When it comes to list building, some people just create a few emails in the autoresponder queue and leave it at that. They may then add a few more as they come across promotions they want to include and for some people, this rather haphazard methods works. It is my view that you can substantially improve on this rather hit and miss arrangement by understanding some auto responder principles as well as creating a mindset to train your subscribers.

I know this may sound awful at first, but think about this. If you actually tell your subscribers what to expect from you, they will be better prepared, and less likely to hit the delete key. If you have only been sending out great quality emails on how to do things, as an example, and then suddenly, you email about a great promotion, some people may feel this is out of character, get offended and unsubscribe. Believe it or not, this happens.

On the other hand, it is better to actually tell your subscribers that you will be sending information rich emails, with a few periodic promotions that will be related to the information you send. In other words, if your list is about games and new games consoles, I would include a promotion about dog training. It is obviously unrelated. On the other hand, if there is a new game console on the market that has a growing following, you may include that as a promotion, or a games pack and so on.

This way, you are in your niche, and the people on your list will see this as a valuable add on service to complement the great material you are already hopefully sending them. Can you see where this is going? By being attentive, and concerned about your quality and promotions, you are protecting your list as well as showing yourself as a giving and caring person.

Also, as a side note, remember that you want to keep your preprogrammed emails evergreen. That means that you want to make sure that nothing in your emails is going to be dated. As an example, you would not preprogram an email about a new games console that has just come out and expect hat to be relevant in six months, as you hopefully will still have new subscribers joining you.

If you want to promote a time specific product, like a new games console, I recommend using your autoresponder's broadcast feature. This is an email that can be programmed to be sent immediately or on a specific date, once. Remember that as your business grows, you may even create multiple lists that are funnelling people from one product to another, and as this gets bigger, it is harder to maintain manually.

An example to explain this is that if you have a list about video information, you may want to switch that person from the first list to another list when they buy a certain product, as the first list's emails may no longer be relevant to them. All of these features can be automated in your list building autoresponder.