How to Write Million Dollar Ad Copy-
A Proven Formula for Turning Prospects Into Instant Buyers

by Craig Whitley

My GRIP Formula

I call my proven and successful formula for writing ad copy the GRIP formula. It is similar to the AIDA formula that professional copywriters have written about and taught for so many years. AIDA is an acronym for:

Attention
Interest
Desire, and
Action

These are the four sequential “steps of emotion” an ad or sales letter needs to convey to and/or solicit from a sales prospect or reader to produce profit pulling ad copy. You need a great headline to grab the reader’s attention. Once your text has grabbed the prospect’s attention, it needs to flow smoothly into easy-to-read introductory text that holds the prospect’s interest. Once interest is gained by discussing features of your product or services you move the prospect onward as you discuss enticing benefits your product or service can offer the prospect. Your text needs to sell your prospect these benefits in a manner that causes desire for your product or service to build to the point that your prospect becomes an impulse buyer. Your closing text needs to convey reasons for the interested prospect to take action and buy your product or service before moving on to do something else.

I find that my GRIP formula is much easier to remember than AIDA, and a bit more descriptive of what your ad copy needs to achieve than the AIDA formula. When I sit down to write ad copy and sales letters, I always remind myself that I want to write good ad copy that gets a firm GRIP on the reader and doesn’t let him go until he has completed reading my copy and (hopefully) bought what I’m selling. What does GRIP stand for? GRIP is my personally coined acronym for ad copy that:

Grabs Attention: Grab your prospect’s attention with a great headline.
Retains Interest: Retain your prospect by moving him or her quickly to text that sets the stage and is so captivating and interesting that the prospect wants to continue reading. Discussing key features of your product or service and the problems it solves is an excellent way to hold your prospect’s interest.
Induces Desire: Inject user benefits in your text that will induce a desire within your prospect to own your product (or service) and enjoy the same benefits as others who have bought it. Inclusion of testimonials and benefits to the sales prospect (reader) are important desire drivers.
Provokes Action: Finish off your ad copy with compelling text that provokes your prospect to take action and switch from the role of prospect to buyer by offering incentives and compelling reasons for buying the product or service now – and not later.

My 53 Magic Hooks

If you’ve done any advertising in recent years you’ve likely found that there are a number of descriptive and actions words that work as well as the 20 magic ad copy words I listed previously. My own personal experience has proven that there are 53 words that work very effectively if used correctly in classified ads.

I refer to these words as my “magic hooks.” Why? Because I use them in my ad copy and sales copy to hook customers the same way I use a well-baited fish hook or tantalizing lure to hook fish when I go fishing.

I realize it can very difficult to try and remember 53 words. I came up with a phrase that serves as an acronym for all 53 words and helps me remember them without constantly going back to review my list over and over. I suggest using the list, but answer any curiosity you might have, my acronym phrase is: IF JIM SAMMY GETS HIP FAST, HIS BEST MARKETING AND SALES PRODUCES.

The table on the following page illustrates my memory jogger phrase and lists the words that each letter(s) in the phrase represents. Some words like improve, also include other variations or tenses of the word (i.e., improves, improved, etc.) that work equally well. Words shown in Italics represent words that my personal experience has found to produce fantastic sales results and accomplish my goals in the GRIP formula.

Read this list of words several times before sitting down to write your next classified ad or sales letter. Put them to memory and use them to sell your product and tell your story. If used properly they will produce wonderful results.

Craig’s 53 Magic Hooks

Writing Classified Ads

Writing ad copy for classified and display ads is an excellent way to use the GRIP formula. Due to the limited space or word constraints for display and classified ads, lots of time and effort is required to write a successful ad that follows GRIP and achieves maximum financial results. Many rules need to be followed to produce a highly successful classified ad for ezines, newspapers, magazines, etc. But your use of a modified version of my GRIP formula should produce highly successful results for your marketing program.

