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At this point I imagine you are thinking who in the world would jump through the double opt-in hoop to become a member of your list. It seems like you are asking a lot from your visitor doesn't it? How many people can you possibly expect to go through all of this just to get access to the free information you are offering? That of course depends on your offer. Please check the "List Building" section of this website for further tips on constructing your opt-in offer.

Generally speaking I like to see about 50% of my website visitors opting into my list. If I am not achieving this target number then I will continue to improve my free offer until I do. The challenge of getting the initial opt-in really isn't much of a challenge in most cases. Getting them to complete the action of the double opt-in can be however.

What I find is that about 70% of the people who opt-in to my lists will take the double opt-in action. I think the way I prepare the opt-in for the required double opt-in action has something to do with that. If you opted in to Bob's list then you noticed that as soon as you clicked the "Send me Johnny's Tips" button, you were immediately re-routed to a page that explained the double opt-in procedure and showed a screen shot of the email you were about to receive. The page also had the confirmation link circled and explained that you needed to click that link to receive my free offer. This of course prepared you for what was about to happen and made you aware that you needed to watch for that confirmation email.

The page also showed that the reason I was requiring this action was to protect you from receiving SPAM. I think this helps to build a little bit of trust from the opt-in and shows them that you have their best interests in mind, which in time helps to convert more double opt-ins to my list. I could have just routed the optin to the sales page for the coaching guide and been done with it. But I am taking a chance that the opt-in will take the measure to complete the double opt-in action and then they will be redirected to my sales page.

As a result of setting it up this way, only the people that have completed the double opt-in action will ever see my sales page. I am giving up some traffic no doubt, but I am building a much higher quality list. My line of thinking is that if somebody won't even make the effort to complete one simple requirement to receive the free information, then the chances are very slim that they are actually going to take out their wallet and pay for my paid product. I am sure I lose a few sales but I will make up for that by having a much higher quality list and low spam complaints.

Fewer spam complaints means that I have taken actions to insure that I will have an autoresponder service to use in my business. I will make up for a few lost sales on the front end because I will have a better list to market offers to on the backend.

It's a personal choice I have made. I want quality over quantity for my lists. This doesn't mean that I don't want to build my lists as large as I possibly can. But I want them to be large, responsive lists that I can market to through my autoresponder follow-up contacts.

You should use these follow-up emails to build a relationship with your list and to possibly make them products offers. The follow-up sequence is your salesman and the key ingredient in your autopilot business.

Please see the List Building section of the Net Biz Boardroom for further discussion on how to use your follow-up sequence.

Broadcast Email Function

The broadcast function on your autoresponder allows you to send out an email to your entire list at will. You might have a new product to introduce and wish to send an email out to your list to make that announcement. Maybe something relevant to your product niche happened in the news today. The broadcast function makes it very easy to send out a quick email pointing your list member to that news story.

The broadcast function allows you to send out emails that you do not necessarily want to be included in your follow-up sequence.

Summary

By now you have a very good basic understanding of what an autoresponder is, and how to use one. If you want to maximize your chances for success, you will begin to use one in your business as soon as possible.

My recommendation to you is to use Aweber Communications. However there are other services available. Another major service is GetResponse. You can perform a Google search and find others. However I will not recommend a service that I haven't used successfully myself.

Now go setup that autoresponder  :)

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