Difference Between Autoresponders and Email Marketing Opt In

Do you know the difference between an autoresponder and an email marketing opt in? Many people wrongly categorize them as being the same thing. There is some overlap between the two, and you may find integrated services that perform both options. However, they are two different services which are used for sometimes different reasons.

Email Marketing Opt In

Optin email marketing is basically the honest, legitimate way of email marketing wherein people sign up for your list willingly and manually. You may be offering something on your website to encourage them to sign up, they might do it without any pushing from you at all or you might hound them into it with pop ups across the screen every two minutes. Either way, the point is they manually opt into your email marketing list.

The only thing an email marketing opt in does is provide a link and a text box, so they can enter in their address and send it through the system. Your email service provider captures that information and adds the new user to your email marketing list. A basic optin email marketing service may redirect the person to a thank you page, show them a thank you or confirmation on screen or even in some cases send them a double opt-in or confirmation email.

Email Autoresponders

Autoresponders take things a step further than that. When somebody signs up for your email marketing list and you are using a full autoresponder service, your email service provider will immediately send out their first message at the time of your choosing.

Going forward from there, you can setup an entire string of emails to be sent in intervals so you can stay in contact with your new list members and quickly convert them into customers. This is a great service to have when you are providing an instructional series or eBook via email, when you provide a series of reviews or when you have planned messages that old list members already received but new ones have not.

An autoresponder does not necessarily have to be tied into your email marketing opt in either. You can set up this kind of service to kick in after somebody contacts you, or you can segment your existing list and begin attacking them with different, automatically sent campaigns.

So really, autoresponders can be put to use with a great optin email marketing strategy, but the two aren’t completely the same. Autoresponders represent a far larger picture of functionality and communication, which if used properly can do wonders for converting a prospect or email marketing lead into a paying customer. An email marketing opt in is designed purely to get people onto your list, and may or may not include any automatic responses.

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