I’ve heard some comments floating around that with the coming of social media marketing , e-mail marketing is on the way out. And consequently, you might not even need to have an autoresponder any more.
I don’t think so!
Yes, the social web (and prior to that, simple blogs, and prior to that, plain old discussion boards) does change the game in terms of being able to engage more intimately with your listeners, and make much deeper relationships than you had previously. But no matter how integrated social media becomes in all of our lives, e-mail is STILL not going anywhere.
E-mail is quite simply too convenient, too useful, too integral to our lives TODAY, and, get this, TOO PRIVATE to end up obsolete.
Not everything is meant to be a social, public message; and although every social network has a private messaging system, e-mail is the best cross-platform solution to communicating in a trusted, private way. Instead of thinking about social media against e-mail (auto-responders) vs blogs, as a marketer you really should be thinking in a different way. It shouldn’t be a question of which method you should use: instead, it should depend on the message and the situation. For example, cars are useful, but I’m certainly not going to use one to get from my kitchen to my living room!
The key is to think in the right way and use each tool for the unique purpose it was meant for, and to integrate these tools together as much as possible. For that, you really need to buy an autoresponder or get some type of autoresponder system. That is the ONLY resource out there that successfully intergrates all of these methods, gives you a central place to manage your business and your message AND gives you valuable ownership of the most critical business asset you will ever own: your list.
Hey, blogs are a great way to get engaging ideas to your listeners in a public way such that group discussion can take place in a place that you own. But, how do you ensure that people come back? Until recently, the answer was an RSS feeder, but frankly many internet users either don’t know what an RSS feed is, or don’t have a reader set up. By integrating your autoresponder service into your blog, you can now send out a broadcast message to subscribers (using the same old e-mail opt in form that everyone is familiar with), and you can choose the frequency that your messages are sent. In this way, you can create a “blog-zine” that sends out a message for every blog post you make, or even every 10 or 20 , etc. Your choice.
Engagement on social media platforms offers the largest conversion rate that you can get, but participating continuously in multiple platforms effectively is a strain on your time or resources. Now, with these autoresponder services you can integrate your social media channels right into your autoresponder and send a message to your social outlets with each broadcast.
Lastly, NOTHING can replace the true impact of a well-crafted autoresponder series like a good autoresponder service can, for the purpose that it serves. Not blogs, and not social networks. Think it’s not personal enough? Try again. It all comes down to your writing. I have some autoresponder series that are so engaging and personal that many have taken the time to write back multiple- page long e-mails telling me pretty private things about themselves. And all of that from an autoresponder series!
