My Boss Says Email Autoresponders don't work -HELP PLEASE

Like any competitive market, you will tend to find a lot of "information seekers", and I would still lean towards the conclusion arrived at by your boss. It would seem to me this is a rather hungry market looking for instant gratification; perhaps eager for an immediate product sale.

But certainly do some small scale test marketing with a tracking system such as provided by several commercial autoresponders. Go for a nominally-priced introductory sale and provide a highly incentivized autoresponder optin for "updates" within the product or during the sales process.

This is a big industry and email automation is almost a necessity, I would think. This doesn't mean that you can't do broadcasts in addition to the autoresponder sequence.

Tracking is key and if your present system isn't giving you this functionality then you're just swinging blindly in the dark. You have no idea of how frequency, subject lines, anchor text or ANYTHING, for that matter, is affecting sales.

Thank you for the information. Well, that is an insanely competitive market, but one that you can succeed at if you're willing to do what many others are not doing (such as tracking, testing, rolling out new products, etc.).

I should know, I've been in that industry (the PUA market) for over 7 years now and can tell you that your boss is probably wrong. However, I don't know the complete ins and outs of your product mix, your price points, how you build social proof, etc. Though the last couple of PUA friends of mine that had me look at their autoresponder series were doing it all wrong. So it's not just a matter of using an autoresponder and setting up a series of e-mails, there's a real art and science to it (powerful sales copy, use content that triggers emotional points, building a real relationship with your readership, having success stories / testimonials, etc.). You can also send out timely broadcasts to coincide with any social marketing you do or plan on doing.

If you're doing any kind of advertising on a large scale you have to get an autoresponder that will give you usable stats or some other 3rd party software to do this. You need to find out which e-mails get the most open rates and which ones are getting you the most conversions. Otherwise you are literally throwing away money on the table. So you need a better, more robust e-mail marketing platform. There are plenty out there such as Aweber, iContact, Constant Contact, etc. There are also other solutions out there (way too many options to list here). Some marketers swear by Infusionsoft, though I've used it and it didn't suit my needs at that price point.

How are you guys tracking sales and conversions? Are you constantly testing new campaigns where you try and beat a control group? (Example: if you're testing out a headline, do you continue to try and beat the control?). If you aren't using tracking urls then you're not knowing where your profits are coming from.

I know of 2 PUA companies that went out of business in 2009 because they were spending over $100,000 a month on PPC ad campaigns and barely breaking even because they were wasting money on unprofitable keywords. Also, their autoresponder series sucked major a$$ and they did not know how to create social proof (which was weird because they were actually very good at doing that with women.....lol). I'm not even going to touch on their product mix (it was weak).

Do you guys offer any digital reports or ebooks that people can download instead of a front end DVD? That might also be part of the problem. Do you offer any free content to get people coming back for more? What do you do to create any stickiness on your site or at least to get them to read your e-mails again and again?

Lastly, do you guys offer any bootcamps or coaching? As that can also be another income stream, it's not necesary, but just thought I'd throw that out there. You don't even have to do them live you can do webinars or record them and then sell them in a variety of ways.

RoD

I'd like to ad some niches respond to different info and delivery methods. There are some that work best with snail mail deliveries, social media, email, phone, rss, fax. It really depends on the niche. Do not rule out any method until after extensive testing. If someone you are working with or consulting with is throwing absolutes at you (This can't work, This won't work) get rid of them until they have data that can back it.

On that note Email is still the most effective method for push button cash, seconded by phone. I have data that can show it too

He also could be getting a lot more from his list. He said in his book he gets about a 5 percent open rate...

So....

His boss isn't an idiot because he doesn't use an autoresponder, his boss is an idiot because he says they don't work. I don't think Kern has ever said they don't work. On the contrary, he actually recommends that folks use them.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Dave DeAngelo(Eben Pagan) thinks autoresponders are a waste of time in the dating/pua niche? He's only sent me about 1,000 emails via autoresponder over the past 6 years.

Ray, it only gets pricey when there's more going out than coming in...