[Tutorial] How to create an autoresponder sequence with GetResponse

Overview

The time has come to get serious about your email marketing strategy. Thanks to your email marketing provider, you can automate the emails you send very easily. In this way you can make your business work for you 24 hours a day .

If you want an email marketing provider that makes it easy for you, your option is GetResponse  (it's the one I use myself). In this post I am going to show you how to create your automated email sequence (what we call an autoresponder) and how to manage this sequence.

Go to Menu>> Autoresponders.

Click Create autoresponder.

Give your message an internal name.

Choose the list linked to the autoresponder. 

Assign the autoresponder to a specific day in a cycle. 

Select if you want to send the message on same time signed up, with a delay of, or exactly at a specific time.

Choose the days of the week you’d like for the message to go out on.

Select the from and reply-to addresses.

Add your message subject line.

Next click Design message to design how your message should look like. For more on using the new editor visit this section.

Choose if you want to send the message as a source to Google Analytics.

Click Save, or Save and Publish if you want the message to go live right away.

What is an autoresponder

The million dollar question. «Paco, you are a tutorial piece that you are working on, but what is that about autoresponders? Can I really automate tasks in my business? Look, I'm a small company and I don't have many resources. Not to mention that this technology does not suit me.

Do not worry, you can and you will see that it is very easy to do it.

Read the Post: GetResponse Review and Pricing -Email Marketing Service

An autoresponder sequence (or simple autoresponder) consists of a series of emails that are sent automatically if a previously established condition is met . For example, after registering a subscriber on our mailing list, we can send them a series of emails like the following:

Subscription confirmation-Welcome-Who we are-What they say about us-Discount offer

Previously, we had to create the emails to be sent. We can also indicate in what period we want the emails to be sent (immediately, wait a few hours, send after a couple of days ...)

We can even develop more complex workflows based on the behavior of subscribers with our emails (opening, clicks on links, etc.).

Let's see below how to create an autoresponder sequence with GetResponse . In this way it is easier to understand what they consist of, how they work and the potential they have.

Create an autoresponder with GetResponse

In the old version of GetResponse  there were two types of autoresponders:

Time-based autoresponders.

They allow you to configure an automated message to be delivered to each subscriber at a specific time after their subscription.

Stock-based autoresponders . Here the possibilities are much more varied.

Although this option as such has disappeared, it is useful to start working with autoresponders. And not just with GetResponse , but with any other email marketing provider. At the end of the day, as you will see, an autoresponder consists of using logic, rather than having technological knowledge or handling one or another of the tools on the market.

Conditions, Actions and Filters

GetResponse  bases its workflows on three types of elements: conditions, actions, and filters . These elements are combined with each other to create workflows that guide the subscriber through their experience with your online business.

The first thing you will need to create your autoresponder is to define a condition . In this way, when this condition occurs, the mail flow of the autoresponder sequence you define will be executed.

You can have one or more conditions for the same autoresponder. In fact, I have several conditions configured in the autoresponder of my own website.

The actions  are elements that define what happens when a condition occurs. For example, send a welcome email when we have a new subscriber.

You can see the types of existing actions in the image:

Finally, filters allow us to create subscriber segments. For example, we can send a discount coupon to the first 100 subscribers.

The types of filters that you can use in GetResponse are the ones you see in this image:

Create our first autoresponder step by step

To create an autoresponder,

 you have to go to Automation  in the top menu of the Control Panel and select Create a workflow  in the drop-down menu that appears. 

The first thing we will do is put the name of our autoresponder and choose between the 6 conditions that GetReponse allows us to start the workflow.

 

In our case, we are going to choose the condition Subscribed .

 In this condition it is important that you remember that the subscription only occurs when the subscriber has confirmed the subscription. The use of double opt-in is mandatory for the European Union, the United States and Canada.

Clicking the Subscribe option opens the editor. 

On the left side of the screen we have some grids that are our workspace . On the right, we have the edit menu . It is from this menu where we will add, just by dragging and dropping with the mouse, the actions that we want to carry out in our autoresponder sequence.

For our example, 

we will choose the Wait option and edit the time that we want to pass between the subscription and this first message. Next, we select the Send Message action . With the three elements on our workspace, what I like the most about GetResponse begins . 

We join the three action boxes and we already have our first message configured. To join the different elements of our autoresponder, 

we just have to click on the lower circle in the box of the first element that we want to join and, without releasing the mouse click, we drag to the element that we want to relate. You can see how it looks in the following image.

If you repeat the process of integrating the Wait and Send Message actions , you can extend your sequence as long as you need. In the example we are following, I have included two more actions.

Manage an autoresponder with Getresponse

To access the autoresponders that you have created you have to go to the Automation> Manage workflows menu  .

On the screen that will appear, you will find all the workflows that you have created. Choose the one you want to manage and you can edit, copy or delete it. As simple as that.

Example of autoresponder sequence

The secret to creating an engaging autoresponder cycle is to make each message more informative than the last, gradually making your subscribers aware of your business features and the benefits of your offering.

Example

Day 1:  Welcome email.

Day 2:  Introducing your offer

Day 4:  Information on how to use your product (for example, a tutorial).

Day 6:  User advice to get the maximum benefit from your product.

Day 8:  Frequently asked questions and customer support information.

Day 10:  "Social proof": a success story from one of your clients.

Day 12:  Closing message inviting more contacts.

As you can see, having a great company tool is available to your business for very little money. Think about how much it would cost you to hire one or more people to carry out these tasks and then think about whether or not it is worth starting a good email marketing strategy.

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