Despite the growing popularity of text messaging, video conferencing, and other more sophisticated technologies, email continues to be an important marketing platform for practically every type of business.

Autoresponders are programs that automatically manage your email campaigns for you. Business owners can input a series of emails, schedule them according to when they should be delivered, upload their subscriber list, and the autoresponder will take care of the rest.

Sequencing Your Emails

Some autoresponders will even manage how the sequence of emails is sent out. For example, if you are sending out a series of emails that are designed to get the reader to take a particular action — such as sign up for a subscription list or download a special offer — once that customer takes that action, you don’t want to keep sending the remaining emails in that sequence.

The autoresponder can be programmed to stop sending the remaining emails in that sequence once the action is achieved. This is usually done via an “if/then” loop: If Action X occurs, then take Action Y.

Moving Customers between Lists

Another helpful task some autoresponders perform is to move customers to different subscriber lists based on the actions they take.

For example, customers that buy a certain type of high-priced product or who are among the most frequent customers of a business can be moved to a specialized class — such as a VIP or MVP group –where they can receive exclusive offers and awards.

Some autoresponders can keep track of buyer behavior and move customers to specified lists according to whatever parameters are set.

Reporting

Another important function of autoresponders is reporting data about the performance of various email campaigns. Having information about how many subscribers opened a particular set of emails, rather than deleting them without reading them, can help fine tune future campaigns to make them more effective.

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