Have you ever signed up for a self-directed email class? If you have you know what I'm talking about and you can skip to the next paragraph, but if you haven't, here's how it works: you register for a class and then over the course of several days (or possibly weeks) you get an email with the lessons for that time period. The ezines we talked about in Personal correspondence in bulk, are sent to the entire list at the same time—it could be immediate, or some time in the future, but the key here is that it's always at the same time.
An autoresponder, on the other hand, does not send an email to the entire list at the same time. It sends out emails one at a time based on the number of days a person has been subscribed to the list. As the author of the email lessons you can "set it and forget it." You write each of the daily messages and then let the autoresponder take care of the rest.
For example: a five-day class needs to have today's lesson, and four days of "tomorrow's" lesson. On Day 1 (or Day zero, depending on how you count), the student register for the class and is subscribed to the autoresponder. The first message is sent out. This might be a welcome message preparing the student for the class including any background reading they need to do, or you could simply launch into the first lesson. On day two, the autoresponder once again sends out an email, but this time it sends out a different email which contains the next lesson. And every day after that for the duration of the class, the autoresponder sends out a new email with the next bit of information for the student.
Every time a new student subscribes to the class, the autoresponder starts again. There's no need to be at your computer sending out individual emails! The autoresponder system takes care of that for you. Sound useful? You betcha it is!
You can do more than just classes though! How else could your business take advantage of autoresponders? Register for Effective Email Campaigns and find out. The class starts today!
