Auto-Responder Flowchart
Here’s a different way to look at the follow-up process, by using a flow chart outlining the various steps taken in the process.
This post goes into more detail on each of these steps, so refer back to the image to the right from time to time to see how each step relates to one another…
Step One – Collect Your Prospect’s Information
Your “prospect” enters their details into some type of opt-in form on your web site, or on a squeeze page. Good auto-responder software would be able to generate the HTML form codes needed for this step.
Usually you would only ask for the person’s name and email address, but other information (including custom questions) can also be requested. The Internet being global, I sometimes like to ask what country the person is from (only because I’m a sticky beak). Depending on your needs, you might want to collect all sorts of information to help segment (or break down) your list into different groups later on.
Just remember, the MORE you ask for, the more people are likely to NOT want to give it to you.
Give them too many hoops to jump through, or appear to be encroaching too much on their privacy, they’ll leave your opt-in form faster than a speeding bullet!
Once your prospect clicks the submit button on the opt-in form, their details are sent off to your mailing list management / auto-responder software…
And that starts a very interesting chain of events…
Step Two – The Confirmation Email and Instructions
While this step sounds like you’re making somebody jump through another hoop here, this “double opt-in process” is a necessity if you are to avoid any legal complications in relation to spam legislation in many countries. Double opt-in is often also a requirement of many of the commercial auto-responder services you might be using, as they too want to avoid spam complications caused by their clients.
So once it receives a subscription request, your software sends your prospect an email with instructions on what to do now - usually to click a link in the email to confirm their interest in your offer.
It should ALSO redirect their web browser to a web page you have prepared which ALSO explains to them what’s happening.
The objective here is to get the prospect to click on the link that is in their email to CONFIRM that it was really them who requested the information in the first place, and not somebody else playing silly games with their email address.
The “message” here should reinforce/remind them of the major benefit of confirming their subscription to your offer! A lot of people might have second thoughts about it at this stage, so this is an opportunity you should use wisely.
So if you can modify the initial email message, and the confirmation instruction page, I strongly recommend you do it!
If that confirmation link in the email is NOT clicked – NOTHING else happens!
The process should STOP at this point.
And, unless they fill out the form again, your prospect should NEVER receive another email from you! NOT even a “reminder” one saying
“Hey you forgot to confirm your subscription, so click this link again!”
Step Three – Subscription Confirmation
Once the prospect clicks the confirmation link in their email, it means they have “officially” given you permission to send them the information requested earlier.
Notice I said “information requested earlier“… This is a very grey area in the spam legislation, so be very careful with what you “do” with your subscribers once they have actually received the information your specified on your opt-in form.
Once it receives the “click”, your auto-responder software:
- Will record the subscribers details (IP address and date and time of subscription for spam/legal purposes), and
- Should then redirect the subscriber to the download or thank-you page * and let them grab their goodies, and
- Send out a “welcome” email, which should also include the address for the download/thank-you page, or provide further details of what is going to happen.
*Note: some people don’t set up the automatic redirects to the “personalised” instruction and thank-you pages mentioned above, instead lazily displaying just the “default” pages generated by the auto-responder software.
If possible, get this new relationship off to a more professional start!
Redirect to your OWN pages so you can clarify exactly what you want your subscriber to do.
Depending on your target audience, your thank-you page MIGHT possibly provide a good opportunity to throw in an OTO (One Time Offer) or present a teaser for a related product they could be interested in purchasing. This is something that testing will help determine whether it will work for you or not.
Step Four – The Auto-Responder Sequence
Here’s where your follow-up fun really begins!
Your auto-responder software can now automatically send each prospect a series of emails at regular intervals.
You could have 5, 10, 30 or even 99 (or maybe even MORE) messages “pre-loaded” into an auto-responder sequence, to send out to your new prospects over the next few days, weeks or even months.
While getting thirty or more email messages ready in advance to plug into this system is going to take a fair bit of time to plan and to write, it is well worth the effort.
The timing between each of these messages is something you should put some very serious thought into, and is something that is/will be discussed elsewhere on this site.
It’s quite exciting to realise that at any one time, you could have a whole heap of subscribers, all receiving totally different messages from you, based on how many days since they first subscribed.
And it all happens automatically!
Important: Run your own email address through the sequence FIRST, just to make sure everything works as it should!
Step Five – The Broadcast Message
What happens if you have an important “announcement” or timely “promotion” you want to tell everyone about, all at the same time?
Whenever you want to blast out a message to everyone, that’s when you use the broadcast message feature of your auto-responder software.
This allows you to send an email to everyone on your list, regardless of where they might be up to in the sequence.
Some of the more advanced auto-responder services allow you to send a broadcast message to just a part of your list, using what’s called list segmentation. So if you feel you might need to collect custom information when people sign up, to send out different broadcast messages to segments of your list… then look for that feature when shopping around for your auto-responder service.
Alternatively, set up different lists which target the different groups of people you want to talk to.
Important: Send a TEST MESSAGE to yourself FIRST to make sure the email is formatted properly and the merges and links all work!
So that’s it… that’s how the auto-responder process works.
Provided you follow each of the above steps every time you set up an auto-responder sequence… you’ve got more than the basics covered. Each time you develop a new auto-responder sequence, check it against the diagram shown earlier… just to make doubly sure you’ve got the “flow” right.
And you WILL develop many more than just one sequence!
You will be working on setting up more than just one “list”.
In reality, you’ll end up with a whole heap of different lists, depending on the different offers you make to your prospects. You could easily end up with 10, 20 or more, “little” lists with varying numbers of subscribers in each one.
So now, all you’ve got to do is work out…
What on earth do you actually “do” with all these people? 
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