Freelance Writing Series

Selecting an Autoresponder Service for Lead Generation

As a freelance writer with your own blog, lead generation is one of the keys to success. You can get some traffic from the search engines when writing your articles and posting them to your WordPress blog. But the other key is to use lead generation to increase return visitors.

Note: If you have not set up a WordPress blog yet, view our "Lead Generation for Freelance Writers" page for details on how to get started publishing articles on your own blog.

Return visits are vital to your success. By building an opt-in list through lead generation, you can send out an update each time you add a new article to your blog or send out once or twice a week if you are posting hundreds of articles.

Although websites come with some autoresponders, these are not at all optimized for Internet marketing, and some hosts place severe limitations on list size and other mailing capabilities. Autoresponder companies specialize in helping you develop a comprehensive lead-generation funnel. They have software to manage your entire list, and you log in at the autoresponder company's website to send out newsletters and manage your leads.

At Writing Shares, we use Email Aces and also their affiliate program, which pays commissions for referring others. Although some services like Aweber, GetResponse and others have more users, Email Aces is cheaper and provides the same basic benefits related to email marketing and lead management.

We capture leads on almost every page of Writing Shares with the Email Aces opt-in subscription form. To do this, you add the form as a widget in your sidebar. Once you do this, then every new article you write for your blog automatically contains that opt-in lead generation form. This is a turnkey way to build a list of targeted leads ready to visit your site over and over again. All you need to do is just keep sending out reminders to your list. You do this in your Email Aces account with the "broadcast" mailing feature. It is very easy and only slightly more complicated than sending an email. 

It really is quite simple building a list when you combine an autoresponder service like Email Aces with WordPress. Once it is set up, the leads join automatically through the opt-in subscription form. Your only job is to write more articles and send out broadcasts to remind your leads and subscribers that you have updated your blog with more articles and content.