How To Automate Your Emails Using GetResponse Autoresponder

Ever received an email after signing up for something?

Yes, we all get those. But did you know that those emails are automatically sent to you as soon as you sign up?

How does it happen? How to automate your emails? It’s no rocket science! As a beginner, I always wondered how people send automated emails. As I started my blogging career and was into it for several months, I finally decided to build an email list. Naturally, I also learned how to send automated emails.

If you are a blogger and haven’t started an email list already, then you are missing out on a lot of high-quality traffic to your website. I too regret not starting an email list sooner.

In this article, for those of you who do not have the slightest idea about how to automate your emails, I will be showing an immensely easy way to automate your email marketing campaigns with my favourite email marketing service, GetResponse, which is one of the best email automation tools out there.

This article will focus only on Autoresponder. An email autoresponder is a tool that sends an automatic email in response to a pre-defined trigger event. An example of a trigger event can be newsletter signups.

This article is the second in my email marketing series. In the previous article, I explained how to build an email list by collecting emails from your website visitors. I recommend you check out that post first and then lead your way back to this post as you may find it difficult to understand certain things here in this one.

Disclosure: Some links in this article are my affiliate links. If you buy any product through any of these links, I’ll get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Such a commission helps me to stay motivated and produce more such content. Thanks in advance if you buy anything from my affiliate links.

With that being said, let’s start without further ado.

What is email automation?

In the simplest words, email automation is the process of sending out emails to people subscribing to your email list automatically without needing to do anything every time an email is sent.

There are various email automation tools in the market today which do the work for you. Whenever someone signs up for your email list or submits his/her email for downloading a free resource (like an E-book), they are automatically sent a welcome email (which you have already designed).

Sounds cool, right?

It is not limited to welcome messages. You can even choose to send a series of different emails throughout a specific period of time.

For example, you can choose to send:

• A welcome email on the first day

• A second email about the resources you use on the second day

• The third email regarding a book that has taught you blogging, on the third day

• And so on…

But, this article’s scope is only limited to an autoresponder. That means, sending emails over a period of time isn’t covered in this post.

Benefits of email automation

1. Saves your time

Time is your most valuable asset. You don’t want to utilize it for sending emails to your audience every time someone signs up for your email list. The time saved with email automation can be focused on tasks that need your special attention.

2. Personalized experience for your audience

When you send out an automated email, the email is sent with that person’s name. This is because email automation collects the data from your email list and then sends emails accordingly.

Moreover, you can have different email lists for different target audiences (blog readers, existing customers, prospects). You can send personalized messages to each of these target segments.

3. Error-free process

Manual work isn’t error-free. You might enter a person’s name wrong in a welcome mail. Getting someone’s name wrong is a cardinal sin in email marketing. But when you have an automated system doing all the work, there’s no scope for errors.

4. Higher conversion rates

When you plan in advance the automated email outflow, there’s a great chance of your leads converting into buyers. You get the leads into a systematic funnel through a series of emails which will foster a buying environment for them.

Enough with the theory, let’s move on to the practical aspect where I’ll be showing how to automate your emails.

How To Automate Your Emails With GetResponse Autoresponder

An email autoresponder is a tool that sends an automatic email in response to a pre-defined trigger event such as someone signing up for your newsletter.

The Autoresponder feature of GetResponse helps you automate your email marketing campaigns very effectively.

Let us see how to use this feature.

• Create a free account on GetResponse.

• From your dashboard, navigate to the ‘Tools‘ tab and select ‘Autoresponders‘.

• Click on ‘Create Autoresponder‘.

On the next page, you will need to configure your Autoresponder.

First, give a name to your autoresponder. This is for your reference.

Also, select the list for which you want the autoresponder to work. A list is basically where all your subscribers’ information will be stored. You can have different lists for different purposes (for newsletter subscriptions, lead magnets, etc.) I selected the “Infoverses53” list that I had created before.

Creating a list in GetResponse is very simple. Check the first post in this series to learn how to do that. I highly recommend checking out that post first. All the basics are covered in that post.

Next….

• Autoresponder settings: Under this section, you need to determine when will the email be sent. For a welcome email, the most common is Day Zero (the same time as the sign-up time). You can also choose to send it on the 2nd day (doesn’t make sense though). If you want to send a message with a slight delay (2 hours), you can even do that. Also, select all the days on which your emails are allowed to be sent.

• Next, select the email address which will be used for sending and receiving mail. By default, you will see the address with which you signed up on GetResponse. There is an option to add a new address. Add a new email address and confirm it.

• Then, create a unique subject line. This is the first thing your subscribers will see.

Here comes the feature of sending emails with the subscriber’s name on them. To personalize an email, simply click on the small icon next to the emoji icon. It lets you select components like ‘name‘, ‘firstname‘, ‘surname‘, etc.

Here’s an example:

Suppose a person named John Washington signs up for your email list. He will enter his first name as ‘John’ and his surname as ‘Washington’.

Now in the Subject line if you enter, “Hey [[firstname]], Welcome to Infoverses”, then the welcome email that John will see will have the subject line as “Hey John, Welcome to Infoverses” (see below). Isn’t it cool?

In the next step, you are required to design your actual email. The body of the email, the header, and footer, etc. You can choose from readymade templates or design one completely from scratch.

Most of the editing process is self-explanatory and I believe you can easily do it on your own.

Next, make sure to turn on ‘Click tracking‘ as it will let you know how many people clicked and opened your emails. This way, you can figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.

Finally, if everything looks good, click on ‘Save and publish‘.

Voila! your autoresponder is now live. If anyone signs up on your email list, they will receive the email that you just designed and configured.

If you are wondering, how will people sign up for your email list and how would the autoresponder identify such people, then check out my blog post on “collecting emails from website visitors for building an email list“.

I highly recommend using GetResponse for your email marketing campaigns. I have been using it for a while now and it works absolutely fine for me. What’s more, GetResponse has a free account that will be sufficient for beginners. The free account lets you store up to 500 contacts (which is more than required).

You can upgrade to a paid plan according to your blog’s needs.

How To Automate Your Emails: Conclusion

Email marketing is inarguably the best way to get more traffic to your website or blog and in turn, increase your sales or conversions. The very first step in email marketing is to build an email list which is explained in my first post of this email marketing series. Go check it out!

After you have built an email list, the next step is to send automated emails whenever someone signs up for your list. This is what an Autoresponder does. Remember, an Autoresponder doesn’t send emails over a period of time. It just sends out an email upon a specific trigger like an email list sign-up.

An autoresponder saves you time and you can focus on the tasks that are more important.

Go get your free GetResponse account today and start your email marketing campaigns easily.

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Read the next post in the series: How to create an email newsletter completely for free