Since you're reading this article, you probably know what an autoresponder is, but aren't quite sure what all the fuss is about. If you aren't sure what an autoresponder is, well in short it's a way to automatically email your prospective customers with a personal message in order to increase your sales.

So, in short, what are the benefits?

- You can grow your list of prospective customers and send each of them a personalised Email. - You can then follow up each of these emails with repeat personalised emails, with varied content, at later dates. - You can track your conversions - You can send out broadcast emails to all your current prospects whenever you have a new product. - You could even setup another set of emails to go out to your existing clients to tempt them back for your new offering

Why send a personalised Email?

You could just mail all the people you have using one email you send from your desktop. This would be quick, easy, and controlled - just set them all up in an email group. So why not use this simple method?

Well its all to do with converting leads into sales. Put simply, research shows that if you address the prospective customer by name then the person is six times more likely to take notice of the email and follow through to your site.

So why don't most people do this? The answer is simpleeffort. Imagine having to email all your prospects, by name. This becomes an insane task, even with only a few hundred prospects.

Autoresponders work by allowing you to setup a template email, where you put in a 'placeholder' or 'substitution variable' where you want the actual name to go.

So why send multiple emails?

Statistics vary but it's generally agreed that 80% of people will only buy after they have been sent between 5 and 7 emails.

This is where an autoresponder really scores. It can automatically do all this for you, without you having to do anything beyond setup the 5 emails in the first place.

So, you say to yoursefl "I've setup my autoresponder, get my customer, sell my product. Isn't that job done now?"

Absolutely not. A 5% increase in retention yields profit increases of 25 to 100 percent (source: Bain and Co.)

Lets say only one in twenty of your customers decides to join your mailing list. That's great news for you - you've just got yourself an opportunity to sell again. Statistics show that with just one in twenty taking up your offer, you can almost double your revenue.

Furthermore, now you've got them hooked, you can sell them more different products. Remember, the cost of acquiring a new customer can be as much as 5 times the cost of keeping an old one, and with your autoresponder system you should have just boosted your customer base.