Design & Marketing Blog

Primary Target Email introduces powerful new autoresponder feature

With the robust features that already exist within our email marketing application,  the autoresponder feature has long been on our wish-list for addition to the powerful application. Why did it take so long? As with all of the features, usability was our main focus. We wanted to ensure that we can integrate it effectively and provide some real potential to our clients.

Autoresponders can be tricky.  They can be prone to abuse, become complex to manage, and quickly overwhelm subscribers (hello, spam complaints). They can also be incredibly valuable.

We were prepared to wait until we knew we could solve these problems in an easy way. After a stack of design iterations, usability testing and a huge effort from our developers, we are finally ready to put it in your hands. Here’s how they look:

Before we get too carried away, how about a quick introduction. Autoresponders go by a few different names like triggered emails and drip campaigns, but essentially they are an automated email, or sequence of emails sent when a subscriber meets a condition you set. For example, when someone joins your list, your subscriber’s birthday, or a month since someone purchased from your store.

Basically, you set the rules around when an autoresponder should be triggered and tell us what emails to send. We’ll do the rest.

Below is an example of how an autoresponder would look if you want to send an email to subscribers when they first join your list, send a quick guide a week later, and then a final follow up a month after they signed up:

You can set up an unlimited sequence of emails for each type of autoresponder you create. Combine these with our new date-based custom fields and the possibilities are endless.

The World’s best salesman (as verified by the Guinness book of records) Joe Girard was a true master of keeping in touch with his customers. As a car salesman, he mailed out a card every month to his customers, including Birthday cards, Easter cards and Christmas cards when appropriate. He was successful because he knew the value of keeping himself at the front of his customers minds when it came to buying their next car.

If you don’t keep in touch with your customers, it is very likely your competitors will be talking to them up to and during the time they are considering buying the service or product you offer.

Keeping in touch grows your business.

It is 5 times harder to find new customers than it is to retain existing customers (source: Peppers and Rogers). Chasing new customers is expensive, so concentrating on increasing the referrals and sales from your existing customers proves extremly valuable. The way to retain and profit from existing customers is to keep in touch.

There are many ways to achieve this - however the most cost effective is to use email marketing. Delivering monthly newsletters and/promotions to your past customers, has proven to be up to ten times more effective than using direct mail (IMT STrategies).

Email Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or tedious. Using a managed email marketing service such as the one here at Primary Target, can have all of your campaign needs handled for you.

From the design of your newsletters, to the scheduling and deployment, a managed email marketing service offers poweful results with virtually no effort on your part.