Review: ProAutoResponder

ProAutoResponder
http://scc.proautoresponder.com/

Small businesses that are assembling tools to do effective e-mail marketing will be excited when they explore the capabilities of ProAutoResponder, a web-based combination listserver, link tracker, and sequential autoresponder system. When I look at the various small business e-mail marketing tools available, I think this is a real "find."

What ProAutoResponder Will Do

There are many e-mail marketing strategies that you can execute with a tool like ProAutoResponder. Let's look at some simple ones before we examine each of the program's features.

1. Handle a simple e-mail newsletter list. It'll create a subscription form, handle bounces and unsubscriptions, and allow you to send out your e-mail newsletter in (a) text, (b) HTML, or (c) text and HTML (multi-part MIME).
2. Send out e-mailings to your customer list, by uploading your current list as a tab- or comma-delimited file. You can manually maintain the list using the Web interface, if you like.
3. Send a timed sequence of e-mail messages to people requesting information about your product or service. Message #1 the first day of the sign-up, then #2 on day 5, #3 on day 10, etc.
4. Distribute a series of training lessons automatically to those who request them. I'll probably use an autoresponder system to send out a short series of weekly Bible studies as part of my http://JesusWalk.com ministry.

ProAutoResponder allows you to set up any number of separate or related lists within a single account and send any number of e-mails each month. The only limitation is a maximum of 5,000 records uploaded to your account each month. All that for $17.95 per month? Yes.

Parts of the System

Perhaps the most difficult task when you first explore ProAutoResponder is to grasp conceptually how the system is designed. Let me describe the parts:

• Messages. These are e-mail messages that you set up and then save to the system for later use.
• Contacts. Contacts are different customers, subscribers, or interested parties to whom you send the messages in a campaign.
• Campaign. A campaign consists of a particular series of messages that are sent over time to a particular set of contacts.

Hmmm. You have to chew on these definitions for a while before you get it. But as you work with it, it'll begin to make sense. Consider messages and contacts as two components with the campaign as the organizing factor. The campaign sequences the messages you select and sends them to a particular sub-set of all your contacts.

Messages

The first basic component of the system is the message. Let's say that you want to send a message to new customers a week after they make a purchase from you.

You are asked for the message title (for your eyes only) and a subject line for the message. I often include my customer's first name in the subject to increase the chances of her opening the e-mail.

The simplest way to prepare the message is to type it directly into the "Plain Text" window. When you're finished with the message you can save it, and then preview it to see how it's likely to look to the recipient. Of course, the best way is to prepare the message in a word processor, proofread it carefully, run a spell checker, and format it precisely. Then paste the message into the Plain Text window.

If you're more adventurous, you can prepare an HTML message. ProAutoResponder doesn't have a built-in WYSIWYG webpage editor, so you'll need a tool like Microsoft FrontPage. Once you've prepared your HTML message with FrontPage -- much as you might prepare a webpage -- you can import it directly into ProAutoResponder. The program's HTML window shows the actual HTML code, but when you click on the Preview Message button you can see it as your recipients will.

An HTML message, of course, can contain various links and images (which are hosted on your own website and show up when your recipient opens your e-mail message).

ProAutoResponder makes it easy to prepare BOTH a text message (for those whose e-mail programs can't read HTML) as well as an HTML message (for recipients with modern e-mail programs). ProAutoResponder treats AOL recipients differently, preparing text links so they are "clickable" in older versions 4 and 5 (though most AOL subscribers have now upgraded to versions 6 and 7 which can read standard HTML e-mail).

ProAutoResponder enables you to personalize an outgoing e-mail message if you have the recipient's first name, for example --

The more information you have about a contact, the more fields you can personalize. Dates can be included in dynamic fashion, so you can specify the current date plus or minus a specific number of days, and that date will show up in the final e-mail.

A particular message might be used in a single campaign, but you can copy the message and modify it for other uses, if you like. You might have 10 or 20 or 30 messages saved in your ProAutoResponder account, each connected to a particular campaign. If you want to send out a newsletter, you would prepare it as a message and give it a name you'll recognize (such as "July 02 Newsletter"). Once you've saved it, you go to the Campaigns section to send it out.