Every great classified, display ad and sales letter have one thing in common – they all have a super headline that grabs the prospect’s attention. Here are six examples of what I mean:

Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days – Guaranteed!
Free Internet Business Can Earn You $1,000 Per Week!
Secret Free Report Can Cut Your Monthly Utility Bills by 30%
Make Duck Decoys That Work for Just 25¢ Each.
Secret Formula for Writing Ad Copy Can Increase Your Sales by 500% or More!
Earn $97,000 Per Year Working at Home in Your Pajamas!
Amazing Money Formula Will Flood Your Website With Cash in 7 Days!
Let’s spend a minute to analyze these headlines and determine what they all have in common. They have what I call magic buttons, words that have stood the test of time and are proven to grab a reader’s attention, implant interest and provoke desire to take action.

I’m sure you may have read about some of these magic buttons before. Marketing and advertising experts often write about 20 magic words that are known to produce fantastic results in classified ads. The 20 words they cite most frequently are: advanced, amazing, discover, easy, fast, free, guaranteed, how-to, improved, increases, method, new, now, plan, proven, reveals, save, simple, and you.

In addition to magic words, advertising history has proven that ads that cite or promise specific results for the reader (i.e., 30 pounds in 30 days, $1,000 per week, 30% per month, 25¢ each, 820% increase, and $50,000 per year) achieve fantastic results. Note that it is extremely important to be specific and use examples like I’ve cited, instead of choosing words that are vague. Hence, “make $1,250 per week” is much more believable to readers than “you can make big money.” The latter is a very overused phrase that no longer works well.

Now that you know about my magic hooks, we are ready to begin a step-by-step plan to implement the GRIP formula and create fantastic classified ads, display ads and ezine ads that sell again and again, producing record results.

STEP 1: Select a publication (i.e., e-Zine, magazine, Web site, newspaper, etc.) that caters specifically to your market audience (i.e., boat owners, income opportunity seekers, stamp collectors, etc.).

STEP 2: Jot down one sentence that describes the market niche or audience you plan to sell your product to with your ad copy. Now I know you may think you don’t need to do this because after all, who knows your market niche better than you do. But its important to write a description of your market niche for several reasons: (1) Some people cater to large market niches and run ads in publications that may cater to only one segment of a the larger market niche, (2) You be shocked to learn how many people run ads in publications that are not read by their market niche, and (3) Writing a description of your market niche helps prepare you for Step 3.

STEP 3: Visualize your ideal prospect. Picture him or her in your mind. Think about how your prospect will benefit from your product or service. Pretend you meet your prospect on an elevator and only have a brief elevator ride of only 4 or 5 floors, less than 15 seconds to capture the prospect’s attention, hold his interest, peak his desire and entice him to say – “Yes, I want to buy your product (or service).” What will you say in those 15 seconds? Jot down the age group of your ideal prospects, the type of business, lifestyle or hobby they may have or share, what products and services they need most to fulfill their needs, wants and desires. Once you’ve thought about this for a few minutes and committed your thoughts to memory, visualize the ideal prospect for your product and move on to the next step.

STEP 4: Write down the most valuable benefits your product or service will offer your prospect. Make as long a list as you can think of in 15 minutes.

STEP 5: Now compare your list of benefits with my list of 53 magic hooks that sell. Take several clean sheets of paper and begin writing one-sentence headlines that utilize these words to grab your prospect’s attention, hold their interest and make them desire your product or service. Write a minimum of 50 headlines using variations of these words, and strive to write as many as 100 if you can. Confine each headline to a maximum of 14 words, 12 or less is preferred. Don’t stop writing until you’ve come up with at least 50 different headline variations. Your best headline variations should be ones that adequately capture attention to a major benefit your product or service can offer the reader and contains two or more magic buttons. The more magic buttons the better, but don’t’ choose the best headlines based on total number of magic buttons in the headline because your headline must address what your selling and offer a benefit. Here are a few examples of great headlines:

How to Make $75,000 a Year Giving Away Free eBooks.
Discover How to be Debt-Free in 30 Days!
YOU Can Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days With Our FREE Plan.
Amazing Cold Cream Formula Can Remove Facial Wrinkles in Just 2 Weeks
Discover Internet Marketing Secrets Only the Pros Have Know Until Now.

