Autoresponders are a great help for implementing e-mail marketing strategies. On the other hand if you’re just starting out you may not want to pay the monthly fee for a professional autoresponder. Let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of autoresponders to help you decide.

Advantages of Autoresponders

1. Build and manage a large list of contacts

Any business that is not building a list of contacts is leaving money off the table. If you build a large list of prospects and take care of them you’ll be able to market to them repeatedly throughout their lifetimes. Autoresponders allow you to capture contact information from a sign-up form on a web page and automatically store the information in a database. The database enables you to broadcast a message to your list or send a series of follow-up messages to your list at predetermined intervals.

2. Sell products on autopilot

Did you know that you can set up an autoresponder to automatically sell your products? If you set up your autoresponder correctly it will do the selling for you. For instance, after a person signs up from your landing page send a follow-up message every day for 10 days. Each message should contain a valuable tip on how to use the product. At the end of each message include a link to the product sales page. When a prospect reads these tips they will be more open to purchasing your product. Sometimes a prospect may purchase right away or on the tenth day. You could even set up your autoresponder to send a new tip every day for one year or set up several autoresponders to sell multiple products.

3. Monitor your success

Most professional autoresponder services enable you to track the open rates of your e-mails and also the number of people who clicked on the links within your e-mails. For instance if you sent a newsletter to a list of 1000 subscribers you’ll be able to view how many people actually read your newsletter and how many clicked on the links.

Disadvantages of Autoresponders

1. Expensive

A professional autoresponder service will charge you a monthly fee. For instance Aweber will charge you $19 each month for 500 subscribers. This fee increases as you get more subscribers or you send out your newsletter more than one time a month. For example if you sent your newsletter to 500 subscribers 4 times a month you’ll need a plan that accommodates 2000 subscribers. If you used Aweber you’ll have to pay $49 each month.

2. Lack of deliverability

If you don’t want to pay the monthly fee for a professional autoresponder you may decide to use a free one. The problem is there is no guarantee your e-mails will get delivered, you may receive spam complaints or the company may go out of business. You probably invested a ton of time and effort into building a list of potential clients so why take the risk of using a free autoresponder service?

3. Unable to write effective follow-up e-mails

It’s easy to procrastinate writing autoresponder messages because it takes a lot of time to write them out. If they are not effective your customers may be turned off and unsubscribe from your newsletters. Even though there are few disadvantages, autoresponders are a necessary marketing tool that enables you to build long-term relationships with your customers and sell multiple products on autopilot.