In April 2017, Red Mango Marketing hosted a free Webinar on how to Automate Your Email Marketing using Autoresponder Campaigns. Click here to watch the webinar. https://youtu.be/l_q8KJYMr-E

I’m also attaching a list of Q&A that I received on the webinar in email followup about Autoresponder Campaigns. Feel free to reach to reach out to me with questions. 

The Welcome Email Autoresponder is a standard feature in Constant Contact’s Email Marketing Service. To utilize additional autoresponders you must upgrade to the Email Plus program in Constant Contact, which has an additional fee, determined by the number of emails in your account. Along with access to Autoresponders, Email Plus also includes Survey’s, TRACKABLE COUPONS, Event Management, and Donations. 

Here are some of the questions we received and the answers:

• Welcome Letter: A welcome letter is an automated response. It is triggered when someone joins your list. It can be a single email that goes out immediately after someone joins your list, or it can be a series of emails. It depends on what the client wants, and how much information they have to share.
• Birthday/Anniversary Campaigns: Email campaigns have signup forms that capture data, such as Name, Email, Addresses, Birthdates and more. You determine what data you want to collect. To use the Birthdate/Anniversary Autoresponder Campaigns, you have to collect this information in the signup form or collect it in some way. Once you have the information, we/you can set up the campaign and it will automatically run based on date based triggers. Once date per email address. 
• Autoresponder Timeframe: – you determine how often you send them and when. It can be once, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or occasionally (2 days, then another 5 days, and such). It’s up to you to determine how many and how often the timeframe in a campaign series. 
• Can you have multiple series of Autoresponder Campaigns? Yes. We have a client that has 4, including the welcome email. The welcome email is a series of 3 emails. The 3 other autoresponder campaigns span 12 months, with an email going out monthly, based on when they signed up. 
• Opting out and back in: 
  • When someone signs up and triggers the Welcome email, they will receive it in their inbox once. If that person opts out at any time and then signs up again (we cannot add them back, only the customer can add themselves back), they will not receive the original welcome email again.  
  • Let’s say your welcome campaign has a series of emails, or a customer signed up for an Autoresponder Campaign (like the Pup Club example). If they opt out, it stops. If they happen to opt back in (again, the only way they can be added back is by the person signing up again. You cannot add them back), they will get added back into the “cue” of Autoresponder Campaigns. How does this work? Let’s say your Welcome email has a series of 5 emails over the course of 2 weeks. They opt out after email 3, which went out on Day 3 after signing up. When they sign up again, regardless of when, after the third day, they will be placed back into the cue for the 4th email in that autoresponder campaign, which let us say is on Day 4. So on the 4th day after signing back up, they would get the Day 4 autoresponder campaign email. This would be the same with any Autoresponder Campaign, not just the Welcome Series. 
• Coupons: Can a client print out multiple copies of a coupon in a campaign? – yes. It happens. Clients typically know who these folks are. We can create an area on the coupon for Name, Phone Number, Date and have them fill it out. Keep them on file for each month and have your staff look through them. Or put a code on the email that goes into your POS system and will show up when you check someone out if your POS system will let you.  Here are some suggestions:
  • Give that coupon a date range – good for 7 days. 
  • Or create a coupon that they have to print off and bring in, where they select one item from a list 3-5 items. 
  • You can track who has opened the Autoresponder emails, and who has clicked on any links by that person’s email. Print off the list and keep it with you. 
• Trackable Coupons: There are a couple of ways to handle this. 
  • If you are using the Email Plus program, there is a way to track the coupons when they are redeemed. It’s an extra step in setting up a trackable coupon and linking to it in the Welcome Email or Autoresponder Email. All you need to do to track that coupon is download any FREE QR App and scan the coupon using that QR app at checkout. You can see who has 1) accessed the coupon and 2) redeemed it in Constant Contact. If Red Mango Marketing is managing your account, we can send you a report.  
  • Another way is by installing a coupon program on the websites we manage (at no charge). You can set a timeframe for the coupon and link to it in the welcome email. Folks click on it, enter their email address and receive the coupon in their email….ONCE. They can’t go back and click to use it again. If they misplace it, or if that email goes to their SPAM filter, sometimes that’s an issue. I always suggest a client have the welcome email at the register just in case someone comes in and says I had a problem with this. Clients that have extreme coupon abuse issues use this method. 
  • Generally, most people like getting coupons, but don’t use them. It creates a positive impression about the business and keeps them opening future emails.