STEP 6: When finished with your headline list, select the ten headlines you like best and write them on a separate sheet of paper. Then show your list of 50 or more to at least 3 friends or relatives and ask them to pick the 10 headlines that “would most likely grab their attention and make them interested in learning more about your product or service.” Compare their list of 10 with your list of 10. If no two people (including yourself) can agree on using at least 3 of the 10 headlines, ask more friends, relatives or business acquaintances to select the 10 that got their attention and sparked an interest. Ask everyone to prioritize their list of 10 in order of the ones they like most. This is important because no one will likely take the time to list them in their particular order of preference or liking. Hence, ask them to rank the headlines, using the number 1 for the one they like best, ranging upwards to the number 10 for the one they least liked.

STEP 7: Hopefully, when you’ve completed this survey of your friends, relatives or peers, you can narrow the list of 10 down to a list of 3 headlines that your survey group consensus felt grabbed their attention, held their interest and made them desire more information on your product or service. If you can’t come to an agreement on 3, chose any one or 2 that the group agrees on and throw in your personal favorite or 2. Now you are ready to run these headline candidates by the experts. Take your 3 headline candidates and post them to five different popular Internet marketing discussion forums or message boards and ask regular attendees to the board which of the 3 headlines do they consider the best at grabbing attention, sparking interest and captivating desire. I know that some of you may consider this an outlandish suggestion. Many entrepreneurs are afraid to release a headline or classified in advance and prefer the first run to “hit the industry by storm” to prevent copying by others. I’ve got news for you if this is your concern. No one can afford to run an ad in every single e-Zine of 300,000 that are published today. The chance that someone will take your headline and run it in the same e-Zines you want to run your ad is very remote. Remember, you are not sharing your sales copy with the discussion groups, only your headline candidates.

STEP 8: After you post your request for input on your 3 headline candidates at 5 different discussion groups, come back each day for 2 or 3 days and read what respondents think. Please remember that most boards have regular attendees who are experts in their own market niches. Hence, listen to their comments and take note. Use and consider their input to make your final decision on which headline you should try. This whole process up until now may sound rather lengthy, but I am showing you a proven way to write headlines that sell, regardless the degree of writing experience you may have. If you consider yourself a good writer and just want to implement steps 1 through 6 before going on to STEP 9, then do so. But I highly recommend you seek input from regular attendees of Internet marketing forums or message boards. Some of the best pros on the net are always willing to help amateurs with good advice because you represent a solid prospect for their own products and services.

STEP 9: Now that you have a headline sentence, let’s move on to completing the ad. What you do next depends on how much text you are allowed for a classified in the publication you plan to run the ad. If you followed my earlier advice, your headline should be no more than 14 words in length. Most e-Zines allow ad space that translates to between 3 and 6 sentences of 60 to 65 characters in length. Hence, what you say next will vary, depending on how much space your ad medium allows for the classified ad you are running.

I hope my comprehensive discussion of Gary White’s ad will give you insight into the psychology behind writing a powerful classified ad. But just in case it doesn't, I will offer some mental reminders and 3 exercises for you to walk through to complete STEP 9 successfully. The mental reminders are:

You have caught your prospect’s attention and sparked some interest in your product or service, or else he or she would not be moving on to read the remainder of your ad. So the purpose of STEP 9 is to come up with words and script that will build desire for what you are offering.

It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to remember that you are not trying to sell your product or service in the ad. The number of sales you will get for a $10 product or a $200 product from a classified are few, 1 out of a 1,000 readers if you are lucky. What you should be trying to sell is something FREE that will provide you the opportunity to tell your prospect everything they will need to know to make an informed buying decision on your product or service. This is why most every classified ad you will see will close with words like “free details,” “free plan,” “free formula,” “Send SASE,” etc. (Note: mail-order ads frequently use SASE as an acronym for self-addressed stamped envelope). For a prospect to want to send you a blank e-mail for more information from your autoresponder, you have to make the remaining ad text even more interesting, building desire and making the process of delivering more free information for your prospect easy.
With those 2 mental reminders in place, let’s now take a look at the 3 exercise drills you will need to perform to complete.

