Beka Ruse is a business development manager at AWeber Systems Inc. A few years back he wrote, "The concept of the follow up auto responder revolutionized Internet Marketing." Indeed. From starting out as an automatic email to let people know you were unavailable, to becoming the tool of choice for many companies to keep in contact with their customer base, an automatic responder has become one of the necessities to internet marketing online.

Simply put an automatic responder is like a fax on demand system. For instance, people visit your website and see that you are offering a free gift if they sign up to your mailing list. They fill out your opt in form and hit the submit button. From that point on, your email automatic responder takes over by sending out any prewritten messages at the time intervals you have already chosen. The fact that this step has already been done, frees you up to concentrate on other areas of your business. Automating as much of the day to day chores of running a company no matter the size is a significant part of growing your business.

If you have a choice between a free or paid email automatic responder service, choose the paid. You need an automatic responder that gives you unlimited follow up and the ability to personalize your messages. Dear "first name" is much more effective than "dear subscriber" and having an unlimited automatic responder to send messages to your customers is very profitable. One thing an email automatic responder does very well is help you to sell products or services on the backend. A customer signs up initially but may not be interested in your product. By sending them a series of followup automatic responder messages that highlight your offer from time to time, they may buy from you in the future. On average it usually takes five to seven follow ups before people feel comfortable enough to buy from you.

Now be careful. People are bombarded constantly with online advertisement. If every email you send is about buying a product, that is a real turn off and people will unsubscribe from your list faster than a blink. Give them useful information first and then you can periodically advertise your product.

So how can you use your automatic responder to grow your customer base as well as business?

1. Do People Love Free Stuff?

Oh yeah and a free mini course is perfect. You can provide quality information explaining the industry you work in, the trends and future innovations or anything else. This is also a great way to get people over to your website. By sending them an email with a small piece of information and a link, you can invite them to visit your website to read the rest of the article and possibly check out some of your offers. The more people that click the email link the more internet traffic you get.

2. Sell ad space

Once you build up your opt in email list, you can sell ad space to your subscribers who have a product they want to get noticed. You can provide different rates for solo ads or single line blurbs. If that particular subscriber receives good feedback at an affordable price, they will want to advertise again. The added benefit to this is it can strengthen the bonds of customer loyalty between you and the subscriber.

3. Promote Other Affiliate Programs

The good thing about your email automatic responder is you are not stuck just promoting one item. You can put together a mini course with affiliate links pointing back to the various products or services you are promoting. This is an excellent way to generate multiple streams of income. Again don't overdo it. Concentrate on providing useful content first. That's the best enticement to get people to buy from you.

Staying in touch with your customers (particularly when you really start to grow your subscriber base) is essential to your success. If you had to follow up with each and every one it would be very time consuming. Investing in an automatic responder only makes sense. Use it to automate your everyday tasks so that you can invest the rest of your time building your business.