Hosting Your Own Program
(This section I kept in for historical reasons. Very few people still host their own autoresponder unless they are running their own website with it integrated.)
If you want more control and use a little bit more advanced techniques, you may want to consider hosting your own autoresponder program. I've tried several of them and one of most popular is Arpreach. It is easy to understand, easy to use and has some features I haven't found elsewhere.
One of the neat features is the ability to move a person from one autoresponder to another. Let's say that a person buys a product from me - Product A. Then, at a later point in time they buy Product B. I've been teaching them how to use Product A to create value and trust and they went through the entire series. Now when they purchase Product B, I can program the autoresponder to automatically take them off of the series for Product A and put them on the series for Product B.
Having your own autoresponder software also allows you to securely control your client database, including doing your own backups and not having to worry about the service you belong to going out of business or cancelling your account.
Tracking Your Results
(Below is true no matter how you send out your emails.)
Before you decide on what autoresponder service and/or program to use -- you must take into account how you want to track your results. Without tracking your results you will never be truly successful in marketing your product. The days of 'throwing something on the wall and seeing what sticks is over.' You have to be precise and pinpoint what is working and what is not.
That is why having a different link in every single message is so important. You need to know which messages are bringing in the results and which ones you need to rewrite to increase their effectiveness. All of the better autoresponder software programs now have built-in tracking link modules and you need to choose a system that does. You need to use it religiously and pay attention to what it is telling you.
On the other hand, although many programs and services now include a section for creating tracking links, some people that use a broad spectrum of advertising prefer to use a single system to keep track of everything they do. I personally prefer this approach, because I simply don't have the time to open a dozen programs a day to check on all my tracking links. If you prefer this approach, I would recommend using Hits Connect You get a 30 day free trial account to see for yourself all they have to offer. If you own your own domain, there are also several software programs you can purchase to handle it yourself.
One more point. Although like newsletter programs have an unsubscribe link, so do autoresponders. However, it has been my experience that some people will never read to the bottom to see it and end up sending you an email telling you to unsubscribe them. Do not ignore these emails. Always go in and manually unsubscribe them so they don?t cause you trouble in the future.