E-Courses vs. Newsletters – What’s the Better Autoresponder Strategy?

How business owners use autoresponders to their benefit depends on the industry their respective companies are lumped in. Online businesses such as affiliate marketing, merchandising, manufacturing, and information intermediation, among others, sell a particular product or service but earn profit in different ways. Therefore, it is not accurate to say that the same autoresponder strategy applies to all.

For companies willing to employ autoresponders with the hope of increasing either their profits or authority as a subject matter expert, below are the two most effective autoresponder strategies for your consideration:

E-courses

Getting your site visitors to register to your e-course that spans from 8-10 weeks about your expertise allows you the opportunity to gain their trust. It is imperative, therefore, to send out informative and high-quality pre-written content to be sent weekly for those who enrolled for the course. Once their trust is gained, there is a greater change of converting the subscribers into customers or advocates of your brand.

This type of autoresponder strategy can be used by niche marketing sites to educate people about their business or those undergoing constant developments in their industry. About.com featured an excellent free e-course about HTML and XML years ago that still stands the test of time.

Perfect for: Niche marketers, Information Technology

Newsletters

Whereas an e-course focuses on a particular update in your industry, newsletters cover the latest news as it happens. Once visitors subscribes to the newsletter, they will receive an e-mail from you through your autoresponder informing them of what’s new and fresh. With that said, you will have to frequently create new content to be sent out to your subscribers.

Companies involved in a static industry will not find much use to newsletters since no updates take place. However, online retailers holding seasonal sales will find this type of autoresponder strategy handy. All they must do is dispatch an autoresponder message to the mailing list informing subscribers of the upcoming sale. News aggregator sites also use newsletter to inform people of the latest news in their respective industries.

Copyblogger and SEOMoz Blog are prime examples of sites that offer compelling newsletters to its users on a regular basis.

At the same time, large companies usually send out newsletters to employees to keep everybody in the loop regarding the latest updates within their trade.

Perfect for: Online retailers, news aggregator sites, large companies

Key Takeaways:

• If there are little or no updates within your business, then you can forego using newsletters.
• Dispatching an e-course about a topic in your industry is ideal if there is not enough information known about said topic. Providing an in-depth e-course would then greatly increase your authority in your business circle.

Are there anything else you’d like to share about using e-courses and newsletters not mentioned in the post? How about other autoresponder strategies aside from the two that can help increase your sales and/or authority? Share your thoughts by commenting below!