People like to get personal emails. So when you set up an autoresponder see if you can find a way to make the messages sound personal.

Of course they are not. Your sequence of emails was written before your customer emailed you. They are canned messages. And your readers will probably realize this. But a chatty, personalized e-mail is certainly going to work more for you than a cold, formal, official note with a stern, no-nonsense tone.

Am I right? Which of the two would you prefer to receive?

You can make your e-mail messages look personal by doing two simple things.

First, write with one, real customer in mind. Think that you are writing to them, specifically, when you write your autoresponder sequence. My old drama teacher at high school used to say we should speak from the stage as if we were addressing a little old lady in an old, frayed coat sitting in the back row, clutching her handbag. Not to the audience in general, but to one particular person. He said when we thought about our lines that way, we would find ourselves delivering them effectively to everyone in the hall. And a few years later, at journalism school, our broadcasting tutor used to tell us to read the news bulletin as if we were speaking to just one listener. This would make our delivery personable. If, instead, we spoke as if addressing an audience of tens of thousands, we would sound wooden and, he taught us.

Both these men were right. And you should apply what they taught when you write your e-mail sequences. In your mind’s eye picture a single reader, and write for them.

Second suggestion is to make use of all the information fields in your autoresponder. When a visitor fills in your e-mail form on your web site you will certainly be asking for their name and e-mail. But you can ask them to give you more information about themselves. Consider asking for more, personal information. And then when it comes time to build your autoresponder e-mail sequence you can put some of these personal details right into the body of the message. Just what details are appropriate will vary from business to business. But they might include things like location, age category, preferences and so on. Merge them with your message, and while people will know your e-mail has been generated by the computer yet they will appreciate the warm touch.

Try this and see what difference it makes.

The web can make you giddy with its potential.

For example, a year ago there were 2,733 million searches a month being made just on Google. that will be much higher now.

At the same time, however, you know of web sites that are getting a miserable trickle of visitors, or a reasonable number who don’t buy much. Perhaps your own site is like this, and you’re wondering why. It’s enough to get depressed over.

Don’t.

And don’t let yourself be carried away by the enormous number of people who use the Internet to get information or buy what they need.

There is just one, simple thing you need to do: get in front of people who want your product and will pay you for it. Step into your niche. Find your target market. And you will make your sales.

Even if there are more than 100 million searches a day on Google, so what? How many of them will buy your product (or service) from you? Only those people who are ready-made customers.

Here are two tools that will help you find, and keep, people who will pay for your product.

(1) Get the keywords people use to search for products like yours and optimize your site for these words.

There are tools you can use to find keywords that people are actually using right now as they search on the Internet. Dozens of these tools are evaluated and reviewed at this , which I recommend:
www.keywordworkshop.com

That is step one.

When you’ve optimized your site, begin search engine marketing based on these keywords. If you need some help with this get in touch with me — I help people like you get on page one of Google.

(2) Offer your visitors a useful, free report on your industry or topic

People look on the Internet for information to help them make their buying decisions. This is a fact. And you know this, because you do it yourself.

There are two comments I’d make about this: one, people looking for information are usually will to pick up useful, free reports; and two, people who come to your site can quickly move away to another one.

Even though they fully intend to return, you may never see them again. You need a way to automatically make contact with a visitor who has left you.

Here’s how you can get visitors returning to you. Offer them a useful report in return for their name and e-mail address, then send it out by automated e-mail on an autoresponder. Set up your autoresponder so that the initial report gift is followed up by a short, personalized series of emails helping them with the report and reminding them of your web site and your services or products.

The report needs only be a short four or five page document, saved as a PDF, that you or your office can whip up in an hour or two. Not much work for you, since you know your industry. But valuable for a visitor, perhaps, who is thinking of making a purchase of a product offered by you and your industry competitors.

The autoresponder service I recommend is Firebirdpro. Because it’s priced below the big ‘name’ autoresponders, but delivers the same features and has been set up to get past the spam filters of all the big e-mail services like Hotmail and Google mail.