Establishing an autoresponder for your blog is one the most important things you can do. This is how you can reach your target market on an ongoing basis.
Email autoresponders come in many forms and it can be tough to determine the best. I have used many autoresponder services and have found each have their strong points and their weak points.
An autoresponder service is just that, it’s a service you pay monthly for using. These services will help with setting up forms and creating lists so all you have to do is plug in the html code to get you along your way.
Now you can setup a free autoresponder using your blog sites cpanel to get a program called PHPlist. PHPlist is a great tool but for the blogger just starting out I would stick with an autoresponder service such as get response, aweber, icontact, etc…
These email service programs make setup a lot easier and it takes some of the spamming issues off your plate. Most good services will do what is called a double opt in list which means giving a name and email address is not good enough.
With a double opt in list, the customer or prospect has to check their email inbox and click an activation link to be on the list. This protects you and the autoresponder service.
The service I like to use is aWeber. The interface is easy to follow and the tracking of email opens and clicks in links make it a powerful tool for your marketing research.
You want to know what interest your customers so you can provide more of the same.
To get started with an aWeber account, simply go to Aweber and sign up for an account. In full disclosure aWeber has an affiliate system attached to it. I make a couple of dollars every month when you click on my link. When you get your account, you can promote your affiliate account and make a couple of dollars every month.
After you have created your account, you will want to create a list. This list is where your subscribers will be placed for future emails. In this article I will touch on creating your list, creating a form, and putting it on your blog.
After you have created your account and you have successfully logged in, you will want to start with creating a list for your subscribers. Look for a link as show in this screen capture.
Now you will want to enter some basic information about your list.
You will want to give your List Name a meaningful name that will let you know what that list is intended for. So if you have a site on wrestling and you have a news letter that talks about the latest wrestling news, then your List Name might be something like WestlingNL. Then of course you would want to type in a description.
The from address should be from your blog sites system. You would want to use something like a gmail account for this. It might throw your subscribers off thinking they are getting spam.
The subscriber alerts is to let aweber know if you would like an email sent to you when a new person joins your list. There is also a help link at the bottom right side of the page that looks something like this…
Just click on the links to help answer questions you might have. They have a very nice walk-through of how to setup your list in detail.
The next thing you will want to do is setup your form. Click the button at the top that says “Web Forms.” You will then see a button like the picture below.
Click this button to start the web form creation process. You will be presented with a screen that looks similar to this…
You will want to give your form a name. I like to setup the type as In-Line. I do not like pop up type forms. The inline style seems to work the best for blogs.
Of course, if you get lost you can check out the help links at the bottom right side of the page. They look like this…
These will go in depth about each option on the form details page. After you have chosen your settings you will now want to go with your form design. You can get there by clicking the tab that says “Design Form.”
I like to ask for a name and email. You may want to play with this and just ask for an email. I feel having the name helps with making my emails more personal to the prospect.
You can add more fields but then you reduce the chance of people filling out your form. I would ask for what is necessary and no more.
After you have saved the changes to your form, you will see a listing of your form with a bunch of columns. One of the columns is called HTML. In that column there is a link that says Get HTML. You will want to click that link and copy the code in the popup box.
Now that we have created our list and our form, it is time to add it to our website. You can add your form to all of your posts if desired.
I would highly recommend it.
At the end of each post, you can simply say something like…”To get more details and special bonuses, be sure to signup for my news letter.”
This will provide people the opportunity to connect with you via email. The way you would add your form to the post is to log into your blogs admin (dashboard) area and create a new post.
As you can see, the text would go into the online editor as normal. Once you have written your article and added your highlighting, the last thing you would want to do is add your signup form to the end of the post.
Just click the tab that says HTML. This will allow us to copy the form code we copied from aWeber earlier when we created our form.
Simply paste the code into the form and now you can preview your post. It should look something like this…
That is it. You have now added you news letter signup to your posts. This makes it really easy for viewers to get connected with you and your special offers.
Brian Lyssy -
If you would like to get added to my news letter simply fill out the form. Tons of cools stuff and no junk.
Tags: autoresponder, autoresponder service, autoresponder services, email autoresponder, free autoresponder
Tags: autoresponder, autoresponder service, autoresponder services, email autoresponder, free autoresponder