STEP 9. First, you will need to build more desire about your product or service by describing what it is you are offering using Magic Hooks that also contain obvious and hidden benefits for the prospect. You cement the Magic Hooks together with simple words that make short descriptive sentences. For example, Gary followed his headline with 2 descriptive sentences: “It’s an EASY 3-part automated system. You can set it up today and LITERALLY be getting checks within 72-hours!” See how Gary chose Magic Hooks like easy, automated, system, you, checks, and 72-hours, then cemented them together with words like it’s, an, can, set, etc.

Just like the drill you did with the headline, write 25 different versions of your descriptive text, more if you can think of more. Use as many of the Magic Hooks as you can without destroying the message you are trying to convey. For example, let’s pretend you have written a book on how to write powerful resumes that improve the odds of landing high-paying executive jobs. Your headline might read something like; “Amazing and Proven Resume Formula Could Increase Your Salary 50% or more! You might follow this headline up with 3 short sentences similar to ones I jotted down in only 2 minutes. They are as follows. My Easy-to-follow 5-step plan can turn YOU into a Superstar Job Candidate OVERNIGHT! Discover how to leap past scores of job candidates and see your income skyrocket.

After writing down no less than 25 different versions of the “inducing desire” phase of the ad, and hopefully as many as 50, you are now ready to complete STEP 9 by selecting your 3 favorites. Once selected, run your 3 favorite ads by your friends, relatives and business associates to solicit their opinions.

If you’ve completed steps 1 through 9 successfully, you should have produced a headline that grabbed attention and retained interest, and follow-up sentences that further retained interest and induced desire to know more about your product or service. Thus, if you’ve come this far you have completed the GRI part of the GRIP formula. You are now ready to move on to STEP 10, where you will learn how to provoke action and complete the “P” part of the GRIP formula.

STEP 10: You will now learn how to write text that provokes action on the part of your prospect. If you’ve done a good job of grabbing attention, retaining interest and inducing desire for your product or service, this becomes the easiest step of the 10-part GRIP system. You provoke action by closing with words or phrases that tell the prospect he or she can learn more about your great product or service without it costing anything extra and you make the process for obtaining this information as simple as possible. Thanks to the power and ease of Internet marketing, technology already makes the process both simple and instant. For with the click of a mouse your prospect can have an entire information packet e-mailed back to him or her via instant autoresponder. This is why your response rates will be so much higher using Internet marketing and e-Zines than they would be running ads in print publications and requiring prospects to snail mail you their requests for more information.

There are several simple ways to complete your classified ad, but the most efficient and profitable way is to offer instant response to your prospect by means of an autoresponder. Just in case you are a newbie and not aware of what an autoresponder is, I will give you a simple definition. If you’ve been surfing the Internet for more than a month, chances are you have likely come in contact with an autoresponder. An autoresponder is simply an automatic response to an inquiry that is triggered into action and sends an email response back to the person that sent an email request to the autoresponder address. The response from the autoresponder is totally automated into action each time it receives an email and sends whatever text has been recorded and stored in the autoresponder text file. A typical autoresponder address you see often on websites is info@anyinternetcompany.com.

When you visit a Web site and it offers free information, this information is frequently sent to you instantly. If you're new to the Internet you might think, “Hey, that guy must have been sitting on top of his computer!” In reality, the feedback that you received almost instantly was sent by an autoresponder hosted on the domain’s web server. When the responder receives any e-mail message, whether it is blank or contains text, it reads the e-mail address of the sender and automatically sends a pre-recorded response (i.e., information packet, FAQ, price list, etc.) back to the e-mail address that triggered the autoresponder into action. It’s just that simple.

If you are not using autoresponders in your own Internet business you are costing yourself many hours of time answering typical requests for information that you could be using to promote your business. Most Web hosting companies do offer free autoresponders, but some do not. One host I can highly recommend that offers the best service I have found yet and a great autoresponder service that has its own simple and easy-to-use control panel Host4Profit.com.

