By Mitchell Harper

Introduction

Feel free to take these tips, add your logo to the top and print them out. Send the tips to your customers "just because". It's always good to give your customers something for nothing as often as you can.

Tip #1: Making Autoresponders "Feel" Real

As you might know, you can use Prolink Media Newsletter to send a series of emails to your mailing list at specific intervals (such as 1 day from now, 2 days from now, etc). These are called automatic responders, or autoresponders for short.
 
When it comes time to create a series of autoresponders, make sure the times when they're sent out aren't too robotic. For example, if you want to send out a series of 5 emails as an autoresponder, don't schedule them like this:

• Message #1 after 24 hours
• Message #2 after 48 hours
• Message #3 after 72 hours

Instead, vary the time between messages slightly, so they feel like they're being sent from a real person instead of being sent automatically, such as:

• Message #1 after 19 hours
• Message #2 after 43 hours
• Message #3 after 80 hours

We very rarely send emails to people at the exact same time every day, so your autoresponder series should reflect and adopt this too so it feels like the emails were sent from humans instead of a computer.
 
Tip #2: Creating Your Own Email Template
 
Prolink Media Newsletter includes over a dozen email template designs that you can use for your newsletters, but what about if you have no design skills and want your own template?
 
It's quite easy to create your own template based on one of the included templates. Just follow these steps:

1. Click the Templates -> Create Template menu link
    
2. Fill out the form and choose an email template to get started with
    
3. You'll see the template appear in the editor. From here you can upload and add-in your own logo, change colors and text, etc
    
4. When you click save the template will be stored and you can use it every time you want to create a newsletter or email campaign

Tip #3: Keeping an Eye On Subscription Trends
 
Did you know that different days of the week influence how many people will subscribe/unsubscribe from your mailing list? We get the most subscribers on Tuesday and send our newsletter on Wednesday, as studies have shown that you get better open and response rates on a Wednesday.
 
Using Prolink Media Newsletter statistics you can see a graph that shows how many subscribes and unsbuscribes you receive over the period of a few weeks/months. From this, you can determine that on Thursday, for example, you get the most new subscribers to your mailing list.
 
You might then decide that on Fridays you'll make a new blog post (you do have a blog on your site, don't you?) on your site encouraging people to subscribe to your newsletter to see if that has any affect on increasing subscription rates.
 
Tip #4: Using Popular Newsletter Content on Your Site
 
Prolink Media Newsletter allows you to see how many times an email is forwarded onto friends. If you see an email that's forwarded quite a few times then it could be a good idea to take the content from that email (if it's an article for example) and add it into your web site or blog. If it's popular in email format, it's going to be popular online.
 
Tip #5: The "Show Help" Link is Your Friend
 
Prolink Media Newsletter includes over a dozen built-in tutorials to help you if you ever get stuck. The "Show Help" link at the top of the Prolink Media Newsletter control panel explains how to complete tasks such as sending your first email campaign, how to create a profitable autoresponders and how to add subscribers to your mailing list.
 
Tip #6: The "Trailing Autoresponder" Trick
 
If you have a series of autoresponder courses that you send out to subscribers then you can use this neat trick to boost your subscription numbers. In the last message of an autoresponder series, invite the subscriber to join another autoresponder series you have setup.
 
That way, when they get to the end of the first autoresponder series they can subscribe to your other autoresponder and keep hearing from you, and we all know that it takes multiple encounters with a prospect before they turn into a customer, and autoresponders are a great way to do that.
 
Tip #7: Using Autoresponders in "Every Day" Situations
 
Autoresponders can be used to increase customer interaction and sales for practically any business, even those that don't have a web site. Here's a few ideas:

• How about automatically following up with customers when they place an order on your web site? Why not send them a discount code to use on their next order?
   
• Why not take information from your web site and build a free eBook for your web site visitors to download? When they download the eBook, ask for their email address and send them a few follow up emails about your products and services.
   
• Create a series of emails and build an "online course" to teach your subscribers about your industry, products and services. For example, if you sell sunglasses, teach your subscribers about the benefits of outdoor eye protection and review a few different pairs of sunglasses (with links to purchase them, of course)!

Tip #8: Don't Overuse Custom Fields
 
Custom fields allow you to collect specific details about each of your mailing list subscribers including their first name, location - practically anything you want, however you never want to overuse custom fields in your emails, especially in the subject line.
 
Imagine if you receive an email like this:

Subject: Hi Mitchell, how are you?

Body: Hi Mitchell. I just wanted to email you to say hi. Mitchell, if you need anything just let me know and I'll be happy to help. Thanks Mitchell!

Hardly appealing, and you can tell it wasn't written by a real person. If you use custom fields such as the subscriber's first name in your email messages, don't over do it. Use their name once in the entire email, and that includes the subject line.
 
Tip #9: Sending to Multiple Mailing Lists
 
If you have a few mailing lists and want to send the same email message to all of them then Prolink Media Newsletter will take care of removing the duplicate emails for you. When it comes time to send the email Prolink Media Newsletter will make sure it goes out to each subscriber only once, regardless of how many mailing lists they've subscribed to.
 
This can come in handy when you want to send a general message to all of your lists, or if you keep separate interest lists, for example customers who ordered blue widgets, customers who ordered red widgets, etc.
 
Conclusion

I hope you liked my 9 tips to get more out of Prolink Media Newsletter. If you use Prolink Media Newsletter a few times a week like I do then I'm sure at least one of the tips can save you time.