Autoresponders serve a few key tasks in online marketing. They help you manage your email list, communicate with efficiency and consistency with your email list. And they are also crucial to providing a sense of trust and security in your customers, and helping you get your messages out there by getting through spam filters.
Autoresponders allow you to keep control of your email list - add and delete records automatically as users subscribe and unsubscribe. This saves you from the time consuming task of having to do this manually.
Once people have subscribed to your list they want to know how often you will be communicating with them and what they can expect.
Taking the time to set up autoresponders takes this responsibility out of your daily or weekly task list and ensures your database receives emails at expected times and at regular intervals.
You can also send random emails to your entire list or to segments of your list.
You can create a series of emails (with attachments if you like) that will be automatically sent to a subscriber at whatever predetermined sequence you have set up. Great for courses, you can send one lesson a day for 7 day, 30 days or whatever suits you. Autoresponders manage it all according to that person's subscription date.
Autoresponders assist you to get through the Internet Service Providers (ISP's) spam filters. awebber.com is the most respected autoresponder, hence emails coming via their system tend to get through all spam filtering software from ISP's and large corporations.
The best quality autoresponders have a compulsory double opt in feature. This requires subscribers to fill in their details on the opt in page, then when they receive the confirmation email, they must again click to confirm they want the offer - hence opting in twice.
This practise reduces fraudulent use. These highly regarded autoresponders are also very pedantic about unsubscriptions. If one of your subscribers wants out, they are out and this is controlled by a third party. Such respect about and guarantees of privacy are crucial to the online and offline reputation of your business.