Many people feel you have to have your own hosted domain name or URL address to have an autoresponder. This is no longer true, and not all Web hosting companies actually offer free autoresponders, unless you visit aeWebHosting.com, or HudsonValleyHosting.com. Consequently, you can find several autoresponders on the Internet that charges $20 to $30 per month for your own autoresponder. But this will probably be a dying breed because a number of FREE autoresponder companies are now beginning to spring up on the Internet. I will give you a list of several free sources of autoresponders that you can use, advertise and put into action without owning a domain name or your own Web site. You can use it to sell ebooks like this one by simply including your autoresponder address in any ad you run, whether in e-Zines or print media. The free ones I have used are:

Send Free @ http://www.sendfree.com

Get Response @ http://www.getresponse.com

Each of these services requires that you do not use their autoresponders for spamming activities. Spamming is illegal in and I highly recommend you do not use spamming to promote any product or service that you are trying to sell. It will cause you your business in the long run. Professional Internet marketers like myself do everything we can to stamp out Spam.

The free versions of both Send Free and Get Response both carry advertisements or classifieds for other people on the autoresponses you send out. Internet marketing experience has proven that running other people’s ads on your autoresponses can reduce your number of orders or requests for more information by as much as 40%, particularly if the advertiser is running a powerful classified on your responses. Get Response does offer an ad-free version of its responder for $58.95 per year if you buy it upon sign up. If you purchase it later it costs much more.

One important feature of both the Send Free and Get Response autoresponders is they are both what we call in the industry “follow-up autoresponders,” meaning you can program them to send additional responses at specified intervals to the e-mail addresses of the prospects that have inquired about your products or services. An easy-to-follow unsubscribe feature is included on each message so that the recipient can easily remove themselves from future mailouts by your autoresponder.

In order to get the feel of how you need to finish off your classified, I’ll illustrate the following example of a highly successful classified ad originally written by fellow Internet marketer Gary White. Gary originally wrote and published this ad in only 3 newsletters in December 1998. I was one of the first Internet surfers to read it and immediately acted on its enticing offer. Although I purchased Gary’s product for research purposes, I recognized how well the ad was written and the psychology behind his carefully selected words. Read it first, and then I’ll provide some commentary that will give you thoughts to consider when you develop your own classified ad for your product or service.

THIS DUMB LITTLE AD can put $2-$300 cash in your mailbox EVERYDAY! It’s an EASY three-part automated system. You can set it up today and LITERALLY be getting checks within 72 hours! For FREE complete details showing EXACTLY how, send a blank email to: autoresponder email address goes here

Gary’s “dumb little ad” was so powerful it sent 8,000 unique visitors to his Web site in the first 4 weeks. I know, because I called Gary personally to discuss his product and the success of the ad. Count the number of Magic Hooks in Gary’s ad. The ad contains 45 words, depending on how you count them. The headline starts with “This” and ends with “EVERYDAY!” If you count $200 and $300 as separate words, the headline is 13 words long. Of the 45 words there are 9 obvious Magic Hooks (ex. $200-$300, cash, easy, automated, system, You, 72 hours, free and details). But is that all? No, not quite. It also contains what I call “Subliminal Magic Hooks.” These are Magic Hooks that are not as obvious or dramatic as our list of 53, but do a very effective job of making the product desirable to the prospect in a soft manner. Let’s look again at the ad. I can count six of these Subliminal Magic Hooks, can you? The six I see are:

1. THIS DUMB LITTLE AD: This phrase screams out three things – SIMPLE and EASY (two of our Magic Hooks) and one part of a PLAN (because it actually implies you too will be using the same dumb ad) to make $200 to $300 per day for yourself.

2. Three-part: Here again, a soft way of saying the plan has only 3 parts, and hence, sounds simple and easy.

3. Today: This word implies I don’t have to wait long to get the plan and be in business. It makes me want to take action immediately.

4. Literally: Soft way of implying this plan is true, proven and real -- even though it may sound too good to be true. Some ad copywriters might take an entire sentence or two to convey they are not feeding you a line of bull. Gary did it with one word! Although the word is not on my list of 53 magic hooks, used in this context it more powerful than half the words on my list.

5. Checks: Just another way of saying “Money” without being so obvious. Hence, the entire ad speaks of specific money amounts ($200 - $300), cash and checks – 3 words that mean money. Repeating the powerful benefit of making money 3 times without blatant or repetitious use of the word “Money” makes this ad one of the classics in my book.

