Finally, after all the planning, you have got your content, your advertisers and your subscribers. Your E-Zine is off to the races. Slowly but surely, your subscriber list starts to grow. Along the way, you are going to have those who wish to be removed. No problem. You have got such a small list of email addresses that doing this manually is a piece of cake. Yeah, it's tedious and boring but it is certainly not hard. And then the unthinkable happens. Your E-Zine begins to take off. Word of it is spreading like wildfire. Your once small email list of subscriber is now into the hundreds or thousands. Suddenly, trying to find somebody in that maze is not easy at all. Handling un-subscribe requests is becoming a nightmare. You're starting to wonder why you ever began to do this in the first place. Well, before you email everybody on your list and tell them that you're about to shut down because you're having a nervous breakdown, there is a solution to your problem, and a very simple solution. Yes, it's going to cost you a few bucks each month, literally, but it will be more than worth it in the long run. By automating your E-Zine with an auto-responder, you virtually take away all the work of maintaining one, other than just writing the content and getting sponsors for your advertising. So exactly how does this process work? Well, the first thing you have to do is find a good auto-responder service. There are some very good ones and some not so good ones. Do your research. Usually you get what you pay for. So if you find one for about $5 a month, most likely it isn't going to be very good. A decent auto-responder service is probably going to run you about $20 plus a month. After you find one that you're happy with the next step is to get your subscribers into it. This means having them re-subscribe. Few auto-responders are going to just let you import names. That's fine. You want to make sure that the people on your list still want your service anyway. This will only reaffirm it. Once the confirmation emails go out, the subscriber will have to either have to click on a link or send back an email to be confirmed into the system. After that, handling un-subscribe requests is a piece of cake. Why? Because with each E-Zine that you send out, the auto-responder service will include an un-subscribe link. This way, if the person no longer wishes to receive your E-Zine, all they have to do is click on the link. Once they do this, they will be brought to a page that tells them they have been un-subscribed. At the same time, the auto-responder service itself will remove them from the system. No muss, no fuss. In the future, to get new subscriber, all you need to do is include the subscribe email address or link in your E-Zine ad or directory listing. All subscription and opt-outs will be handled automatically at that point. All you need to do is load your E-Zine message into the auto-responder and broadcast it to your subscriber base. Most auto-responders will have this option. By using auto-responders to automate your E-Zine you will save yourself a lot of headaches and a lot of sleepless nights. |
