Email Marketing: What’s an Autoresponder, and Do I Need One?

I like Perry Marshall a lot. I think he’s a smart guy. And I think this class he’s giving on autoresponders (sequences of email messages that fire off in a specified order) is probably worth the $4,000 he’s charging for it. It includes a bunch of gnarled old direct response copywriters coaching you through the process. (I’m guessing they will essentially write it for you, with your input). Plus probably there are extras like foot massages and lattes made with Himalayan cashmere goat milk. Or something.

But if you don’t happen to have $4,000, I thought I’d expand on a few good points he made in this article. Yes, the article is setting you up to buy the course. But the points are still valid.

Complex systems can make you a lean, mean competitive machine

King Crankypants Dan Kennedy is a big proponent of this. He advocates making your marketing sequences and processes so complicated that your competitors wouldn’t steal them if you sat down with a whiteboard and a pot of coffee and drew out a map for them.

(Being Dan Kennedy, he then goes on to call those competitors lazy, stupid, disgusting and weak.)

When you look at an entire mature marketing system, the thing seems completely overwhelming. Even if a competitor is hungry enough to attack it, a good marketing sequence generally has too many pieces to easily steal the whole thing.

The cool part is, these processes are actually easier to create than they are to understand. Complex isn’t the same thing as difficult. You make each little piece one at a time, then string them together. It’s the WATTS Towers marketing technique.

Add to the system over time, tweaking it here and adjusting it there. And you automate the delivery, so it never gets overwhelming.

There’s complex, and there’s complex

Some of the more advanced shopping cart systems have complicated systems you can rig up to pitch upsells and cross-sells and subfunnels (oh my). These systems are somewhat expensive if you’re just starting out, and the learning curve isn’t trivial.

And then, to be able to upsell or cross-sell, you have to have a bunch of products. It’s great for a mature business, but intimidating when you’re still trying to get things off the ground. Or if you’re a consultant, and you have essentially one product: an hour of your time.

An email autoresponder is a pretty simple animal, in comparison. Just a sequence of communication that moves customers in a nice, neat conveyer belt. Invite a prospect into the system by asking her to opt in to get something free and good. Then move her smoothly through different stages until the finished product—a happy customer—pops out the other end.

An autoresponder can be as short or as long as you like. You can have a three-day sequence or a three-year one. And you can put together as many sequences as you want to.

You can absolutely do this

It’s just not that hard to set up a 10-step (or 30, or 300) sequence in an autoresponder and let that do the selling for you. Yes, it helps to have a few “no-selling” sales techniques under your belt. But you don’t have to be a marketing genius or a code monkey to make it happen.

That’s why Perry Marshall’s $4,000 course is actually a fair deal. If you have a good product and you know how to find (or buy) traffic, a halfway decent autoresponder sequence will be worth a lot more to you than $4,000.

He’s selling his course to businesses who have those pieces in place and want to quickly start using this nifty tool to do a lot more business. He’s not selling it to solo entrepreneurs (unless they’re doing very nicely) or struggling consultants or nonprofits.

Get ready, I’m going to pitch you something

If you like the sound of the autoresponder thing but $4,000 seems like a scary amount of money to pay for a class on how to write an email newsletter, you might start small.

If you’re newish here, I’ve got a free class on how to write an email newsletter and/or autoresponder. It has 10 lessons (I imagine I’ll probably add more as I think of new ideas) and comes with free bonus pictures of monkeys, flowers, cute children and lemonade stands.

It looks a lot like this blog, in other words. You can sign up for it here.

If you’ve already taken the class, or you want more step-by-step directions, I’ll have a product available for purchase some time, ummmmm, in the next couple of months. (I’m putting a ton of work into it, because I want to make sure it’s got truly valuable content and not just a lot of simple stuff you could find on the Aweber FAQ page. So it might take me some time to finish.)

What’s going to be in the paid class

It’s not going to include every possible way of creating an autoresponder. It’s going to give you a simple, workable method that’s effective. It will help you know exactly what to write and why, and it will teach you to avoid some of the boneheaded things I did when I started using Aweber.

(Not that mistakes are the end of the world. But if you can avoid making simple ones, why not?)

Also, it uses Aweber, because I think Aweber is very good. You might prefer MyEmma or Constant Contact or another system. That is fine—90+ percent of the class will still be completely relevant. The hard part is knowing what to say and how to say it, not figuring out how to make your office hours automatically populate all of your emails.

I’ll probably talk about this again once or twice (maybe I’ll throw a Havi-inspired FRO out there at some point). Don’t worry, Remarkable Communication is never going to be a pitchfest. But if your email newsletter has stalled out because you never know what to say, or if you’re overwhelmed and hyperventilating thinking of how to get started, I can definitely help you with that.

You can sign up for super secret early bird notification here if you want to get the earliest word on when the product can be ordered, and the best price. Or you can just hang out, and at some point I’ll let you know it’s available. Your respect and good will matter more to me than making a few dollars, so only buy it if it’s something that will really help you, ok?

You could also hire me to write an autoresponder. I am expensive and hard to schedule (I love you all, but my time is limited), but for 10 messages you’d come in at a lot less than $4,000. Unless your field is something impossible to understand like particle physics or the infield fly rule. In that case, all bets are off. If you want to talk with me about that, you can use the Contact tab (it’s up there at the top of the page) and drop me a line. I will get back to you, but it may take me a few days.

P.S.

If you’re looking for solid advice about doing business online, I subscribe to some of Perry Marshall’s stuff (not the $4,000 stuff, the $29 a month stuff), and I can recommend it. He’s known for Google Adwords, but he also has smart things to say about messaging, customer relationships, making your sales material relevant, and other things we all want to hear more about. (He has a kind of bizarre personal slant on some issues, but that doesn’t get in the way of the part you care about.)

And he gives out good, solid advice for free from his own autoresponder, so you don’t have to buy anything and you’ll still get goodies.

This is an affiliate link, which means I make a few bucks if you decide to buy from him. If affiliate links bug you, feel free to go directly to his site and check him out, my feelings won’t be hurt! He’s at perrymarshall.com.

OK, the pitch is over, you can open your eyes now

There’s more objection busting coming soon, as well as toddler-inspired advice, rants about general evil, and pictures of monkeys.

You know, the usual good stuff.

(P.P.S. Don’t miss out on all the remarkable goodness! Subscribe for free in a reader or email!)