The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they’re eating up your revenue), you have a problem!

The good news is an autoresponder is an inexpensive – or even free -method of quickly responding to emails. What these programs do is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as they are received.

Emails are essential to your business for many different reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices give you their feedback about your website – for free! However, if you spend all your working hours answering these emails, how are you supposed to run your business?

The answer is simple: use autoresponder. Autoresponders are programs that automatically respond to your emails without you so much as having to click on your mouse.

There are a number of good reasons why you need an autoresponder besides just answering your email.

For example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to send information about your services or products, price lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across large numbers of emails.

Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an autoresponder. Additionally, you can advertise your
business and then build stable relationships with your customers by using autoresponders.

Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with your email program to a specialized script that runs on your web hosting company’s server. This kind of script may use a web page form or simply operate with your email account. This kind of script is programmed to send out a standardized message whenever an email is received. The message is sent to a particular script or email address.

Some autoresponders can do more than simply send out standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined interval of time. For example, you can set your autoresponder to send out a new message every day for as long a period as you desire.

There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free of charge. Your website hosting company often provides autoresponders as a free service. If this is not the case with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge, providing you attach an advertisement for their company to your emails.

To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact numbers and addresses, and a brief message.

It’s a good idea to attach a signature to every email that is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your business identity every time a customer sees it. The more they look at your signature, the more likely your company will spring to mind when your particular service or product is needed.

You can create a standardized signature that every employee in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every staff member create their own personal signature. Of course, like everything in life, there are some rules and guidelines to creating a personal signature.

Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line. Make sure that your email program does not cut off your text! The content should include your name, your company name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact details, such as 800 numbers. Lastly, always include a short personal message about your company. It should be a subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly your company’s reliability and longevity.

Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create courses that you can then offer your site visitors for free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert and that precisely targets your potential customers.

Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a different sub-topic. You must have the visitor’s permission to email them marketing messages on a consistent basis or they can report you for spam.

The first topic should always be a welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation about what is to follow. Your explanation should be enticing, getting the point across that you are offering free, quality information that your target audience will
find of great value.

With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the topic title, information about your company and its services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue on.

Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable information, and leaves the visitor lusting to know more. Otherwise, you may lose them in the very beginning.

Of course, you have to write up your course before you can offer it. Once you have done this, and gone over the material carefully, employing a professional writer or editor if necessary, you must transfer your text to your autoresponder.

There are a number of autoresponders you can use. I personally recommend and use Aweber for over 5 years now and I love it! Or you can go onto Google and you will find a long list of free autoresponder companies. Then sign-up for your chosen autoresponder. Once you do, you will receive instructions as to how to set it up and transfer your text.

Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and it is fast. Use it to advertise your business by choosing your email address carefully.

Your website should contain different email addresses for different contact requests. For example, use info@yourdomain.com for information requests, or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about sales. It’s a good idea to set up one for the owner, such as president@yourdomain.com. This presents your company in a personal, approachable light and insures that direct contact is provided.

Autoresponders are an effective and powerful marketing tool, allowing you to make contact with thousands of potential customers.

This is an invaluable asset considering how many potential customers you usually have contact with before you make an actual sale. Essentially, an autoresponser allows you to automate part of your marketing campaign, which frees up your precious time to keep getting more customers.

Within the Ecademy you receive 519 pages of examples and ways to use autoresponders to build your business.

Share your thoughts below:

In this video, I’ll share with you 2 schools of thought (I suggest you combine both for exponential results!) that you can use right now to grow your business.

Enjoy! Share your thoughts below:

There are many situations when we feel as if we could do anything, deal with any obstacle, take on any task or job yet at other times, we simply just run out of steam!

Let me share with you how we all can learn to exude that trait that makes us feel confident about what we are doing and about who we are.

1. Increase your knowledge

The best method to increasing your self-confidence is to work on improving your knowledge and abilities. “Knowledge IS Power!” but the application of knowledge is much more important.

Read books as a means to an end. Read books to gain information about what you need to know. Read as an end in itself. Read for pleasure. Just read!

As a young person I’ve always read, but you know what?
I still lacked confidence in some areas.

No! Reading is not all. Still you need to….

2. Like yourself

Liking yourself is equivalent to your self-worth and accepting yourself as you are. Your feelings about yourself are probably the most important feelings you can have. If you do not love yourself then who will? Be proud of who you are and what you are and forget the self-talk.

