One of the oldest and least innovative ways of converting leads into sales with an auto-responder is to offer something free. Rather than just providing any old item for free as a way to convince people to sign up, the secret is to make it something valuable, and polish it up real nice. Your free product is ultimately what advances the sale and closes the deal. It works much better than some one-a-day email chain that goes on for 7 days straight and ends up in the spam box of subscribers. How often do you buy from people that come at you from this perspective? This reality is probably a bit different than what you get from most Internet Marketers, but then again most Internet Marketers are full of B.S. Instead of sending 7 messages in 7 days, how about 2 messages in 5? Respect and mutual understanding build rapport. If you are sending someone a pushy sales letter for seven days straight, chances are you don’t really respect them. Your customers can feel this, I guarantee it.
Hey, my thoughts exactly! The occasional ezine article included in emails to your mailing list relevant to you niche also goes a long way to building some client rapport and interest.
Exactly, it doesn't have to be all offers for the latest and greatest new product you are promoting. People open up a newsletter for information, not to be sold to. Slip a few affiliate links in and disguise them as content, and the click-thrus will increase drastically, along with your open rate.
Also, there's enough free stuff around. The people on your list will respect you even more if you can find something relevant for them and send them a link - something that doesn't require them also joining someone else's list.