Last post I mentioned that I wrote an ebook for the Auto Pilot Cash Streams giveaway (as a reader, you can get it here without signing up for the giveaway: Link Cloaking 101).
As part of that whole process, I had to set up an autoresponder, opt-in page, custom thank you pages, the whole bit. After all, the whole point to giving the ebook away is to build a list of people interested in link cloaking. Capturing the names and emails in an autoresponder will allow me to send periodic emails to the list when new developments or products are available.
Since the whole process is fresh in my mind, I thought I’d do a series of tutorials covering it. That way those of you who haven’t been through it before can get involved in the giveaway with a minimum of fuss. This series does not cover writing the ebook, you’re on your own for that. If you want to get involved in the giveaway, and don’t feel like you can write anything, buy some PLR articles and make them chapters in an ebook.
Today’s tutorial will cover setting up the autoresponder itself.
I assume you already have an account at Traffic Wave. If you don’t have one, they have a 30-day free trial so you can follow along with the tutorial and get things set up before you decide if you want to pay for a membership. Personally, I see Traffic Wave and Aweber as being the two autoresponder services to choose from.
Note that the screenshots in the following are accurate as of today. Traffic Wave is continually upgrading its system and adding features, so the screenshots might not be accurate if you’re reading this in the future.
Create Your Autoresponder
Log into your Traffic Wave account, and select the Autoresponder Campaigns menu item (shown below):
That will take you to the list of autoresponders you already have, which presumably is empty (if it isn’t, you probably don’t need this tutorial). There’ll be a list of options on the left (shown below). Choose “Create New Campaign” from that list.
The next screen will ask you for the campaign nickname and campaign description. The campaign nickname cannot have spaces in it, while the campaign description may.
Fill out the fields and click the “Create New Campaign” button. You’ll get a confirmation screen that talks about an email address. You won’t be using that email address, so just ignore that confirmation (shown below), and click “Confirm”.
You’ll next get the campaign profile screen. These fields will be filled out already, but you’ll want to change some of them.
The return email name defaults to your complete name. If you’ve written the ebook under a pseudonym, change this field to the name you used. You may also decide you only want your first name to show here. If so, change the field to what you want to show in emails sent out to the subscribers.
The return email address defaults to whatever email you used when you signed up to Traffic Wave. I recommend changing this to an email address specific for the ebook itself. That way all replies go to that email address and don’t clutter up your main email.
The campaign title will show up in a few places, to change it to something that represents your actual ebook title. Do not click “Publish these letters”. Click “Submit Profile Changes”, and you’ll end up back at the Campaign Profile page.
Your autoresponder is now set up!
Of course, we still have some tasks to complete before we can use it. These include:
1) Upload the ebook to a directory on your domain, and create a first letter in your autoresponder with the download link
2) Create custom thank you pages to host on your domain
3) Create an opt-in page to host on your domain
Note that Traffic Wave does provide some default opt-in and thank you pages. I do not recommend that you use these! Not only do they look pretty generic, but you don’t get to put your analytics code into them, so you won’t get information about how many people sign up but fail to confirm, etc. Google Analytics in particular has goal tracking that will let you see at a glance the numbers for the funnel that starts at the opt-in page and ends up at the second thank you page.
The next in this series will cover uploading the ebook and creating that first autoresponder message.