When you are building a business online an essential element for success is effective email marketing. Every online business needs an email list. This is the list of prospective and actual customers that you have on your email database list and who you can email messages to at any time. Your email list is a vital tool in the online marketers’ toolbox and like all tools, if you don’t use it, nothing will happen.

For effective email marketing, you need an email autoresponder. It is your electronic personal assistant who works for you 24/7. It’s important to use it to its full potential if you are serious about building an online business. Here are 5 steps to make your email autoresponder work harder.

1. Create a compelling opt-in form.

Your email autoresponder software can create an opt-in form to capture email addresses. This opt-in form should be placed on the home page of your website. You only need to ask potential subscribers for their email address. You don’t need their name or anything else at this stage. The more info you ask for, the lower your conversion rate is going to be.

2. Provide something of value.

To encourage your prospects to input their email address into your opt-in form, you will need to provide something of value in return. For instance, this could be a free report, training video or e-newsletter relevant to your business. Set up your email autoresponder to instantly send what you offered in exchange for the email address when somebody does opt-in to your list. In this electronic age, people expect to have things sent quickly and if they have to wait for days to get anything back from you, when they do get it, they will have most likely forgotten why they asked for it initially.

3. Keep providing value.

Effective email marketing means developing a relationship with new subscribers as soon as possible. Studies show that it takes approximately seven emails before most subscribers will act. To stay in regular contact with your subscribers, pre-load your email autoresponder with a sequence of helpful emails that are automatically sent out over a set number of days or weeks. Generate a desire for your subscribers to want to know more by providing value and sparking your reader’s curiosity.

4. Avoid the hard sell.

Create a balance of selling to them versus being helpful. Send out a series of lessons. Ask them to participate in a poll so that it becomes interactive. Be a little controversial, but not offensive. You’ll want to set up a series of emails that your subscribers will want to read and will look forward to receiving. Moderation is key with effective email marketing and you don’t want to overdo it by bombarding a new subscriber with sales messages every day.

5. Send real time broadcasts.

Your email autoresponder works 24/7 for your online business. Your follow-up email marketing campaign is basically a series of emails that have been pre-written and loaded into your autoresponder. They are automatically sent out whenever somebody joins your list. But you don’t want to just rely on automation. You can enhance the relationship with your subscribers by sending emails that sent in ‘real-time’ about things that are happening now.

You can do this with a broadcast email that you send out to everyone on your list at the same time. Everyone will receive the same message whether they’ve been signed up to your list for days or years. This type of email message is particularly effective if you have some new product or service you want to let your customers know about, or if you’re having a sale.