6. Exactly: This is not the same as “exact amount.” Instead, it’s another way of implying that the simple and easy to use plan the prospect will receive covers every step and gives the prospect everything he will need to know to put the plan into action successfully. Once again, this word “exactly” is not on our list but is yet another example of saying an entire statement with just one simple word.

Lastly, I would like to point out that Gary’s marvelous choice of the opening phrase “This DUMB LITTLE AD” reflects both genius and guts. A few short years ago the best ad copywriters in the business would have warned to never use the word dumb in a classified ad. But the huge success of the “Idiot’s Guide” and “Dummies” series of how-to books sold in bookstores around the world these days gives a whole new meaning to use of the word “dumb” in Gary’s highly successful ad.

I’ve seen Dummies and Idiot’s books in offices of CEOs and corporate Presidents all around the globe in my business travels. Now a reference to something dumb implies information that “clarifies and puts information and instructions in an easy-to-follow” manner. This ploy by Gary may not have worked a decade ago, but in the late 1990’s the use of the phrase “this dumb little ad” conveyed the message “this little ad may look simple and dumb but it packs a wallop and produces better results than one that has bigger words or longer text.”

One thing that I really liked about Gary’s choice of words for his opening phrase (i.e. “This DUMB LITTLE AD), is that at the time he introduced it to the Internet marketing world, it was different and unique from every classified ad phrase being used at the time. This made Gary’s ad stand out from all the other ads. However, the thing I liked most about the ad was the fact that those first four words make you read the ad at least twice. You want to read it a second time because it makes you stop and think to yourself . . . “now why is this ad so dumb.” Then, once you read it a second time, you didn’t think of it as dumb and little, you thought of it as clever and concise. In short, this excellent example of a well-written and successful classified ad makes most readers take the time to read it twice, stopping and thinking about it both times.

One last item of discussion on Gary’s ad is in regards to the most important Magic Hook he used. This is likely a discussion that would cause two Internet marketing professionals to argue all night. I’ve already talked about how and why the opening phrase was so important to me. Obviously, a case could be made for the phrase because it makes some people marvel over the clever wording of the ad and many people read it twice as a result of the opening phrase. But the single most import hook that provokes the reader to take action and gamble to learn more is the century old four-letter word “FREE.”

The reason that “FREE” is my candidate for the most important Magic Hook award is because in one four-letter word I learn that I can find out more about this plan that sounds too good to be true, and it won’t cost me a single cent. Not only that, but the details I get will be complete, which translates to “I will get everything I need to know about this plan at no cost.” It is no wonder that Gary had over 8,000 visitors his first month from a run of only 3 e-Zines.

Now I don’t recommend you try to get cute and think that you can use the same words for your ad to get the same record response Gary got, because you won’t. I haven’t told you anything about Gary’s plan. But it was so successful that it spread across hundreds of e-Zines like wildfire, and in only 3 months it became a grossly over-used ad. During its peak popularity period of 1999 and early 2000 I saw Gary’s ad run by people who had purchased his Cookie Cutter System run repeated as many as 4 times in the same e-Zine, by 4 different people using and reselling the plan. Hence, if you use the same words for your product, people that have already checked out Gary’s product from one of his reseller ads will likely ignore your ad thinking it’s the same product. It is extremely important to develop your own unique and distinct ad for selling your product or service.

There are two types of autoresponders – simple and followup. A simple autoresponder sends just one response back to the email address that triggered the autoresponder into action. A followup autoresponder is more flexible and can send multiple responds at clearly defined intervals. In short, they “follow up” the initial response with several different responses spaced a day or more apart.

Gary White’s “Dumb Little Ad” program was used to market his “Cookie Cutter” system through the medium of followup autoresponders. Gary’s entire business plan was a simple two-step marketing system. The first step was to run his highly successful ad to pull in prospects looking for free information about his moneymaking plan. The second-step was to try and close the prospects using Gary’s automated virtual salesman – a followup autoresponder. Gary used the first message sent by the autoresponder to introduce his moneymaking plan – called the “Cookie Cutter Marketing System” and the primary information product – an Internet marketing bootcamp called “The Bootcamp.” Subsequent follow-ups sent by the autoresponder was different messages whose purpose was to try to close the sale on prospects that hadn’t crossed the decision line and purchased his system – which incidentally sold for $20.

