In our last post in this on going Aweber series, we discussed how we can manage our email subscribers. Today, we'll be creating email follow ups messages that would be sent to the subscriber with a set interval between them. Such email follow ups play a key role in building a solid relationship with your subscribers.
Your readers subscribed you as they were thirsty for more information from your end and you as a blogger need to do your best to provide them with valuable information over the period of time.
I personally have about 15 email follow ups messages that are sent to the subscribers with a week interval. With every new email follow up, I share my experiences, what I learned over the time, and some useful tips that I feel would be valuable for my email subscribers.
The same way, you can setup a series of email follow ups using Aweber. The frequency totally depends upon you and your niche. Some bloggers don't send email follow ups at all. I notice them sending blog broadcasts to the subscribers weekly or bi-weekly.
Though we'll discus blog broadcasts in our future post in this Aweber series, just to give a brief idea, these bloggers aim to drive traffic to their blog using their email list by sharing their latest blog posts with their subscribers.
While there is nothing wrong with this strategy, I personally don't like to do this now. I tried it early on but realized that I wanted my email subscribers to feel more premium. I wanted to share exclusive information with them that I don't publish on my blog. They could always visit the blog and look for latest blog posts if they would be interested.
We don't need to push our blog posts to their faces. They subscribed us for valuable insights and information that we must provide them in concise easy to digest manner. Which I am aiming to do at the moment.
As I mentioned, I currently have about 15 follow ups messages which I am to increase up 40-50 messages so that they cover the entire first year.
Sending valuable information to the subscribers on consistent basis would convert them into your loyal followers and what not. That's what we need at the end of the day.
So without further due, lets get right into the steps that would help us make an auto responder email follow up series in Aweber.
How To Create Email Follow Ups in Aweber?
Navigate to Aweber Dashboard >> Messages >> Follow Ups.
Next, it would take you to follow ups page where you can manage, create and set the order of the follow ups that you have.
The One Very Important Follow Up
There can be tons of follow ups you can create, though it's vital to have an introductory email follow up that would introduce you and your blog to the subscriber in detail. This is like building the first impression and it must be that good as we aim it to be in real life.
In my introductory email, I speak my heart out as to how I started blogging, my passion behind it and what I aim to do in the future. Also, I share my plans of what the subscriber can expect in their future emails so that they should be looking forward to them once they see it in their inbox.
Make a strong connection with the subscribers in your first follow up.
Open Rates
With every follow up, you'll notice an 'open rate'. These open rates largely depend upon if you're using double optins (that we discussed in our previous post in the series). The better and to the point your subject lines would be, the more open rates you'll be getting.
Steps To Follow
There are two ways to proceed. You can either choose to send a plain text email to the subscriber or use a pre-defined templates that you often see companies using.
I'm personally a fan of plain text as it feels more genuine and opens up easily. Templates can be good too if you're looking forward to branding, like adding a logo or footer to your emails.
It's all about your personal preference.
For the demonstration purposes, I'll go with plain text.
Navigate to Create a Follow Up >> Plain Text Message as shown in the image below.
This would bring up the plain text editor. You can use 'personalization' options to do something similar as shown in the image below.
Once you're done writing the follow up, you can test it before making it final by clicking the 'test' button on the top right. You can provide your email to receive the test email.
That's pretty much it. Hope this tutorial gave you an insight about the importance of building a strong relationship with your email subscribers using follow ups. Aweber really eases up this process.
Till, next time, take care.
Allah Hafiz :)
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