Campaigns

A campaign combines a timed series of messages with a particular list of contacts. You can set up as many campaigns as you like and have them all running simultaneously.

When you set up a new campaign, you are asked for a working title and a one-word name that the system uses to keep this separate from your other campaigns. Next you are led through a series of decisions, such as: Should recipients be notified when they subscribe? What reply e-mail address do you want to use? What name should appear in the "from" field of messages which are part of this campaign? Do you want to track click-throughs on hyperlinks? Once you save a new campaign, you can:

1. Add messages and specify the timing and sequence in which they are sent. You select these from a drop-down list of messages you have prepared in the Message section.
2. Start adding contacts that will receive these messages.

New sign-ups will now receive messages on schedule, with their clock starting from the day they signed up. Day 1 may have a "here's the information you requested" message. Day 3 a "Did you have any questions about the information we sent you?" message, etc. (Of course, when you have a capable e-mail system, some people will use it to abuse recipients with unwanted messages. With any e-mail marketing, be very careful that you don't step beyond the level of permission your customer has granted you.)

If you have a monthly newsletter, make the newsletter one of your campaigns. But instead of sequenced messages, you'd send a message every month containing the newsletter content as a "broadcast message." You can also turn off a campaign (freezing the time clock) and turn it on again later. There's quite a bit of flexibility.

Contacts

Now it's time to start adding contacts to the campaign -- the recipients of your e-mail messages. You can do this in three ways:

1. Import your customer list. You might want to e-mail customers stored in your Outlook 2000 address book, an Access database, or an Excel spreadsheet. You would export them to a tab- or comma-delimited text file. Then you tell ProAutoResponder the location of the file on your hard disk. You identify each field so they can be mapped to their appropriate slots within the ProAutoResponder database. You may find this challenging the first time you do it, but once you know your way around, it's a pretty nice import system.
2. Advertise a unique e-mail address. Each campaign has its own unique e-mail address. If the campaign's short name is "inquiryX" and your account username is "bigdog," then the e-mail address might be inquiryX@bigdog.par32.com. You can use this in newspaper ads, e-zine ads, etc. as a way for people to get more information. When they send any e-mail to this unique address, they are enrolled in that campaign's contact list. If a name appears with the e-mail address, it will be parsed into the appropriate first and last name fields in the contact database.
3. Set up a sign-up form on your webpage. ProAutoResponder gives you several ready-made forms you can choose from, with the HTML all coded with your account username and the campaign short name. You paste this HTML into your webpage and sign-ups are automatically recorded in the contact list for that campaign --such as subscriptions to your monthly e-mail newsletter.

Web Forms

If you know HTML, you can modify ProAutoResponder's ready-made sign-up forms. For a local marketing campaign I am conducting, I request a first name and ask inquirers to select their street name from a drop-down list, in addition to giving their e-mail address. The possibilities here are vast -- so long as you don't ask for too much information and turn off your potential subscriber.

Some autoresponder systems allow you to list only the e-mail address, first name, and last name. But ProAutoResponder gives you at least 24 fields in which your can store customer data: First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Address1, Address2, City, State or Province, Zip Code, Daytime Phone, Evening Phone, Fax Phone, Country, Age, Comment, User 1, User 2, User 3, User 4, User 5, User 6, User 7, User 8, User 9, User 10. These last fields are unspecified and can be used for any other data you might want to collect (such as the name of the street).

The program that runs the web form sits on ProAutoResponder's own server, but it gives you some flexibility. In hidden fields you can specify the URLs of webpages subscribers are taken to in the event that they are successfully subscribed, are already subscribed, or encounter an error in subscribing. You can also include a hidden "ad code" to help you track the landing page where a particular contact signed up. I wish that their program allowed you to designate required fields and check e-mail address formats for validity. Yes, you can do this with JavaScript, but it would be nice if the ProAutoResponder did this sort of checking on its own.

The Contact Database

The contact database is well thought out and uses a ColdFusion front end to work its magic.

