A Simple 4-Step Plan for Building an Email Autoresponder that Works

Imagine you’ve just won the luxury car of your dreams.

You could never afford this premium ride on your own and now it’s going to be all yours. As an additional reward, you are invited to the factory to watch the experienced automotive craftsmen assemble your beautiful driving machine.

At the end of the assembly tour, four men push your car off of the final inspection station. An engineer in a white lab coat greets you warmly and hands you the keys.

He then reaches into his pocket and pulls out an unrecognizable piece of steel about the size of a grapefruit. He extends it toward you saying, “This is a piece of your engine. We aren’t sure exactly where it goes but we think it’s pretty important. Your car probably won’t run the way it should without it. Anyway, congratulations …â€?

Not quite the car of your dreams anymore, huh?

Even if you inserted the keys into your shiny new set of wheels and it started, you’d know that you are missing something vitally important and will feel an impending sense of doom in regard to your almost-assembled dream ride.

For many business owners, that neglected engine part is your email marketing plan.

You are so close to the online presence of your dreams, but you’re not quite there …

The missing piece of your content marketing plan?

You have a beautiful website. You’re active on social networks. Your content is well-written and interesting to your readers.

You are even increasing your website traffic and have seen your organic search results improving for your most important keywords.

However, your email list is growing slowly and your site isn’t generating your most important goal … sales.

Just like your dream car, you are certain that the missing piece is the key to peace-of-mind and peak performance.

Not knowing what to do next, you stand frozen with indecision staring at the keys in your left hand and the mystery part in your right hand.

Suddenly, another engineer races from behind a towering parts rack and shouts, “Wait!! We can fix it!!�

It turns out that the missing part happens to be in an easy-to-access location and the engine can be fixed with just a few careful steps. However, they are short on help and you will be forced to participate in the repair.

Would you possibly choose not to participate in fixing your dream car? Of course you’ll help!

So let’s retire this car analogy (or is it a metaphor?) and get on with fixing your email problem …

Step 1. Create your email content

Why create your content before you have a large, targeted list? So you don’t miss anyone!

Your first step is to employ the magic of an email autoresponder.

Here’s a simple trick for getting started with your first autoresponder. Decide 3 problems that you were going to solve with your next 3 blog posts. (Or one problem you are going to solve in 3 steps.)

Create an introduction email. Add your 3-part problem solver. Then write one final email that will give you more insight into your audience than you have ever gained before. (More on that in Step 4.)

Once complete, you will have five emails that will go out to every new subscriber until the end of time without having to create another email.

We all do better with examples. Subscribe to Internet Marketing for Smart People and see how the folks here got more than 85,000 very smart people engaged with their autoresponder.

Step 2. Make it easy to subscribe

You always want to make every call to action clear and obvious, with an easy response option.

The easiest way to do this for email subscribers is with multiple subscription boxes in conspicuous locations. You can have a developer design and code these for your website, or buy a premium WordPress theme that’s already built around the importance of email marketing.

You can sync your subscription boxes with your email marketing provider and easily capture and track subscribers. Your autoresponder is built within your email provider and drips out to your new subscribers automatically and according to your predetermined settings.

Step 3. Optimize your emails

Now that you have created useful, problem-solving content for your new subscribers, take the time to optimize each email for maximum results.

Take these steps to gain even more benefits from your new system:

• Write a specific headline stating the subject of the email: In this context, specific works best. Let your subscriber know who you are and what this email is about. Because it will solve a problem, it will automatically be interesting to your reader.
• Make each email short: Your readers don’t want a long email. Even if it’s useful, they will convince themselves that they will get back to it later and it will sit in their inbox until it gets deleted. This doesn’t mean the content is ultra brief, just the email. You will simply link to the full content.
• Store the full content on your website: When users click through to read the entire email, they will be taken to your website where the full article is published. This allows your emails to be simple and your site to benefit from additional search engine optimization. After all, you want to be known for your problem-solving ability and shouldn’t lose the organic keyword search benefits of your valuable content.

Step 4. The final email

After giving your subscribers such useful, problem-solving content, you now get the chance to give them one final gift. You will also give yourself more insight into your readers than you have ever gained before.

If you do this right, you will know what to write for your next autoresponder, ebook or other digital product that your subscribers will be ready and waiting to buy.

In your final email, thank your reader for subscribing to your series. You will have invited feedback every step of the way. Now, invite them to be a key part in creating your next offering.

Simply ask them what they would like to see next.

Something like “Now that you have conquered Problem X, what would you like to conquer next?�

Get in your car …

After completing these four steps, you can now sleep at night knowing that every subscriber is getting a problem solved, you are maximizing your website by building your email list and improving SEO, and you are about to get insight into the exact products your readers want you to create.

Now take the keys and drive off into the sunset. (Wait, were we done with the car thing?)