By Michele Scism
The Results Lady

Day 3: Create Your Autoresponder Series

If the freebie that goes along with your newsletter is a multi-part (multi-day) ecourse, then you already have this step covered. If not, then you’ll need to create a series of at least 7-12 autoresponder messages for starters.

The reason for creating a series of messages is twofold:

1)  It helps you start building trust and a relationship (automatically) with your subscribers. People buy from those they know, like, and trust.

2)  It also creates a stream of income for you, as you can start pitching products immediately in your autoresponder series.

As mentioned, you’ll want to start with at least 7-12 messages. However, each week you should commit to adding a few more messages to your series.

That way you can have months of content – or even a year or more of content – all sent out AUTOMATICALLY to your subscribers.

Indeed, you can get to the point of having a nearly hands-free list (save for a live broadcasts that you send from time to time).

Because you are sending out content that may not be seen by your subscribers for months or even a year or more from now, your content needs to be “evergreen.”

That means –

It needs to be just as relevant a year from now as it is right this month.

Example: Talking about the latest “fad diet” or about specific diet pills are NOT evergreen topics. However, talking in general terms about fad diets and diet pills – without mentioning any specific fads by name – would qualify as evergreen content.

Of course you can mention specific products (and link to them using your affiliate link) if they’re time tested and likely to be around for a while. In other words, if the product themselves are evergreen.

Example: A good example of that is a copywriting book that goes over the basics of how to write a sales letter. While copywriters are always coming up with new ideas and spins on old ideas, the basics have stood the test of time and will be evergreen for as far into the future as you can see.

What Should You Include in Your Series?

The first thing you should include in your series is whatever you promised subscribers on your squeeze page.

That’s your most important consideration initially – because if your subscribers don’t get what they expect and what they were promised, they won’t be subscribers for long.

Beyond that, your autoresponder series should be used to solve your market’s most pressing problems.

1)   Some of the problems you can solve for free via the content in your newsletter.

2)   Other problems you can solve by recommending paid products.

In many cases you’ll do both right in the same article.

Example #1: Let’s suppose you have an article about how to correctly use diet pills to lose weight. The article itself is informational and in-demand by your market. But the article could also pitch a specific brand of diet pills, vitamins, or supplements through your affiliate link.

Example #2: Let’s suppose you’re writing an article on how to optimize a website for the search engines. The article could go through the basics of how to do it and yet it could include links to SEO (search engine optimization) tools like a paid subscription to WordTracker.

Here’s the take away point:

You don’t have to “hard sell” in every email. Instead, weave recommendations and links for paid products into some of your free content.

A “Common Sense” Tip: NEVER recommend a product or service that you wouldn’t recommend to your mother or your best friend.

It doesn’t matter how high the commission rate is, how amazing the conversion rate is, or how much money you can stuff in your pockets recommending it.

If the product stinks, do NOT recommend it. Your reputation – and your future sales and income – depends on this.