Before you take another sip of your morning tea, take a moment to reflect on how your online business is going. While you are likely busy working on growth plans, dealing with partners and improving your designs, there is another major piece of the puzzle that is just waiting to be discovered. If you run a quality online business, there’s a good chance you’ve already earned the trust and respect of a wide variety of consumers. Remember though that, while websites are an important way of directly contacting your customer base, failing to build up a proper email marketing strategy is the single biggest mistake you can make with your online business.

Ask yourself, “am I fully utilising email to harness the power of my brand?” Nearly 99% of companies should be using this question as a Call to Arms. A proper email marketing channel can help you build up relationships with both existing as well as prospective customers who express interest in your offers. When a customer first comes into contact with your brand what is the initial communication they receive? Many firms merely send an email confirmation request and then fail to follow it up until the next periodic mailer. This is missing the point entirely – users want you to reach out to them with a personal message, which effectively primes them for a sale.

Up Close and Friendly with Auto-responders

Since you cannot reasonably have personal contact with each new prospect in a growing online business, auto-responders provide an instant way in which you can connect with new leads. Even if you have already implemented a responder, there’s a good chance you can vastly improve its quality and reach, to better encourage growth in your online community. Actually go through the opt-in process yourself so you can see exactly what new users view, and adapt the message to make it more attractive.

Auto-responders are simply custom messages, which are sent to users immediately upon signing up for a service, buying a product or filling out an opt-in for your mailing list. You can use these emails to welcome the user to a community, discuss how they can interact with your brand, and introduce your business to a new audience.

The real value in an auto-responder is its role in starting a chain of communication that nurtures the long term personal relationships with your customers. Email, at its best, is an effective way of establishing a two way dialogue with consumers. As Seth Godin famously remarked, opt-ins signal an opportunity for “Permission-based marketing”, where you begin a relationship with your customers.

In the beginning stages of your business start-up you’ll be cultivating your own organic list of customers. It’s best practice to build your personal list from the beginning, since you’re building a community over time. When properly implemented, an auto-responder is an ideal way to get your new business off the ground on the right foot.