Have you ever signed up for something online and then immediately received a follow-up email? Welcome to the world of autoresponders. They enrich the user experience by making the web more interactive and, in the case of a small business, they help to reassure those who opt in for your products or services that there’s someone

on the other end of that button they clicked.

Many online services offer autoresponders—Constant Contact, MailChimp and InfusionSoft are examples. The basic process is for someone to fill out a form on your website, offering something like a free CD, a teleseminar or a newsletter signup. After they click “submit” an email acknowledging them appears in their inbox. There is usually a short message thanking them for signing up, along with an explanation of what comes next—the shipment of a package, another confirmation email, the details of when a webinar will be held… But that’s just what the site visitor sees.

On the back end, the real beauty of a service with an autoresponder is that each person who fills out the form gets added to a database holding all of your contacts. This is also referred to as your list. This eliminates added steps like manually adding them to your Contact list in your email client because it is all done automatically, saving your time over and over again. Once their name is in your database it is possible to send other messages, or even initiate a bulk mailing, all with the objective of nurturing your contact list for the future. Pretty cool, huh?

To your business success!