9 Awesome Autoresponders that will Increase Engagement With Your Email List

Sending out event driven email to your email list is a great way to keep them engaged and reminded that you have their best interests in mind. Since this type of email can be set up in advance and sent out at a later date, you have the advantage of coming up with great ideas ahead of time before launching them out as part of a campaign.

If you need novel concepts for your autoresponders to get the most of your list, below are nine that you can use, develop, and tweak for the benefit of making a more indelible mark with your recipients:

1. Repurpose old content

If you have existing content in your site that isn’t gaining lots of traffic despite the helpful information it contains, you can rewrite it into an autoresponder. Since the content will be delivered straight to a recipient who is interested with what you have to send to them, there’s a better chance that you can gain more traction with your old post, especially if you link back to it at in a series of autoresponders. You can even split the content into different autoresponders like an e-course and create a new signup form from the autoresponder so they can exclusively get their hands on your valuable course.

2. Greet users on their birthday

This may be a low-hanging fruit, but it bears repeating. Setting up an autoresponder that greets them on the birth date they indicated in their form is a good way of acknowledging them as a member of your email list during a special in their life. You can sneak in a promo or discount offer in your birthday email to your products or services to sweeten the deal.

3. Send out a survey

If you run an ecommerce site or manage a blog that produces high-quality content on a consistent basis, then you may consider asking your email list to answer a survey about your site or blog. You can use the findings to improve your customer service and user experience design or publish the results on your blog to usher discussion with your audience. To increase the chances of the recipients filling out your survey, you may considering give them something in return.

4. Request for reviews

Positive online reviews featured on your website can potentially drive more sales to your shop. Politely asking your list to describe their experience with you can turn this potential into reality. You’d want users to be completely honest with you, so you should expect to receive negative feedback as well. Instead of losing your top, you need to approach the constructive criticism as a means to make your business better.

5. Create a sense of scarcity for your services

If you are offering your services at discounted prices for a limited time, you need to not only inform people, but also make them feel the urgency of the offer. Here are two psychological tricks that you can incorporate in your autoresponders for your offers with expiry dates. Again this is a good way to enforce you triggered mails, like for instance abandonned shopping cart mails.

6. Help them decide

The last example for increasing email marketing engagement with you’re email list is to help them decide. There can be big differences in shopping and purchase behavior. For instance between low-risk fast purchases or high risk and complex buying cycles. And mayor differences between B2B and B2C.

b2b versus b2c purchase behavior Image source: global Database

The search behavior on your website gives you a good opportunity to contact them by email. When someone is looking for a coffee maker or searching for a course on your website, then help them. Stimulate their decision making process by emailing them the most sold or top rated coffee maker, or the most visited course.

7. Tell them how much you missed them

For those with the ability to track users from their list who haven’t logged in for a month or so or visitors who haven’t commented on any of the latest posts, send them an autoresponder to remind them why they signed up with you in the first place. Share your updates and latest achievement you had with your site or blog, while they were away in order to draw them back in.

8. Celebrate holidays with them

Your email list is like family – they are an integral part that holds you online business or blog together. Therefore, even if not actually an event triggered mail. You need to show important they are. They are your VIPs and holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, Independence Day, and others can trigger them to buying on impulse. Customize the message of the autoresponder according to the holiday and the person who will be receiving your email to elicit a response from them.

9. “You’re might be interested in this too”

When someone in your email list bought one of your products or services, you’re getting the opportunity for cross-selling. A week or two after the purchase you can send them an email with additional products or services. For example, when someone bought a jacket for the winter on your website, you can send them an email containing products like gloves and a scarf. An email with additional products or services, is saying to your customer: “you’re might be interested in this too”.

Siebren van Bruggen

Siebren van Bruggen is content manager at Email Vendor Selection and does online marketing and research for FloraHolland. He is a master student at Tilburg University, is interested in online marketing & psychology. He loves to write about marketing topics and is a genuine coffee addict.