Self-esteem is directly influenced by the negative and positive thoughts you hear. These may be thoughts heard in your environment (TV, radio, family) as well as thoughts in your own mind. Your self-talk! This is extremely Powerful! What are YOU thinking about yourself everyday?

“How come everyone else can do this, except me?”

OR

“I’m so grateful to be involved in this project!”

Trust me…it does make a difference!

3. Focus on your strengths

Each one of us has our own particular strengths. Be thankful for these and capitalize on them.

For example one of my strengths is writing and listening. I’ve always been called ‘shy’ or ‘quiet’ when I was younger and was always told to ‘speak up’ or ‘say something’! I thought something was definitely wrong with me as everyone else in my family could not shut up!

Now I’m older, I’ve made those strengths work for me. They’re now my business! I listen to what my clients and my prospects want and then provide it!

Try building on your strengths by writing down in a journal all those traits you like about yourself. If this feels too hard to you, ask someone else what is it they like about you as a person or what they think you are good at.

When you have your list, focus on them and forget your weaknesses!

4. Remind yourself and acknowledge your success daily

Go ahead! Think about when you felt successful last year, last week or indeed yesterday! Thinking about your past successes makes you a stronger person, better able to handle and cope with today’s challenges.

What’s going to be better than to say to yourself, “I can do this, I’ve done it before!”

Aah! Now That’s confidence!

On the heels of this is the daily celebration of your successes, no matter how small or how insignificant YOU think they are. Observe and celebrate them!

I do this every night with my son and also use this exercise with my clients. Either use a journal or simply tell yourself the ten things that you praise and acknowledge yourself for. Don’t stop until you get to ten.

If you’ve had a particularly bad day simply recognize that you’ve had a bad day and tomorrow will be better!

5. Visualize your future success

What could be more exciting than seeing in your mind how it feels to have succeeded?

Did you know that athletes use this all the time? Especially those high jumpers!

Successful people use visualization regularly. This is because they know that our minds cannot distinguish the difference between something real and something imagined.

Creating a detailed mental picture increases the likelihood of success, and boosts your self confidence.

They are many ways to do this. For example if you are going for a project meeting, you can write down how it will feel to answer all the company’s questions easily and effortlessly. Or you can go into a peaceful place, close your eyes and truly visualize yourself getting that project!

6. Get rid off the ‘nay-Sayers’

Your environment has a great effect on the confidence that you, as an individual, displays.

Environment here could be family, friends, political, media, neighbourhood or any other strong influence.

Surround yourself with people that love and support you and want you to be your best!.

Those people, who tend to criticize and constantly put you down, simply ignore them. Usually they are and can do no better than you anyway.

Join supportive groups online, if there are none in your area. Get a coach who really listens to you understands you and helps you build your confidence in yourself. Higher confidence in yourself translates into bigger profits for your business!

7. Develop an attitude

Develop an attitude of excellence. Give of your best at all times. Be cheerful and happy. Shock everyone with your attitude of confidence!

In this way, no one can declare that you do not have self-confidence, not even yourself.

It’s true that people with a high degree of self-confidence are normally more likely to be successful – all other aspects being equal – than those who work in a less confident manner.

So what are you going to radiate today?

In this video I share what an asset is and how you can quickly start to build assets in your business:

Share this video with your friends and share your comments below:

 ”How Caribbean Small Business Owners Can End the Confusion and Frustration and finally understand their business financials, even if you’ve never studied accounting….ever!”

In this free video series, you’ll learn:

• Why Caribbean Small Business Owners Need to Understand Their Financial Statements or face the constant struggle and frustration in running their business
• The Small Business Owners main problem that keeps their business from becoming more profitable
• The 3 most important statements that YOU, as a business owner, MUST understand and MUST monitor on a consistent basis
• The 2 other important statements that are crucial to controlling your cash flow

During this video series, I’ll also share details on the 16-week bootcamp coming up in May. In this bootcamp I take the veil off and have you look over my shoulder as I create a company, set up their accounts, analyse the details of the business. You’ll learn all the secrets that your accountant keeps to himself! I’ll answer your questions to ensure that you can go confidently and grow your business.

Please feel free to invite your friends but please reserve your space here first.