You’ve hopefully written your free report and have  uploaded the report to your hosting account (server). Now you’re ready to set up your autoresponder campaign to get this whole thing going.

Before you begin you’ll have to have an autoresponder.

There are some free autoresponders out there ~ I highly recommend you invest the money to get a quality paid autoresponder. The free services may be free now but it will cost you in the long run. At some point you’re going to come to a place in your business where you want to switch to a paid autoresponder ~ probably because the free one can’t do what you need or want it to do. You’re going to end up losing most of your list in the process and that’s going to cost you more money than you saved going with the free one to start.

18 bucks a month to get started.

Anyway…

Aweber is probably the better of the two autoresponders I recommend. However, I have Get Response so all of the lessons and tutorials will be done through get response because that’s what I have and use. If you want to be able to follow along with the tutorials I would suggest get response. If you think you can take what I share and use it in Aweber (which shouldn’t be that hard, they’re relatively similar) then go for Aweber.

So let’s get on with it.

How to set up an Autoresponder Campaign

You’ll first log into your Autoresponder account.

In GetResponse you’ll see some tabs across the page (this is your dashboard here). You’ll see one of them says campaigns. When you hover over the tab it will give you options related to your campaigns. Today we’re going to choose “create new campaign”

Here’s where we’re going to choose a name for this campaign. This name will show up on the confirm page, and in some other places, so make sure you choose a campaign name that relates to what you’ll be talking about  and won’t look “weird” to your readers (because they will see it at some point)

Here’s what it will look like:

Click create new campaign. If you have chosen a pretty generic name like the one I just did you may get this page:

It’s no biggie ~ just rename your campaign and click create new campaign again.  Ok, once you’ve done that you’ll get a nice green message that says you’ve created your campaign.

The first thing we want to do is go in and set up our settings.

When you get to the settings area you’ll want to go through screen by screen and fill in your information and the settings you want to use for this campaign.  At the bottom of each page will be a “save settings” button. Make sure you save before going on to the next tab.

One the first page of settings make sure you have the email addresses filled in that you want to use. The reply address is the one email will go to if you one of your readers hits the reply button to say something to you. Most people don’t, but I encourage you to use a REAL address for this. It’s very important for your readers to be able to  contact you and not get a message that this is a do not reply address.

Blog Announce:

This feature will let’s you add your RSS feed address and it will automatically send an email to your readers whenever you add a new post. Be aware though, if you do a lot of updating to published posts it will also send updates each time you do that as well. I like to just write a quick “newsletter” whenever I add a post so I can personalize it and talk to my readers. (it’s also a good place to add news, or an affiliate promotion that’s going on)

Postal address:

To be in compliance with the Can spam laws you must have a real address in all of your outgoing emails. So YES, you need to have this part.

Clicking to the next tab we have “language”

This is where you can choose the language your emails go out in, but you also need to add a bit of personalization to your confirm email and you can do it  here.

You only need to fill in the text box. Just say hello, and thank you for subscribing. Let them know you’re glad to have them ~ be personable, but there’s not a lot of space, so be brief as well.  Make sure you check it with the preview button. Make sure your text lines up with their text so it looks good. You will probably have to go back to your message and hard return some of the lines so they are even with what they have.

Plain vs. Html

Html messages can be gorgeous, but I can tell you from my computer that I don’t get the images and they look crazy  unless I click the “view images” button, which I don’t do very often ~ unless it’s recipes and I want to see what they look like. For emails I would stick to plain text. It will be much neater, will come across to more people looking professional, neat and tidy.

Next tab: Message

I leave everything in the default except share the message and I untick that one. If you are in network marketing or have a group of people you can share your emails/settings by having that one ticked, but I don’t, so I turn it off.

I also don’t fill in the signature ~ only because I do something a little bit different every time. You can play around with it though, it may be a good fit for you.

Next tab: Contact

This is where things can get really fancy. I suggest you make sure the top 2 email addresses are an email address you check regularly, and then leave the rest in default.

You can change the page that shows up when people click the confirm button, you can change the pages that show up when people opt in ~ but it can be  a little glitchy ~ so for your first campaign I suggest you leave the default ~ just know this is where that kind of action happens and you can play around with it once you feel more comfortable with all this stuff.

next tab: RSS/Web Archive

All of your messages are saved as archives. This is where you set things the way you want them for those archives. It’s up to you how you want them set up, so play around with it until you get what you want.

Our settings are set up, now it’s time to write our first message and add the link to our report.

Follow up vs Newsletters

A message is an email you create and it will be part of your series. It will go out every time someone opts in. You can set how many days after they opt in you want it to go out~ but it is permanent (you can delete it but permanent that it’s part of the series)

Newsletter ~ used to be known as the broadcast ~ is an email you write that goes out immediately or scheduled depending on how you want it ~ but it does NOT become part of the series. It’s a one time thing. (although they too are saved in your archives so you can go back and see them if you need to)

So go to messages and choose create follow up so you can create the first email in this series.

Make sure in the right hand corner you’re working on the right campaign.

Then choose plain text.

You’ll find a new page opens up and you’ll have to choose when you want this email to go out ~ in days after they requested your information.

You’ll want this one to be 0 so they will get it immediately after they click the confirm button in the confirmation email that is automatically sent when they subscribe.

Make sure the email address is correct (this should be your email address)

Write a subject line. Now don’t get all twisted up about this. Just write something like thanks for subscribing gift inside ~ or something like that.

That’s all this email is going to be ~ a thank you and a link to the gift, and a quick note about how often and when to exptect to hear from  you again.

Once you’ve got the subject line down you’ll want to go ahead and write your email.

Say thanks for joining ~ let them know you appreciate them.

Then you’ll want to give them the link to the free report. This link was made when you uploaded your free report to your hosting account.  Go ahead and put the link right there in the email.

Remind them to save it to their computer so they can refer to it as often as they want.

Let them know how often you plan to write to them ~ what topics you might be covering and anything else you want to say to your new subscriber here.

Remember ~ treat this person as you’ve made a new friend and you’ll be fine.

Finally ~ wrap it up by saying thanks again, and then sign off.

Click save message at the bottom and you’ve completed your first autoresponder email. WOO HOO!!

That’s all there is to it ~ if you want to set up another email list, for another site or another topic you just do the same thing again from the beginning. You can create as many lists as you want on both of these autoresponders. So it’s worth it, even if you’re doing niche sites to create a list and get your readers on it.

It’s always much easier to get a current customer or reader to buy something from you than it is to get a stranger to buy.

So that’s it for today. Next post we’re going to create an opt in box and get it up on your site! So get this first message set up so you’ll be all set when you get your opt in box up to start getting subscribers.  (next week we’ll be creating more messages in this series so don’t worry about it right now ~ the first one is enough to get your started)

If you have any questions on this process feel free to ask. I don’t have access to Aweber or other autoresponders so I won’t be able to answer questions specific to those services ~ sorry. If you have a GetResponse specific question I should be able to help.

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3. Upload Report So You Can Share It!
4. How to Add an Opt In Box to Your Sidebar
5. Build Your List From the Very Beginning