You can search for individuals in the contact database by first name, last name, or e-mail address, and include wildcards in those searches. However, you can't search for any other information in the database file. Let's say you wanted to do an e-mailing to everyone within a specific ZIP code. There's no easy way to select those records and mail only to them. You'd need to browse through an existing campaign contact list record by record, and then subscribe qualifying contacts to a new campaign to do this kind of selective mailing.

For most purposes, the database structure is fine, but I'm a bit dismayed that user-defined fields can only take up to 255 characters maximum. What's worse, you can only view about 40 characters on the screen -- the field "window" isn't large enough to see more. This makes it difficult to record extended notes about a particular customer.

On the other hand, the database keeps excellent records regarding which campaigns the contact is (or has been) subscribed to, which messages he has received, and (if ClickTrak is enabled) which hyperlinks in an e-mail message he has clicked on.

This system also avoids needless duplication. Contacts are subscribed to a particular campaign -- though it is possible that one contact might be enrolled in several campaigns. The contact consists of a single record no matter how many campaigns he may be subscribed to. Any subscriptions to new campaigns with the same e-mail address become part of the same record. Nice!

Each contact list can be easily exported. You select the campaign contacts to be exported, and the program compresses ("zips") them and e-mails them to you. The records come in a comma-quote-delimited text file. Unfortunately, neither the name of the particular campaign these contacts belong to nor the field names are included in the exported file.

Tools, Training, and Support

As web-based programs go, this one is pretty well documented and supported. Once you login to your account, the first screen lists a number of video tutorials that explain the various functions, such as: "How to create an e-mail campaign", "How to import contacts," "How to create an HTML/Plain-Text message," etc. If you like, you can read or print out the script of each of these tutorials as a PDF document. A rather extensive FAQ asks and answers the most common questions. Each screen offers a Help button, but unfortunately contextual help isn't actually available yet.

I found that when I called the number listed on the Contact Us page, a real person answered who was well acquainted with the program. There's also a chat system for online help.

Odds and Ends

ProAutoResponder makes it easy for recipients to get off a list using an easy-unsubscribe link found in each e-mail message. Attachments to e-mail messages are not allowed in this system -- which I don't see as a big marketing setback. If you want to distribute an e-book or program, you can include a link to the file which can be downloaded from your website.

Though it's currently disabled, ProAutoResponder includes a very useful link tracking system, ClickTrak. A campaign's open and click-through statistics are displayed so you quickly see how well a campaign is going. If you drill down, you can determine exactly which contacts clicked on which links -- a useful feature if you are trying to develop a targeted list for special interests. ClickTrak only tells you about click-throughs, not actual sales -- you need affiliate management software for that -- but it's a handy and welcome feature for Internet marketers.

ProAutoResponder is fairly unique in giving you the capability of sending audio messages. First, you set up the body of the message, name it, and are assigned a PIN number to identify the message. Then you call a toll-free phone number, punch in the PIN number, and record the message as many times as it takes for you to get it right. A new ProAutoResponder account comes with 500 free audio messages. After that they are sold in blocks of 500 or more at a rate of 2.8¢ a message (for only 500) down to about 1.4¢ when purchased 20,000 at a time. Experiment with this, since many marketers have found that an audio e-mail message can build trust and increase your response rate significantly.

ProAutoResponder is experiencing growing pains, trying to expand their hardware infrastructure rapidly to accommodate a customer base they say is doubling in size every 30 days. This means some downtime at night for maintenance occasionally.

Conclusion

For the price, ProAutoResponder is a bargain. It has a number of valuable features and no limit to the number of e-mails sent each month. Unlike higher-end, web-based marketing programs, you can't do selective e-mailings based on what's found in a contact's data fields. But then, the program is written primarily as an autoresponder -- and at that task it is very good indeed. I don't know of any web-based program in its price range that can touch its features. I recommend ProAutoResponder for a wide variety of small business e-mail marketing tasks, and plan to use it myself.

 
If you like, set up an account and put it through its paces. http://scc.proautoresponder.com The sale pitch has a lot of hype, but the product is great. They guarantee your money back within 30 days if you find it isn't for you. Try it out.