website.
Head over to this article to get more detailed information and instructional videos on how to build your AutoResponder Workflow.
If this stuff is all new to you, don't fret, it's very straight forward once you get into it. But it will take some time for you to fully grab the process and make your way through it.
To build an autoresponder series can take a couple of days or a couple of months, depending on the content you wish to deliver and how much prior work you've done creating it.
The good news is once you set it up, that's it! it's done and now it will go out automatically for every subscriber who meets the criteria you have set.
As you grow, your autoresponder series will grow and become more complex so it's always worth revisiting your process every couple of months.
If You've Made It This Far, Congratulations!
If you've completed each step to date then well done on your progress so far.
However you won't necessarily get a flood of subscribers through your door just yet, We've lots more work to do first....
Once you create your content you need to market and distribute it to internet land, and there are many ways to do that.