Saturday, October 31, 2009
Send a Series of Emails with Scheduled Auto Responders
After someone completes your Relevant Tools web form you can send them an immediate email response. You can also automatically continue your connection to your new contact with scheduled auto responders. Also known as drip marketing, a scheduled auto responder is a series a messages that are sent at intervals after the initial signup. Here is how to set up scheduled auto responders using Relevant Tool's web forms.
First you must define each of your messages in the Messages area. Then click on Forms and select the form that you to use for the series of messages. When you click on scheduled responders you will have an option to define a new scheduled responder. Select the message you want to send and the interval that you want to send it, such as 2 weeks after form signup.
You can review and change the series of messages at any time.
Every night Relevant Tools will automatically check your databases to determine if any signup records qualify for the next message in the series. You can see the results of your scheduled auto responder message series by clicking on Results and clicking on auto responders.
To see the details of a particular day click on the name field. A detailed list of each email address that qualified for that particular day is shown with the message that was sent and the trigger that qualified that particular address. If a user decided that they did not want to continue with the series of messages they can always unsubscribe and they will not receive additional emails.
With scheduled auto responders you can automatically keep in touch with your customers and prospects with a series of scheduled emails that deliver your message for you. Put Relevant Tools to work.
First you must define each of your messages in the Messages area. Then click on Forms and select the form that you to use for the series of messages. When you click on scheduled responders you will have an option to define a new scheduled responder. Select the message you want to send and the interval that you want to send it, such as 2 weeks after form signup.
You can review and change the series of messages at any time.
Every night Relevant Tools will automatically check your databases to determine if any signup records qualify for the next message in the series. You can see the results of your scheduled auto responder message series by clicking on Results and clicking on auto responders.
To see the details of a particular day click on the name field. A detailed list of each email address that qualified for that particular day is shown with the message that was sent and the trigger that qualified that particular address. If a user decided that they did not want to continue with the series of messages they can always unsubscribe and they will not receive additional emails.
With scheduled auto responders you can automatically keep in touch with your customers and prospects with a series of scheduled emails that deliver your message for you. Put Relevant Tools to work.
Labels: auto responder, drip marketing, send email, web forms
Send a Series of Emails with Scheduled Auto Responders posted by Jean Christofferson @ 8:32 PM 0 Comments
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Send Email Messages with Attachments
It is easy to use Relevant Tools to send email messages with attachments. From your own email program you can create the message just as you normally would. Attach your file to your message. The email address that you send it to will be message@relevanttools.com. The subject will be your userid that you use to login followed by a colon followed by the real suject of your email.
You will get an email response back from Relevant Tools letting you know that your message has been installed and is ready for you to edit or send.
You can then login to your Relevant Tools account. Click on Messages and select the message that was just installed to edit it. Often you will want to change the from email address so that instead of coming from your personal email address the message will come from your company email address.
Now you are ready to send the message out in a mailing to your database or use it as an auto responder email message that people receive when they complete a web form.
There is one warning for attachments - they can't be too big. No one likes to receive huge attachments that take too long to download. Relevant Tools will check the size of your message with the attachment when you send it and if it is too large you will not be able to send it. If you run into this situation just ask us about file upload as then you can upload the file and just include a link to to file instead of sending it as an attachment.
You will get an email response back from Relevant Tools letting you know that your message has been installed and is ready for you to edit or send.
You can then login to your Relevant Tools account. Click on Messages and select the message that was just installed to edit it. Often you will want to change the from email address so that instead of coming from your personal email address the message will come from your company email address.
Now you are ready to send the message out in a mailing to your database or use it as an auto responder email message that people receive when they complete a web form.
There is one warning for attachments - they can't be too big. No one likes to receive huge attachments that take too long to download. Relevant Tools will check the size of your message with the attachment when you send it and if it is too large you will not be able to send it. If you run into this situation just ask us about file upload as then you can upload the file and just include a link to to file instead of sending it as an attachment.
Labels: attachments, auto responder, email messages
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Put Web Forms to Work for You
Web forms on your website can help make your site more effective. The most common example of a web form is the contact form that almost every site has. Many contact forms collect the basic contact information along with the customer question and then email it on to the person responsible for customer support. But depending on your organization size it may take a few hours to a few days for the customer to get a response. By using an auto responder associated with the form that sends an immediate email message you can get a rapid response to the customer. While the auto responder message may not answer all of their questions it can offer answers to frequently asked questions and give them something to get started on.
The primary job of a web form is to collect information. The question is what do you do with the information after you have collected it. If the information arrives via email and you respond that may solve the immediate problem but it makes it difficult to go back and use the information later. If you store the information collected by the web form in a database you can easily find out how many people asked about a particular product and then send them an email when you are offering a special on the product that they are interested in.
You don't have to be technical to install a form on your website. Using Relevant Tools you can select that information you would like to collect. You can define custom fields to collect information that is specific to your business. Fields can be plain text or a text area such as used for entering a question or comment. You can also have radio buttons, check boxes and pull down menus so users can point and click and you will get the answers you need. Relevant Tools will generate the html to install on your website. We are available to help you if you have questions about how to install it or if you need help customizing the code to your exact requirements.
