July 12th "Autoresponders in Your World" Series, Part 10.

How Autoresponders Can Explode Your Article Marketing Results.

Think autoresponders and article marketing don’t go together? Think again. You may be the best writer in the world, but if you’re not converting readers into subscribers and eventually customers, your efforts are in vain. In order to become a great article marketer – not just a great wordsmith – incorporate autoresponders into your strategy.

Consider all four components of a successful article marketing campaign:

1. Original, high-quality, informative, niche-specific articles.
2. Resource Box.
3. Landing page reached by clicking resource box link.
4. Autoresponder code that captures contact information.

Each component, like teammates in a 4X100 track and field relay race, must work together to achieve results – in this case, more sign-ups for your business. The resource box, for example, is an essential link between your article and the autoresponder. These two or three lines after your article must entice readers to extend their relationship with you. It’s “call to action” should capitalize on the heightened sense of awareness generated by your words. To extend the track and field analogy, the resource box should “drive” your viewers to a landing page which in turn “hands off” the baton to the autoresponder anchor in order to win the list-building and sales generating race.

What are the best ways to use autoresponders? In the past, people were advised to set up each of their articles with a unique autoresponder address. This would permit easy tracking of important performance metrics to determine the effectiveness of a campaign, niche, etc. In addition, you would also maintain an article master list that included every address along with a brief description of the content.

However, promoting individual articles in this manner was extremely time-consuming, so marketers have opted for autoresponder campaigns, where the master list’s autoresponder address identifies a group of related articles. By opting into a newsletter, subscribers can receive a unified sequence of prewritten e-mails on a specific subject. To stay current, authors may contribute occasional broadcasts and/or edit their sequence accordingly.

Increasingly, leading autoresponder companies and article directories allow marketers to capitalize on synergies with well-known social media outlets. Consider some of the options already in place on the Internet that can extend your articles’ reach:

- Autoresponder services that give marketers the option of broadcasting messages to their Twitter followers.
- Article directories that connect you with Facebook and MySpace as expert and verified sources of information.
- RSS and other syndication feeds that originate from article directories and the blogosphere.
- Effective and creative use of widgets, including simple HTML autoresponder code for your websites.

Just remember to subtly direct new readers to your autoresponder!

Original, high-quality, informative, niche-specific articles attract readers – no doubt about it. Whether you submit them to directories, e-zine publishers, or your own blogs, they will improve your search engine rankings and establishing your credibility. However, without autoresponders, how can you initiate relationships that lead to subscribers, customers, and (ideally!) life-long buyers?

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Rahul Majumdar is an Information Marketer specializing in article marketing, list-building, and digital product creation. Sign up for more of his insights here.