654 – Make automation work for YOU: Tom talks Autoresponders Revisited

Episode 654 – Autoresponders Revisited
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, is Tom here with episode 654 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're talking about autoresponders. I call this auto responders revisited because I did autoresponders, I think, a couple of years ago. Episode 337 And I highly suggest you listen to the first part of episode 337, because that's where I told you about the history of how it came up about autoresponders and how they evolved. So you can go there at screwthecommute/337. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode 653. Oh, boy. We had Frank Wiegers was there as part of Vetpreneur Month here. We do that every September and this is episode is explicit. He's a Vietnam vet. He's 87 years old and he tells us in pretty great detail how his love life is sizzling. He's got a website called Top Gun Love because he was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. And we even talk about after burners there, too. Now, how would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the show has helped you out at all in your business or giving you ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Go to screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says Send a voicemail, click on it and talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the show has helped you and also put your website on there so I can give you a shout out on a future episode.

[00:02:01] All right. Make sure you pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. This book has saved me 8 million keystrokes. We actually estimated it a couple of years ago. Just one of the tips in it, by the way. So there's lots of tips on automating your computer and your cell phone so that you can spend time with customers and prospects and and develop products and services because that's where the money is. So pick it up at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app for use on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:02:46] All right let's get to the main event autoresponders now. We're talking about sequential autoresponders today. And even though this is a pretty short episode, that doesn't mean I don't think this is a really important topic. In fact, as I record this, I have nearly 500 autoresponder sequences answering questions and giving service to over 60,000 customers and hundreds of thousands of prospects to my business all while I'm here recording this for you. Now, these sequential autoresponders were a game changer in the Internet marketing arena.

[00:03:20] Now, if you ask people that have been around as long as I have online, what were some of the most powerful tools invented for Internet marketing, the sequential autoresponder would be at the top of the list. Now, before we get too deep into what autoresponders can do, let me make sure you understand the distinction between an autoresponder email and a broadcast email. An autoresponder email is always, always triggered by someone else. Someone had to do something to trigger the autoresponder. Now, in the Internet marketing world, there's two common events that trigger autoresponders. One is when someone buys something and the other is when they opt in for a freebie or some type of incentive that you're giving them. In other words, they opt in to your form and that triggers the autoresponder. A broadcast email is an email sent to people on your list. Any time you feel like it, you decide when you want to send one, You can schedule them to go out on their own. If you're not going to be around to send the broadcast out at a particular time. But any time you want to, you can send a broadcast email. So an autoresponder is triggered by somebody else and a broadcast is sent any time you want to. You decide. All right. Autoresponders can handle many more emails than you could ever process manually.

[00:04:50] And also, you can send a ten page email just as fast and easily as sending a two paragraph email. However, in today's email atmosphere, I wouldn't be doing too many ten page emails or any really. Now there are ways you can automate your promotions and keep them selling for you using autoresponders. You'll not be sitting here in front of your computer all day long, so you ought to. Responders are a great way to get the information out to your market while you're doing other things. Now, I've had some of my sequences of emails going out for more than 15 years without any changes. Anyway, your messages are going to last a long time, so when writing the messages, try to write them in in such a way that you don't have to change them too often. So if you do this, the autoresponder will work quietly behind the scenes with little or no attention. Now, some terminology here. A campaign is a bunch of emails going to the person who triggered the autoresponder. Each campaign could have any number of follow up emails that you want. That's what sequential means. They just keep going out. And these emails can be separated by any number of days that you want and and the number of days don't need to be the same. Between each email, you can send one a day for the first three days and then one a week after that.

[00:06:20] I mean, you get to pick whatever makes sense for your market. So I have different campaigns for each product somebody buys. Now I have different campaigns if they want public speaking tips or Internet marketing tips or entrepreneurial tips. Now, I've had all kinds of other side hustles for golf and protection dogs and tennis and various other topics, and they all had their own campaigns. So you don't want to be sending emails to people that haven't proven interest in a certain topic. I'm not going to send protection dog stuff to people interested in Internet marketing or public speaking and, you know, all vice versa. Now there's another term you need to know about called Unsubscribe upon subscribe. This is really important. One Unsubscribe upon subscribe. This means that when someone subscribes to a new autoresponder campaign, they stop getting a previous campaign. So let's say you had an autoresponder campaign to try to get somebody to purchase a particular product. And let's say it had seven emails in the campaign. Let's also say on email five the person bought the product. Well, it wouldn't make much sense to send them email six and seven since they already bought the product from email five. Would it? So after they bought the autoresponder can put them into a new email series about the product that they just bought and unsubscribe them from the campaign, trying to get them to buy the product they just bought.

[00:08:05] Okay. So go back and listen to that if you didn't catch that. But anyway, you don't want to be hammering people to buy stuff that they already bought, put it that way. I mean, sometimes you can't help it, but whenever you can help it, these autoresponders will help you fix that problem. So what else can you do with autoresponders? Well, autoresponders can be used to train the customer in the use of your product and or suggest other products that would likely be of interest to them. The best part is that after an autoresponder is set up, the entire process goes on autopilot, totally unattended, which saves you time and money. And there was a survey on ZD Net. It's a respected, you know, kind of Internet geek type kind of place. Anyway, they found that 98% of customers would repurchase from a company if they were just asked to do it. All right. Autoresponders make sure that they get asked to buy something else or to help them in some other way when you're too busy to do it yourself or when your volume is too high that you couldn't possibly do it yourself. Another big benefit of autoresponders is that they tend to decrease returns, especially on big ticket products. Now, buyer's remorse can really increase your return rate. A simple automated series of follow up emails will let the customer know you aren't going to disappear now that you have their money.

