Email autoresponders are a boom to the online marketing industry. Can we think of a way to send bulk emails (on autopilot)? In a sense, the email marketing industry will be doomed if there are no email autoresponder solutions like Aweber, GetResponse and the like.

It doesn’t matter if you choose a free or a paid email autoresponder solution; you still need one if you are serious about building a list and marketing your business via emails.

In this post I am going to discuss some of the features you need to look at when you are seeking an email autoresponder service.

Unlimited emails

The first and the foremost thing I’d want to have in my autoresponder service is that it should allow me to send unlimited number of emails for the standard price I pay. This means I should not be worried about the number of emails I send in a month

I should not look at the email credits or counts that run down so fast every time I send an email to my list. This is pathetic if I have a reasonably big list - say a couple thousand subscribers.

For every email you send, a couple thousand counts will go down in your email wallet. This will restrict me from sending another email, which could be very important for my business. Or I would end up buying credits and paying more just to send one additional email.

Ah I hate this kinda situation. When I am on a subscription plan, I want to be carefree about the number of emails I send.

Unlimited lists

This is the second most important thing that I’d be looking for. For any online business it is indeed very important to have multiple sources of income.

For some this could mean multiple monetization methods of a single big business. For some others this could mean multiple businesses - not an overwhelming number but a handful - as with my case.

If you have one single website as your main business model, then still, you’d want to build multiple lists for different purposes.

Say you are launching a product and you want to have a list of the customers who buys that product (so that you can up-sell them something else); or you’d want to have separate coaching programs and separate lists for each one of them; these kinda requirements apply even if you have one big business.

If you have many websites on different niches, you’d want to build lists for each of them.

In any case, if you want to be carefree about the number of lists you create, you need to look out for this feature in your email autoresponder service.

PS: Do not confuse the number of subscribers to the number of lists; of course every email autoresponder has pricing structure based on the number of subscribers - here I mean the number of lists you can have under one account.

Email deliverability

This one is a biggie and not only is just a “feature” that you need to look for, but this could contribute to the trust factor. Surprising? I’ll explain.

Email deliverability is nothing but the promise that the email autoresponder service will make when they explain about their features. For instance, if a particular company claims that they have 99.8% email deliverability, this means that out of 100 emails you send, they assure you that 99.8 of those emails will be delivered to your list subscribers.

Well, what will happen to the 0.2% of it? Those emails could simply bounce (because of bad email addresses) or they could also end up in spam folders.

The latter case is dangerous and could tamper your trust factor among your subscribers. To avoid this most email autoresponder solutions use a few factors to help get their emails delivered to your subscribers’ inbox.

This article will help you get familiar with the terms involved -

19 Email Deliverability Terms Every Marketer Should Know

Hence you should be looking for an email autoresponder service that does well with these factors.

Remember, if your emails often get bounced or if they frequently end up in spam folders that will send a bad message to the email service providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) that could eventually lead you into trouble.

Spam checking

I’d seriously want some sort of spam checking to be integrated in my email service provider - I mean, seriously. Spam is a serious word and sending spam smelling emails to your list subscribers will simply put the purpose of your email marketing business out of question.

In Aweber, I have an in-built spam checker which checks my emails for spam BEFORE I send them. This information is gold. It rates my email on some spam meter and tells me which range is safe to send.

Customer support

Last but certainly not the least, I would want my email autoresponder service to be at my service when I run into trouble or if I have any question. I always love any support that gets back to me within 24 hrs - Aweber (aff link) is pretty decent with this. I usually get responses within few hours.

And with GetResponse (aff link) I like their chat support. They’re pretty fast and sharp!

What are your preferences with choosing an email autoresponder service? Let’s talk in the comments.