I have been working on the net since 1998, when I started clicking banners for pennies. If nothing else, it’s been a roller coaster ride “earning while learning,” and one thing I’ve learned to count on is this: About the time that you master a hot marketing technique, it quits working effectively and something new comes along.
One thing that has never gone off the rails, however, is list-building. Once you build a good list, you can market to it, assuming that you have earned the trust and respect of your readers.
You cannot, however, build that list without the right tool to communicate with subscribers. Sure, you can do it with your email client, but if you are successful at attracting subscribers, you will rapidly reach the point where it is simply overwhelmed.
In addition, using your email account may subject you to termination by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) if even one of your subscribers complains about unwanted commercial email.
Autoresponders
Autoresponders make it easy for you to create profitable customer relationships. Email marketing tools like professional subscription forms & autoresponder services make it easy for you to build an email list and stay in touch with your prospects without putting your ISP account and your reputation at risk.
There are lots of autoresponder subscription systems for those of you who don’t want to roll your own. For a small monthly fee, you can be up and running in minutes. Two of the best are AWeber and GetResponse. Both will get you started for less than twenty bucks a month. I have used several autoresponder subscription systems in the past, and found them all to be easy to set up and use, and either of these two will satisfy your needs, although the more successful at list building you become, the more these subscription systems are going to cost you. (At the time of writing, for instance, GetResponse’s fee to manage a list of 10,000 or more is $65 a month.)
Critical Elements
When you’re considering subscribing to an autoresponder system, or purchasing your own software, there are a few things that are critical to success. Here are a few of them:
- Availability of both single and double opt-in responders
- Automatic removal of bouncing email addresses
- Ability to ban specific email addresses
- Ability to ban entire domains
- Ability to mail to specific demographics and/or custom data fields
- Ability to import leads
- Option of subscribing by email or RSS
- Link Tracking
- HTML “Mail opened” tracking
- Access to multiple accounts with unlimited autoresponders and messages using your own domain.
- Ability to publish professional and personalized opt-in email messages.
VarPro
Enter VarPro, which sells for $449. Let’s assume you have no technical skills at all, and have the author install VarPro for you…no problem – the price includes installation. Add the cost of registering your own domain – perhaps $15 a year – and it’s obvious that owning your own professional responder is the most responsible, economical and efficient way to go.
The VarPro System™ is a complete autoresponder hosting solution, an all in one server-side software application. With VarPro you can host Free and Fee Based Autoresponders on your web site.
I subscribed to various autoresponder services for years before switching to VarPro, and spent at least $900 on subscriptions before doing so. GetResponse and AWeber are great systems, and will certainly get the job done, but do you really want to make subscription payments indefinitely?
The VarPro Autoresponder System was developed from the ground up to meet the needs of internet marketers, but you won’t have to pay someone else every month to use it.
The Meat & Potatos
I obtained the VarPro System seven or eight years ago and have enjoyed it ever since. It does everything I need an autoresponder to do, and does it well. Support is outstanding, fast and reliable.
One feature which is important is the ability to automatically remove bouncing email addresses from your list without human intervention. This is critical, because folks change their email addresses all the time, and the changes will rapidly degrade the value of your list.
From 43,000 to Zero in 12 Months?
I once subscribed to a marketing system which included a “custom autoresponder,” and used it to build a list of over 43,000 subscribers. Unfortunately, the list became increasingly unresponsive, eventually reaching the point of being worthless.
The reason? The owner of the marketing system didn’t want to deal with the volume of bouncing email error messages large lists generate, so he had them automatically deleted without notice to the list owners – he sent them to the proverbial “bit bucket.”
What this ill-conceived policy meant was steadily decreasing income, since I was not aware of the bad addresses on the list. I thought I was marketing to over 43,000 people, but the list was actually shrinking every month, and shrinking rapidly. Not only were my customers disappearing, but the responder was generating thousands of bouncing messages with every campaign mailing. What an enormous waste of bandwidth!
Things eventually became so bad that I simply deleted the list. The loss of income was substantial – You can understand my reluctance to trust my financial success to someone else.
I acquired VarPro, which provided every feature and function I needed - and then some. Now I enjoy complete control over my list marketing; and the opportunity to market my own autoresponder service to others.
The VarPro System can readily be turned into an income stream in its own right; it was designed that way. (How neat is that?)
Providing a description of the full scope of the VarPro administration functions would take more time than than either of us want to spend. Instead, I thought it would be useful to provide a series of screen shots, starting with this one. Click on the images for a full-sized picture.
Let’s start with a quick look at the business side of the system:
Administration
A screen shot of the VarPro Main Admin Menu
Administration: Setup Account Type
Top portion of the VarPro Account Type Setup Menu
Lower portion of the VarPro Account Type Setup menu.
Administration: Opt-In Email Setup
VarPro Admin Opt-In email setup showing variables available.
Client: Main Menu
Here’s a shot of the client’s main menu for a new account:
VarPro Client’s Main Menu
Client: Link Tracking Setup
Client Side: Add Autoresponder Help
VarPro “Add Autoresponder” Help Screen
Client Side: Form Code Help
VarPro Form Code Help Screen (Partial)
Virtually every client function has a corresponding Help file. I find them simple and easy to understand, without a lot of technical jargon. If you need detailed technical help, however, VarPro author Jim Nelson’s email support system will quickly provide it.
VarPro: An Autoresponder System That Delivers.
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