[00:09:44] It can also reassure them they made a wide wise decision in purchasing your product. Sequential order responders have made me a load of money by delivering E courses. This is another thing you can do with them. And these are both paid and free E courses. My first free E course brought in $7,000 the first week. And you say, Well, that sounds like BS. Tom How could that how could that be? Well, I gave the people the free information they wanted, but at the bottom of each email of the E course, I offered them something to buy. It was pretty simple, really. And don't ever lead off with something to buy on a free E course because they won't trust you. Give them the free stuff you offered them and then offer them something to buy. Now if you have the shopping cart system kick start cars.com, which I have been using myself for over 20 years and promoting it to other people. You can have unlimited sequential autoresponder campaigns. Now, shopping cart systems were covered in episode ten, and you really need to listen to that episode to see all the kinds of things that these shopping cart systems can do that just sell way more stuff for you and automate things. And so all the great things that you can do with them. So check that out.

[00:11:13] It's screwthecommute.com/10. And again the reason I'm using Kickstarter com because it's it is totally integrated with my shopping system and the autoresponders can be tied to a specific purchase, which is an extremely powerful sales and customer service technique. The way it works is that when someone buys a product, they automatically subscribe themselves. In other words, trigger, as I mentioned earlier, to follow up emails. And the emails can be used to give additional tips on how to use what they bought or to sell them more products. The customer can unsubscribe themselves, of course, any time if they don't feel your emails are a value. And that means make sure your darn emails are of value that help people. You want to get people in the mood to hear from you because whenever they open one of your emails, it helps them in some way, even if it's if you're not selling anything. Now in good order responder systems. You can choose whatever return email address you want on a particular campaign. For instance, I could have won with Tom and Screw the sitcom if I'm doing this podcast type stuff. Or I can have Tom at Brutal Self defense or I can have Tom at Protection Dogs Elite or Tom and Fatso Tennis or whatever it happens to be. So it lines up psychologically with the person getting your email. Oh yeah, I just signed up for Fatso Tennis thing.

[00:12:50] And here's Tom with Fatso Tennis, so it wouldn't make sense if they signed up for Tom or Fatso Tennis and opt in Freebie over at Fatso Tennis and got something from Screw the commute so it doesn't line up. So you can customize the return address from each one of those. And if they click reply, you can easily have your email forwarded to one box so you can catch them all in one place. You don't have to check eight different email accounts. Now don't forget to let people know that you have a strict privacy policy so they don't feel you're going to spam them to death with too many promotional emails. I mean, you can have a little privacy policy link on your opt in forms and even a phrase that we put in frequently called We hate spam as much as you do. So it makes kind of relates to them and lets them know that we won't spam them to that. And just a reminder that your email list is where the money is. Everyone at my level makes the bulk of their money on email. Nobody really disputes this except people selling social media training. All right. So it's really important that you build your email list. Now, if you'd like deep training on all this stuff. I have the longest running, most successful, most unique Internet and digital mentor program ever on the on the Internet.

[00:14:11] Nobody I've triple dog dare everybody to put their program up against mine and nobody will because I'm a crazy fanatic. I mean, you have an immersion weekend where you actually live in this estate home in Virginia Beach with me for an immersion weekend. We have a TV studio here where we shoot your marketing videos, all included in the deal. You get a separate trip where it's just you here shooting marketing videos for you, or we edit them, put the graphics on, and just one of these. I've seen an event go for 5500 bucks and we had a couple come in and do 53 of them in one day. All right. So. So there's nobody can put up the value that we do and everything is one on one because I don't believe in group training where you're lumped in with people more advanced or less advanced than you. And it's not very efficient. This way. We hone in on exactly what you need and you're not forced to just sit there for hours with other people that have different problems than you. And also the the financial part of it. People at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to train you for this stuff, and they could care less if you're successful once they got their money. Where my program the reason it's one of the reasons it's so successful is I'm not going to disappear on you because I don't get my big money unless you make big money.

[00:15:31] I'm tied to you at the hip to help you along your way here. And for me to get my 50,000, you have to net 200,000. So people like this and 1700 plus students later, it's still going strong. So check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com, get in touch if you want to discuss it. There's no heavy pressure here, but we can certainly help you. And I've been there and done that. All right. So I just want to remind you, before we leave it, autoresponders are one of the most powerful things you can implement in your business. And the sooner you put them into play, the more money you're going to make. All right. So that's it for this episode. Get out there and get your you know, get you you can get a free trial of Kickstartcart.com 30 day trial and check all this stuff out. And once you decide to get the cart, we also provide free unlimited one on one tutoring to teach you how to use it. Nobody does this kind of stuff and it's very cost effective with all the features. And it has. That's why I've kept it and used it myself for 20 plus years. So check it out at kickstartcart.com and we will catch you on the next episode. See you later.