How many times does a prospect need to see your offer before making a purchasing decision? Once? Twice? Three times? In fact, the figure for most industries is 7 times. That means if you are simply throwing up a post, an article or an advert and expecting conversions you’re leaving serious money on the table.

People buy after repeated brand exposure. That’s why companies like Coca Cola and MacDonalds still spend millions of dollars on their advertising (Coke’s annual advertising budget is reported to be $1.6 billion!) even though these brands are already well known by most of the population. It’s through repeat exposure that people associate the brand and make a decision to buy.

So what does this mean to you and your online business? Well, if you’re selling products (either your own or as an affiliate) you need to be able to expose your prospects to that product multiple times. In real terms what that means is building a list – an email mailing list of subscribers who you can send promotional emails and content to using an autoresponder.

Autoresponders

An autoresponder is a tool that allows you to build and manage a list of subscribers, and send them emails. Those emails can be sequenced (so they are sent at set intervals after the prospect subscribes – say every other day for 2 weeks) or as broadcasts where you send an email to your entire list at a specific time. What this does is allow you to expose your prospects to the same offer multiple times.

Let’s say you have a new ebook that you want to promote. You could simply write a blog post about it with a link to the sales letter – but how many people will read that and decide not to buy? With an autoresponder sequence however it’s simple to send multiple promotions. Each email you send can focus on a different benefit or feature. The first email might give an overview of the product, a few days later you might mention one or two of the key features in more details. Yet another email might mention your money back guarantee, your affiliate program or the exclusive bonuses you’re offering with the product…

What happens is that different people will have different ‘hot buttons’. Some will buy right away, some will buy once they read about feature X and others only after you describe the bonus in detail. With each exposure you’ll get a few more conversions and increase your sales.

A good autoresponder service, and the abilty to use it properly are absolute essentials in building a successful online business. I’ve tried several systems and the one I like best, and which I use now for my entire business, is Aweber. Tomorrow I’ll give an in depth review of the system and a tutorial on setting up your first autoresponder sequence.