Ofuz 0.5.8 has quite a few new features, and over 90 across the board improvements. In this blog post, I want to tell you about the new Auto Responder feature in Ofuz.

An Auto Responder is a mailing list feature that sends timed followup messages to your mailing list. You create a sequence of email templates and tell the Auto Responder how long to wait before sending each one. Then, when new people join your mailing list, the Auto Responder sends out your emails at your chosen intervals using the merge fields from your email templates to personalize each email.

Auto Responders can be a great way to convert contacts into customers. Remember the following important facts:

• On average, it takes 7 contacts within 18 months to make a sale. Reference
• 2% of sales are made on the first contact, 3% on the second, 5% on the third, 10% on the fourth, and 80% on the fifth to twelfth! Reference

Auto Responder sequences should provide interesting or valuable information to your contacts, and it should remind them about the benefits of becoming a customer.

Here’s how to set up an Auto Responder in Ofuz.

1. Sign in to your Ofuz account.
2. Set up any email templates that you plan to use for your Auto Responder.
3. In the top right of the Ofuz page, click Settings.
4. On the left navigation bar, click Auto Responder.
5. Click Create New.
6. In the Auto Responder Name field, type a name for your new Auto Responder.
7. In the Tag Name field, choose the tag that you want to associate with this Auto Responder. Contacts tagged with this tag will receive your new Auto Responder sequence.
8. Click Create.
9. The new Auto Responder appears in your list of Auto Responders. Click the new Auto Responder’s name.
10. Click here to the right of You do not have any auto responder Email Templates for Auto Responder1.
11. Either click Select Email Template and choose an existing email template to add to your Auto Responder, or create a new email template using the form that appears.
12. Fill in the Name field with a name for this template.
13. Fill in the Subject field with the subject you want this email to have.
14. In the Send it in field, type the number of days you want to wait before sending this message.
15. In the Message editor, create your message.
16. Click Create.
17. To create additional emails for this Auto Responder, click Add a new email, and then repeat steps 11 – 16.

That’s all there is to it! Ofuz contacts that are tagged with the tag assigned to your new Auto Responder will automatically receive personalized emails at the intervals you’ve chosen. You can really save yourself some time by combining the Ofuz Web Form feature with the Auto Responder feature.

Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to get a free Ofuz account to take advantage of over 90 enhancements, just released in Ofuz 0.5.8!

Keeping in Touch: Micro Mailing for the Solo Entrepreneur.

As a small business, very small business actually, we have to always keep one eye on business development. We always want to be the first person that comes to mind when potential customers have a project that we can do. You  could create a mailing list and send out bulk emails with any of the email marketing tools that are out there. However, email readers are notoriously unwilling to read another generic, nicely formatted newsletter. If you are sending these out, you would be fortunate if one fourth (25%) of your recipients actually read your email.

That is not what we are looking for in customer contacts.  We want to have personal communication with potential clients.  So, instead of collecting a thousand email addresses of questionable value, we send out “micro mails” using Ofuz.

An Example Micro Mail:

The past three months have been a pretty busy time for us .  Philip has been deeply engaged in white papers and other collateral on virtualization subjects, including deep technical dives and sales focused documents to show the value of virtualization in the new IT environments.  He is working so much on virtualization that he has started to act virtual himself.  On really busy days he loses his normally shiny presence and I can actually see through him.

We tried to make the case with the IRS come tax time that since he was virtual he did not need to pay actual taxes.  They did not go for it.

• A Learning Management System  and courseware for a client that is developing a complex — but really really cool — software tool that will help to control the Bonneville dams.  A lot of people need to be ramped up on a whole new mission critical user interface and we are going to build a learning tool to get them all ramped up.
• We have been investigating podcast, both audio and video, as a way to deliver our customers’ message. Research has shown that by adding podcasts to your marketing delivery, you can increase your exposure.  We see that as a way to multiply the value of content across multiple platforms. We could take your white paper and affordably turn it into a podcast that appeals to a whole new audience.

We hope your endeavors are keeping you just the right level of busy.  What kinds of things are you working on these days?

Tips for Your Micro Email Campaign

• Keep it brief or they won’t read it at all.
• Let people know what service you offer.
• Give them ideas of how you can help them.
• Give them something of value or something entertaining
• Ask about how their business is going.
• Like any good marketing piece, end with a call to action.  Some times I like to couch this in the form of a question as I did in the example above: “What kinds of things are you working on these days?”

How to Make A Micro Email

1. Click Settings (top right of the page).
2. Click Sync.
3. Click Google.
4. Click Import Contacts.
5. In the Email field, type your Gmail address and then click Import.

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. Click in the white space next to each contact you want to tag.
3. The white space around the selected contacts will become light yellow.
4. In the text box above the selected contacts, type the tag you want to assign to those contacts.
5. Click add tags.

When it is time to create a message, use the Search by Tags feature to select all of your prospects.

Then, send a simple, readable email to these prospects. Don’t go overboard with formatting; this is a personal email, not a bulk newsletter. Use the Insert Merge Fields to add business name, contact name, and the contact’s position wherever it is appropriate in the email.