Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Automating Your Routine Tasks

How many times have you tried to reach a company through a toll-free hotline only to be put on hold or made to listen to an endless array of recorded messages? Have you pressed a number on the keypad so many times that the number has now rubbed off the button? If you're like us, you hang up and never do business with that company again.

Guard against this situation when customers interact with your online business. If they can't quickly add or delete themselves from your newsletter mailing list or respond to an e-mail or banner offer, they get frustrated and leave. They might never come back, no matter how many offers and deals you throw their way.

Enter automation. By setting up automatic processes, you can have your marketing campaign go 24/7, and with automation handling the more routine tasks, you're free to handle more business deals (such as finding the right merchandise, analyzing your sales numbers, or hiring the right staff to increase your business).

Here are some tools you can use to automate parts of the process:

• Autoresponders: This tool automatically generates an e-mail response based on an incoming request, such as when someone joins your newsletter mailing list. An autoresponder can add that person's name to the database and send him or her a welcome message (full of information about your company) and maybe even an introductory newsletter issue.

  Don't abuse the autoresponder with every process you have in customer interaction. The ...