Personalizing Autoresponders
Although quite different, autoresponders are like two peas in a pod. They provide a series of automated emails that users will receive after signing up for an account - the only difference is that one provides such an email to schedule individual responses, while the other is meant to follow-up on people who initiated contact with you. When it comes to personalizing and optimizing your autoresponder, there are certain steps you should take for both functions. Hopefully, this write up will help you along.
Let's start with the one that is meant to follow-up on subscribers. When you're creating your autoresponder you probably set it to be triggered by a specific action - to put it simple, your email will go off after someone clicks on a link in your email. If they don't click on the link, they won't get anything out of it from an attention standpoint. You can change this behavior by adding a Bounce List; this would add subscribers who didn't open the email or ignored the resend option (resubmitting the same email for people that haven't opened it for some reason).
That's exactly what we need to do in order to personalize the autoresponder. We add people to this list who have not engaged with us as much or have recently opened another piece of our content; it is great for resending something that was sent out before and wasn't read to give them an incentive to check it out. You'll also want to make sure that you're sending a Unique Autoresponder (or one with good segmentation) in order for the auto responder to be personalized; you wouldn't want your regular autoresponder message flying around, after all.
What about the other side of autoresponders? It's actually different in terms of personalization as well. Setup is quick and easy, no matter if you're using the standard or a custom autoresponder form. Selecting people's emails for sending to them is even easier, and it's just as much about finding out your subscribers' attention metrics as it is about sending them notifications based on their behavior.
There are actually two ways to do this, one less effective than the other. You can:
Find out what activity they have done in the past, so that you can send an email that they would see in their inbox (This will also depend on your segmentation). Use the "With" field to segment subscribers on what they are doing in your email campaign (with a personal message).
*** Add Unique Autoresponder Settings for this activity ***
Each of these options is described in depth throughout the /u/Kallman_Reddit userbase, and if you have any questions or doubts don't hesitate to ask them here. This can almost be summarized by adding one more step - selecting the right type of email style.
Depending on what you're trying to achieve, you can choose a Quick Message, Follow-Up Message or an Email Series.
Quick Messages are great for communicating and letting people know that you've read their message and that you're acting on it. Of course, the value of this message depends on the nature of your company; if it is meant to increase brand loyalty and boost sales, a simple "Thank You" might not be enough. That's why these messages are best used with a Message Series - they can offer more trust by showing people where you stand in terms of your business goals.
Follow-Up Messages are often used as a thank you, or a way to reach out to your subscribers and remind them of something that they might need. It's effective to set up such messages so that they can be sent on a regular basis, at least once a day.
Email Series are meant to act on an idea, and can be sent from the same prompt. Although the value of this type of message is similar to Quick Messages (it is designed for thanking people for their support), it doesn't hurt your brand's image as much if you send out these notifications via an email series.
Another thing you'll want to consider when personalizing autoresponders with segmentation is working with A/B testing . This is an increasingly popular way to make your campaign more effective, increase sales and boost subscriber engagement. Unsurprisingly, creating A/B tests is quite easy on Constant Contact, and most of the work is done for you by the company's software.
What you need to do is set up two different messages - the first one would be sent out en masse to all of your subscribers. The second message would be segmented in such a way that you select people who should see the second message (if they are not in this group, they will receive the first message). This way you can test out different pieces of content or different strategies without running separate campaigns. After all, if you're working with segmentation you're probably not just testing something out to see what happens - you know exactly who is in this group and you want to see how effective your message is.
Personalization is important, but it's also important that you don't overdo it. This can be a difficult thing to do, especially when the people's attention isn't what it used to be; there are two sides to this coin. First of all, if you send out too many autoresponders your subscribers may get annoyed and start ignoring them. On the other side of the coin though - sending too many messages without segmentation can lead to a lot of waste of time and money as well. After all, you only have so many subscribers, and it is better to spread these out by setting up fewer but more personalized autoresponders.
When working with personalization on Constant Contact (as well as other solutions) you can start with either an Autoresponder or an Email Series, or both - however it works for you. With autoresponders, there will be a bit more work put into them because they are given more custom foundations and possibly different layouts as well.
Conclusion
No matter how many times you go through Constant Contact, you will always be able to take it from another perspective. This is why it is such an effective marketing platform, and why it's a great time investment. Remember - getting the most out of your autoresponders doesn't just mean that you're working with them on the right website. It means that you're taking advantage of the strategies we've talked about in this article.