The primary job of a web form is to collect information. The question is what do you do with the information after you have collected it. If the information arrives via email and you respond that may solve the immediate problem but it makes it difficult to go back and use the information later. If you store the information collected by the web form in a database you can easily find out how many people asked about a particular product and then send them an email when you are offering a special on the product that they are interested in.
You don't have to be technical to install a form on your website. Using Relevant Tools you can select that information you would like to collect. You can define custom fields to collect information that is specific to your business. Fields can be plain text or a text area such as used for entering a question or comment. You can also have radio buttons, check boxes and pull down menus so users can point and click and you will get the answers you need. Relevant Tools will generate the html to install on your website. We are available to help you if you have questions about how to install it or if you need help customizing the code to your exact requirements.
Labels: auto responder, web forms
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Maintaining Your Email Database
Regular maintenance is required to get the most out of your email database. Databases need nutrients, grooming and a little loving attention.
For example, say you run a weight loss website and send out regular email newsletters to people who are interested in losing weight. New people can join through a signup web form on your site. When they signup you have an opportunity to collect information from them that can help you to serve them better. Ask what their weight loss goal is and how many pounds a week they are trying to lose.
You can use an auto responder that is setup to send out a sequence of emails at a specified period after they signup. The email after they receive immediately after they fill out the signup form is usually a thank you for joining type of email with information about your service. Then the next day you have the scheduled auto responder send them an inspirational email that will help remind them to come back to your website and take advantage of the services that you offer. And then every week after the signup date a personalized message can automatically be sent to them to see how they are doing achieving their goals and entice them to visit your website.
Your weekly email newsletter will typically go out to your entire database. This is where you need to groom your database. When you send email and the message can not be delivered it is considered a bounce. To maintain a good relationship with the different ISPs and keep the quality of your list high the bounces need to be removed. It doesn't do any good to try over and over to send to an invalid or suspended email address. Of course anyone receiving your email that does not want to receive it any longer must have a method of unsubscribing but that should be handled automatically by the service sending the email.
You need to also look at the behavior of the people receiving the email. Say one of your subscribers told you when they signed up that their goal was to lose 10 pounds at a half a pound a week. So if they have been successful they will have lost the 10 pounds in 20 weeks. So do you keep sending them weekly emails for a year or two until they get annoyed and forget that they signed up on your site in the first place and report the email as spam?
It would be better to find out how they are doing with their goals. You can have web form on your site where people enter how much they have lost each week and then you can display a graph of their weight loss to inspire them. Then you will know if you should send them a congratulatory email for achieving their weight loss goal and switch them over to the weight maintenance newsletter. If they have completely failed with the weight loss program and are not returning to your website after a lengthy period you should consider purging them or moving them to an less active mailing list as they are letting you know by their inaction that they are not interested any longer and it is a waste of your resources to continue to email to them.
For example, say you run a weight loss website and send out regular email newsletters to people who are interested in losing weight. New people can join through a signup web form on your site. When they signup you have an opportunity to collect information from them that can help you to serve them better. Ask what their weight loss goal is and how many pounds a week they are trying to lose.
You can use an auto responder that is setup to send out a sequence of emails at a specified period after they signup. The email after they receive immediately after they fill out the signup form is usually a thank you for joining type of email with information about your service. Then the next day you have the scheduled auto responder send them an inspirational email that will help remind them to come back to your website and take advantage of the services that you offer. And then every week after the signup date a personalized message can automatically be sent to them to see how they are doing achieving their goals and entice them to visit your website.
Your weekly email newsletter will typically go out to your entire database. This is where you need to groom your database. When you send email and the message can not be delivered it is considered a bounce. To maintain a good relationship with the different ISPs and keep the quality of your list high the bounces need to be removed. It doesn't do any good to try over and over to send to an invalid or suspended email address. Of course anyone receiving your email that does not want to receive it any longer must have a method of unsubscribing but that should be handled automatically by the service sending the email.
You need to also look at the behavior of the people receiving the email. Say one of your subscribers told you when they signed up that their goal was to lose 10 pounds at a half a pound a week. So if they have been successful they will have lost the 10 pounds in 20 weeks. So do you keep sending them weekly emails for a year or two until they get annoyed and forget that they signed up on your site in the first place and report the email as spam?
It would be better to find out how they are doing with their goals. You can have web form on your site where people enter how much they have lost each week and then you can display a graph of their weight loss to inspire them. Then you will know if you should send them a congratulatory email for achieving their weight loss goal and switch them over to the weight maintenance newsletter. If they have completely failed with the weight loss program and are not returning to your website after a lengthy period you should consider purging them or moving them to an less active mailing list as they are letting you know by their inaction that they are not interested any longer and it is a waste of your resources to continue to email to them.
Labels: auto responder, databases, web forms
