Autoresponder vs List Management System.

they are piratically the same as far as email marketing is concerned.. the difference is only academic.. they both manage opt-in.. unsubscribe.. confirmation.. and bulk mailing..

The term autoresponder was created way way back in the early days to handle getting information to people who had only email access to the Internet. Some were really fancy and had a whole list of commands you could get by sending "help" to the autoresponder.

I still use the NOAA autoresponder to get weather reports when I am on my yacht. It's very handy when you have only a maximum of 4800 baud on SSB to transfer email.

The IM crowd starting using autoresponders for marketing. They then started capturing the email addresses of those sending email to their autoresponders. Then they started creating a series of emails. This all evolved within the IM community.

The broader online business community also got involved in email marketing, but their language used terms like "Contact Management" and "Email List Management."

Companies sprung up to handle the needs of the online business community and they used the language of that community.

Other companies (like Aweber and GetResponse) sprung up to handle this much smaller IM community. It is much smaller, but it is certainly large enough to justify it's own companies speaking the unique lingo of the IM community.

So if you are immersed in IM lingo and want to deal with a company that speaks the same language, you might prefer Aweber or GetResponse who call themselves AutoResponder companies.

If you speak the language of the much larger online business community and want the features that are demanded by that community and have the IT support to use those features, then go with a company that called themselves an Email Management company or a Prospect Management company or a Contact Management company.

The other advantage is that you will be mixing with a much more successful and serious community. That leads to a much higher deliverability rate.

Email ISPs work with Aweber and GetResponse because they are responsible companies, but they are dubious of any email from those sources because those companies are used by IMers and how do we say it gently... some among the IM crowd are a bit grey hat and don't send the kinds of emails that the customers of email ISPs would prefer to receive.

The companies that run Email Management Systems are used by companies that send email with a different tone that is perhaps more preferred by the email ISPs.

You will also find integration with the software used by most online businesses much easier, but of course you might find integration with the software used by the IM sub-community much harder.

I think all IMers would benefit greatly by at least becoming familiar with the broader online business community. There are a ton of great tools and techniques that become available to you.

I personally would never use an autoresponder service like Aweber or Getresponse because of the class of customer they have and the effects that has on deliverability of email. And also because of the reputation it gives when a prospect sees a confirmation email from either service if they have ever been assaulted by an IMer in the past.

I have been known to refer to my own company's email management system as an autoresponder here on the Warrior forum just for the sake of communication.

But when I used that term with a friend who runs a very successful online business, but had never heard of the IM community, he replied "autowhataschmadoogie?"

The term "autoresponder" is completely unknown outside of the IM community except within the government and academic community where it means something completely different. It means a robotic email address that autoresponds with some pertinent information in the government and acedemic community.

In the yachting community, we use autoresponders all the time, but we don't call them that. I think the term we most often use is ftpmail even when we aren't dealing with an autoresponder that isn't based on ftpmail. I'm not sure why that term caught on. Maybe because the NOAA still uses ftpmail for their autoresponder and every yachter uses the NOAA weather bulletins. Not every cruiser uses the other various autoresponder services for low-bandwidth email only communication.

Thank you for the replies guys. The reason I asked was because I was just watching a Frank Kern video where he was selling a program that came with a free list building course. One of the topics covered in this course is why you should use a List Management System and not an Autoresponder because the latter is unpersonal and not condusive to building a list with a good relationship. This is according to Frank at least... and who could argue looking at the success he has had.

As has already been touched upon though I imagined that they were the same if not very similar.

Frank is right.

He is a well known personality in the tiny IM sub-community who has enjoyed quite a bit of success and is now hanging out much more often with the much larger online community. He is starting to use the tools and reap the advantages of that community.

You don't have to wait until you have a bit of success to hang out with the larger online community though and there are a lot of benefits and a lot of knowledge that is never discussed in the IM community. I would encourage all IMers to get out there and meet some people from the wider online business community.

They won't know what you are talking about if you say "autoresponder" though, so like any new community, listen and learn the lingo first.

My feeling is that the mean annual income of full-time IMers is probably around $100K. The mean annual income of the wider online business community is probably somewhere around $2 million.

There is a lot to be learned by hanging out with successful people.