If you have signed up with an autoresponder service, you need to take the time to read the instructions to learn how to use the service ? before you load the first word of your first message! Not knowing how to use the service will lead to many mistakes, and your customers and potential customers will most likely see every mistake you make!

As soon as you have complete the sign up process, load one email address into the autoresponders mailing list yours. If there is a manual or help file for your autoresponder, read every word of it, and really learn how to use all of the features of the autoresponder.

Work with it, sending messages to your own address, until you know your autoresponder service inside and out! This may take a little time, but after a few hours or so, you should know all that there is to know, and you will be able to set your autoresponders up much more effectively in the future. Taking the time to learn now, will not only save time in the future, it may also help you tweak and tune your autoresponder messages and tracking in a way that increases your responses!

If you are using your autoresponder to sell a product or service, you must be very careful as to how you approach your potential customer. Few people like a hard sale, and marketers have known for years that in most cases, a prospect must hear your message an average of seven times before they will make a purchase. How do you accomplish this with autoresponders?

It's really quite simple, and in fact, the autoresponders make getting the message to your potential customers those seven times possible. On the Internet, without the use of autoresponders, you probably could not achieve that. Too often, marketers make the mistake of literally slamming the potential customer with a hard sales pitch with the first autoresponder message this won't work.

You build interest slowly. Start with an informative message a message that educates the reader in some way on the topic that your product or service is related to. At the bottom of the message, include a link to the sales page for your product. Use that first message to focus on the problem that your product or service can solve, with just a hint of the solution.

Build up from there, moving into how your product or service can solve a problem, and then with the next message, ease into the benefits of your product giving the reader more actual information with each and every message. Your final message should be the sale pitch not your first one! With each message, make sure that you are giving the customer information pertaining to the topic free information! This is what will keep them interested

in what you have to say.

This type of marketing is an art. It may take time to get it exactly right. Use the examples that other marketers have set for you. Pay attention to the messages that you receive from other marketers. Start a ?swap? file, and keep those messages. Use some of the better sales copy for your own autoresponder messages ? just make sure that yours doesn't turn out to be an exact copy of someone else's sales message!

Remember not to start with a hard sale. Build your potential customers interest. Keep building on what the problem is, and how your product or service can solve that problem or fill that need. If you are doing this right, by the time the potential customer reads the last message in that series, they will be convinced enough to make a purchase!