How to write an effective AUTORESP. series?

Well, let's say it can be simple to understand what you
want to achieve, but trickier to implement than you would
hope.

Readership to emails generally falls off as they get 'em from
you. That's expected. All the more reason to write stuff
that's a lot more interesting than the other guys sending
emails.

That's challenge #1 = be more interesting than the other
marketers competing for your prospect's attention.

The longer people read your (interesting) communications
the more they'll bond with you and want to trust you.

The catch of the situation is those "long tail" readers are
a lot smaller in numbers than the "short tail" readers.

Neither group likes to be pressure to buy.

My belief around this stuff is that people are either ready
to buy "right now" - in the next 48 hours and will be making
a decision and taking action... so you have to give these
people a tangible reason to respond to your offer, right now.

They are a minority though.

The next group will probably make a decision in the next
week. They are still in the information gathering stage
but they are getting weary of it and want to move into
group one. You need to support their needs for reassurance
that your product should be on their short list.

The third group is the trickiest of all because they didn't
subscribe because they were looking to buy at all. They
may buy someday, but their interest was more general
curiousity or maybe some shiny bauble (ie. video) in your
window caught their eye.

This group will NOT buy anytime soon. But they WILL
sometimes remain subscribed and if the stuff you send
out is good you can sell them eventually. The main thing
is to continuously ask them to re-engage with you -
but you cannot be boring about it or appear to be highly
repetitive.

The maddening thing is that while the biggest group is the
third group by a long shot (unless you put barriers-to-list-entry
in place: ie. requiring a purchase to receive emails from you)
they are also the trickiest to sell.

Eventually, if you nurture a large list composed mostly
of 3rd-groupers you'll have a valuable asset for affiliate marketing.

In the IM niche however, you'll notice the big launches focus
on rapid list-building to capture people in phases 1 and 2.
That's because this is where the fast cash is, but not the
long-term loyal subscribers.