Some of you are probably familiar with the notion of an email autoresponder; but for those who aren’t… an autoresponder is a program that sends one or more automated messages in response to either an email or a Web form inquiry. It may be as simple as “Thanks for contacting us!” to a series of 10 or more emails sent at specified intervals.
For whatever reason, autoresponders have a fairly low adoption rate among B2Bs; and Kate Headen Waddell believes that’s mostly because they’re not well understood. It certainly can’t be difficulty of use: you simply set up your response in an autoresponder system (from Constant Contact, AWeber or another of numerous providers), set the parameters for when it gets sent, and the program takes care of the rest.
Posting on Savvy B2B Marketing, Kate argues that “unless …. emails and web inquires go to a specific person who responds personally to each one within a few hours, you should – at the very least – have an autoresponder set up that thanks the person for contacting you, lets them know when they can expect a response from a real person, and provides them with a phone number they can call if they need help right away.” Hey…it’s only good business.
A more effective – though not really more complex – usage is to basically set up your entire nurturing campaign as an autoresponder series …and Kate gives a hypothetical example of a six-step peel-the-onion approach that takes the prospect from thank-you note to an industry-expert analysis of your product.
Too many B2Bs are insufficiently aware of the tools that are available to help them manage growth …and this is one. Don’t let increasing volume trap you into failing to properly care for prospective buyers who have responded favorably to your website content, blog or emails; they’re the reason you do all this, and an autoresponder is the perfect answer to too much of a good thing.
