There are no two ways about it. E-mail is still the primary way business owners are communicating with their customers and subscribers. E-mail is used to answer questions follow up with potential customers confirm purchases provide information of interest and maintain relationships. Its a vital source of income for any successful Internet business.

Now Im sure you already understand this, but let me ask you a serious question: Are you managing your e-mail as efficiently as you could be? Statistics from a recent Jupiter Media Metrix report say not.

Only 38% of online businesses are reported to be living up to customers expectations, responding to their inquiries within 6 hours or less:

• 62% are taking longer than 6 hours to respond
• 33% are taking 3 days (or longer!) to respond
• And a shocking 24% of businesses have thrown up their hands and given up responding to customer inquiries entirely!

And all of these disturbing statistics point to the simple fact that, despite all of the technology available, nearly three quarters of web site owners have no idea how to manage their e-mail. After all, why else would you so severely neglect the critical and extremely valuable relationship with your customers and subscribers?

Ive seen it happen to some really intelligent business owners. You start out with the best of intentions. You grow your web site traffic you run a few successful promotions and suddenly you go from personally answering a handful of e-mails each day to drowning under hundreds of customer inquiries, questions, and requests Managing your e-mail suddenly becomes a full-time job!

If you plan to grow your business, you cant afford to be spending your days chained to your computer, replying to e-mail after e-mail individually. Especially if you want to grow quickly! Even if youre using canned messages (i.e. pre-written e-mails that can just be cut & paste), looking after your e-mail one by one can fast become overwhelming.

And this is where a lot of new e-business owners find themselves stuck. You may be there yourself right now. Youre tired of wasting your days replying to the same e-mails over and over again but automation is even more intimidating. Replying to hundreds of e-mails each day probably seems a lot less daunting than finally buckling down and getting automated.

I know where youre coming from The mysterious scripts and software that seem to magically automate the average e-commerce web site can be a bit intimidating for a new e-business owner.

You know that, somehow, automation should give you the power to

• Anticipate and instantly respond to the needs of your customers by answering common questions on the spot.

• Give potential customers the exact information they need, exactly when they need it when theyre still a hot prospect so they can make that important buying decision.

• Capture the e-mail addresses of visitors to your web site so that you can market to them again and again for free!

• Increase the perceived value of your web site by offering free reports or articles that can be e-mailed to prospects the minute they request them!

• Dramatically reduce the time you waste on daily chores so you can start growing your business instead of getting trapped running it!

• Start capitalizing on the lifetime value of your existing customers automatically increasing your sales without increasing your workload!

and much more.

You see other e-businesses doing it all around you taking advantage of this mysterious "automation," freeing up their time to increase their profits even more. But how the heck is everyone doing it? Is it "I Dream of Jeannie" wizardry? Cross your arms, wiggle your nose, and voila instant automation?

Almost

Like anything, you can make the automation of your web site as simple or as complicated as you want. Large e-commerce sites hire programmers with education and experience to put together intuitive automation systems that make learning to translate Greek to Latin seem easy. Fortunately, the average web site owner just starting out doesnt need anything nearly this complicated (or confusing!).

Did you know that all of the automation Ive mentioned so far in this article can be accomplished with one simple tool called "autoresponders"?

Automate Your Customer Service And Dramatically Increase
The Sales You Close With This One Simple Tool...

Now dont panic!

Autoresponders are not difficult to use So take a deep breath and lets get past any techno-phobia that might be preventing you from making your life a lot easier and your business a lot more profitable!

An autoresponder is basically an e-mail tool that is designed to automatically respond to any incoming messages to a particular e-mail address that you set up. Confused? Then let me give you an example that will clearly illustrate exactly how this works

Example #1:

A visitor arrives at your web site and reads your sales copy. They're interested in your product, but they have a question that needs to be answered before they'll consider making a purchase. So they e-mail you at faq@yoursite.com (an e-mail address youve set up for just this purpose).

Your experience answering customer questions has shown you that there are 10 or 12 questions people ask over and over again. So rather than answering each person individually, you put together a "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) e-mail. You spend an hour or so writing it, making sure that it's thorough and that it ultimately directs the reader back to your web site to close the sale.

You then set up this FAQ e-mail in an autoresponder, so when the visitor e-mails their question to faq@yoursite.com, they are automatically sent your FAQ e-mail. Its neat, clean, and simple.

The e-mail your visitor receives might read something like this:

Within 5 minutes of sending their e-mail to faq@yoursite.com, the visitor receives your e-mail via your autoresponder. They read through your FAQ e-mail and find the answer to their question.

The visitor is impressed because

and this means that you look extremely professional. This instant reply also lends your business a measure of credibility because you've made it clear that your customers are your first priority and that you take your business very seriously.

Do you think this visitor will go back to your web site to make their purchase? Chances are very good that they will. In fact, the probability that you will close this sale is much higher than if you had forced this person to wait a week for a reply. Or hadn't answered at all.

How much time did this take you? None. You wrote the e-mail and then used the autoresponder to automate your customer service. You now provide fast, high-quality customer service, decrease your workload, and only respond to customers who have unique questions or situations that need your personal touch. Itll take you just minutes each day to respond to customer inquiries instead of the hours it did before you got automated!

Let me give you another example

Example #2:

If youve been reading this newsletter for a while, then you already know that a critical step in closing sales involves establishing your credibility. And establishing your credibility, in many cases, requires repeated contact with potential customers.

A good way to initiate a "second contact" with a potential customer is by using autoresponders.

A visitor arrives at your web site and starts looking around. They notice that you offer a free article titled "The Best Ways To Save Time And Money." They click on freearticle@yoursite.com and are prompted to send a blank e-mail to this e-mail address.

The visitor is quite content to take 30 seconds to do this because they want this valuable information.

So they send a blank e-mail to freearticle@yoursite.com to request the article from your autoresponder... they spend a few more minutes looking around your web site... and then they leave. They have a clear interest in your product or service (they requested your article on the subject, right?), but they're just not ready to buy yet.

Now this is the really powerful part. The visitor checks their e-mail half an hour after they've left your web site perhaps even the next day and discovers your free article waiting in their Inbox. They read it because they requested it and therefore already know it contains information that is of interest to them.

So this is your second chance to:

1. Prove your expertise,
2. Establish your credibility,
3. Develop a relationship with them by providing valuable information they can use, and
4. Direct them back to your web site to close the sale!

Pretty powerful, right?

Now imagine how you could increase your sales even more by sending this potential customer a follow-up e-mail using the e-mail address they gave you when they requested the article and asking them if there is anything else you could help them with? Or even by sending them a special offer as a "thank you" for reading your article?

The possibilities are endless really. You could offer autoresponders like

• salesinfo@yoursite.com for people who would prefer to receive your sales information in an easy-to-print e-mail they can read offline. (Not everyone has free Internet access, so this saves them money!)

• article@yoursite.com to send interested potential customers copies of articles that initiate that important "second contact" and remind them about your business, your products, and your web site. Once you have their e-mail address (which they obviously have to give you in order to receive the article via e-mail), you can contact them again to follow up very easily!

• faq@yoursite.com to answer potential customers questions on the spot, while theyre still a hot prospect, and dramatically increase the sales you're closing.

• instructions@yoursite.com for customers who have purchased your product, service, software, etc but need a bit of extra help using it. This simple e-mail could answer commonly asked technical questions automatically!

Were back at square one, arent we? You want the autoresponders and the powerful automation they can bring your e-business you have a general understanding of how they work but how the heck do you add them to your web site?

Good question. You have 4 choices: