Follow up emails are important aspect of email marketing. A single email is often not enough. It needs repetition in order to get people to absorb, understand and act. There would be people who would respond immediately and there would be people who do not respond at all. There are people between these two extremes. Follow up mails are aimed at the people in between the extremes.
Autoresponders automate the process of follow up. Over the years autoresponders have evolved a lot to seamlessly integrate with lot of webscripts, shopping carts and blogs. This makes follow up very smooth.
But first a note about types of consumer behaviors.
Each person, with each marketing message and for each different type of product, has a specific responsive behavior. All markets can be divided into several, graduated segments based on such behaviors.
There are five type of responses that market generates:
- Innovators
- Early adopters
- Early majority
- Late majority and
- Laggards.
Innovators are risk-takers and make about 2.5% of the whole market. They represent the one extreme we just discussed. They respond to new offers almost immediately without giving them much thought.
Early adopters are the one who respond by taking action soon after the innovators do, but carefully. They represent 13.5% of the market.
Third and fourth groups constitute the largest segment. The early majority catches up the idea a bit later than early adopters but at the time when product is still new. They would suppress their temptation, watch the buzz and the product for a period before buying. The early majority represent 34% of any given market.
The late majority makes another 34% and are skeptical, careful and slow. They take their time, usually shop around and need to see offers more than a few times before giving them any consideration. They are the ones who would search for reviews , testimonials and other proofs of product performance.
The laggardsare the slowest lot and act usually after everyone else has done so. They consist of the remaining 16%.
If you look carefully the middle segment is the largest group that forms 68% of whole market. As a marketer one’s goal is to effectively reach, persuade and incite this larger segment.
Because that cannot happen with a single mailing, repeating your more than once is essential to move this group.
Autoresponders can be scheduled to send the messages on any given time. They also allow you to send scheduled announcements and offers.
Autoresponders are invaluable tool to get response from middle majority by sending automated follow up mails.
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Tags: Autoresponders, consumer behavior, email marketing, newsletter, response generator
Great post: Autoresponders and Follow up emails are key to keeping your subscribers interested, and keeping your messages relevant and personalized to them. I would only caution against too many emails too frequently.
I’d also like to point out the importance of the welcome email. The “welcome to the mailing list” email has the highest open rate out of any email message you will send. Email marketers should take advantage of this email by putting valuable information for the subscriber, as well as a call to action to increase conversions.
Thank you for sharing this information. I was looking more about understanding autoresponder and its importance on internet marketing tools. This really help me a lot.
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