How to Monitor the Performance of Your Autoresponder Letters

How to Write Autoresponder Emails

After creating a series of autoresponder letters, do not turn your back and forget it there. Monitor its performance for maximum results since an autoresponder series that is not monitored can cost you a lot of time and money without returning anything.

This is one reason why you should have an account with time-tested and dedicated autoresponder service like Aweber. Dedicated companies like Aweber provide an amazing wealth of reports that you can use to fine-tune your letter series to perfection.

Here are some autoresponder metrics that you should keep an eye on:

1) Increase in weekly, monthly, or quarterly signups. This number should go up. An easy way to see this is to generate a time graph, if your host allows you to do so.

2) Monitor your open and click rates. Yes, a good autoresponder service like Aweber will provide you detailed reports on each letter you send away. If your letters are opened 50% and your links are clicked 25% consider yourself VERY lucky (and successful) indeed.

Use such statistics to understand what's wrong with certain letters and why others are opened by more people. Think again about your SUBJECT lines for example, and edit them. Test out different subject lines and compare the results within a month or two.

Do the same analysis for those letters that have a high open and click rate. Try to learn from both your hits and misses.

3) What are your unsubscribe rates and which letters have the highest subcription cancellations?

You should have access to that kind of information as well. That way you can zero in on those specific letters that cause you lose subscribers. Analyze such letters and try to take corrective action by editing the subject line, the text and/or images, the promise you make in the letter (if any), or the attachments (if any).

4) Geographic distribution of your subscribers is another important piece of information to tune-up your letters and make them more targeted.

For example, if you know that most of your subscribers are in India and China, should you pay attention to the HOUR of the day at which you are sending your broadcast? Perhaps you should.

If your letters are arriving in India or China at midnight due to time difference, perhaps they'll never get read due to all the junk mail that accumulates on top of them through the night. Perhaps if you time your letters such that they'll arrive in the inbox of an Indian or Chinese reader in mid-morning local time, then perhaps more of your letters will be opened and read, and thus more of your links will be clicked -- which is ultimately what the game is all about.

5) Try split testing. If you're sending letters to only ten or twenty subscribers split-testing does not make sense from a statistical point of view. But if you have 500 or 1,000 subscribers then you should try split testing by dividing your letters into two groups and sending out different content and/or subject line to those two groups. The group that yields a higher response rate can become your new "control". You can then test that against another letter variation and see the change raises your response rates, etc.

Autoresponder management takes a lot of testing and performance monitoring. But when done right, it's a great path (if not short-cut) to success and prosperity.

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