You determine how many followup emails you want them to receive, you determine how many days apart you want to space each followup and you determine what text or information you want them to receive in each followup.

If you get a followup autoresponder you will definitely need Autorespsonder Magic to turn this great tool into a gold mine. Another great resource to consider is Autoresponder Gold. I have both products in my e-commerce library and can attest to the fact that they are packed with great information on how to make money with autoresponders.

Marketing experts learned long ago that its very difficult to make a sell to someone on the first try, and that the probability of selling someone a product or service increases with each new contact up to about 7 or so contacts. If I recall correctly, about 80% of your sales will be made between attempts 2 through 7. So, if you can create an autoresponder that doesn’t stop after sending the first response, but can continue emailing your potential customer once every few days through say, 5 to 10 mailings before ceasing, your chance of selling the prospect is much higher. That, in a nutshell, is what a followup autoresponder is my friend.

What Followup Autoresponder Services Are Available

ROIbot 8.0 – ROI stands for “Return on Investment” and boy does this great tool live up to its name. ROIbot is an ever-growing collection of web marketing tools that will help you to increase your Internet return on investment. Whether you sell your own products, sell products for other companies, or are a professional affiliate, ROIbot is guaranteed to increase your ROI. The ROIbot Follow-Up AutoResponder Server allows you to send a series of follow up messages to your customers using any time interval you specify. This program will keep you in constant contact with all your customers with personalized follow-up messages. You can setup an unlimited number of personalized autoresponder messages to go out as often as you want. This feature alone is worth far more than the price of a ROIbot Pro subscription. If you don’t think this tool is popular, think twice. I get countless emails each day with the ROIbot email address. This is a great tool from a great company that understands your business and its needs.

Permission Express - The PermissionExpress autoresponder allows you to finally enjoy the benefits your competitors are already enjoying, without paying the high fees associated with traditional services. Now you can increase your competitive advantage by joining the thousands of companies who have found autoresponders to be the answer to their marketing needs. Many autoresponder services base charges on a per-email basis-this can lead to high costs associated with a product that is intended to increase the productivity of your marketing dollars. Permission Express autoresponder services are based on a low annual fee, which means that the more sales you make, the more return you receive on your marketing dollar. You have full control over the number of followups (maximum of ten) and the content of each. You customers have the ability to opt out at any time.

Autoresponder Plus - Purchase AutoResponse Plus for a one-time fee, install the system (or let us do it for you) on your own web site and run unlimited autoresponders, each with unlimited personalized follow-ups.

You get all the benefits and none of the hassles!

AutoResponse Plus benefits and features include:

· None! Zero! Zilch! ongoing fees.

· No ads for other people's web sites in your messages (do you really want to give this sort of impression?).

· Unlimited personalized follow-up messages - 5, 10, 20, 100 - it's up to you.

· Choice of plain text or HTML messages.

· Unrestricted file attachments.

· Subscriber tracking allows you to accurately determine which of your ads produce the greatest results.

· Complete control since it's installed on your web site.

· And so much more!

1ShoppingCart – The followup autoresponder service offered by 1ShoppingCart is unique in that it is part of a total online sales solution, that includes shopping cart, real-time credit card processing, discount coupon tracking, affiliate tracking and followup autoresponder system. If you are going to get your own merchant account to accept credit cards and sell downloadable products you owe it to yourself to check out this wonderful web application. I love it because it allows you to use the same system throughout a chain of websites you may own. Just insert the html code into any web page or site and you’re in business to take orders, process a discount coupon you may have offered, process the credit card, keep track of any affiliate sales, point the customer to your download product link and record the customer into your followup autoresponder system – all done automatically. Talk about running on autopilot! Once you’ve got a successful online business you can take vacations for months at a time while the 1ShoppingCart system takes care of everything automatically!

GetResponse – Get Response is my personal favorite followup autoresponder service. I use GetResponse myself and have never had any problems. A very easy to use system with lots of features and benefits. Following the age-old rule of building a better mousetrap, GetResponse has taken over a huge share of the followup autoresponder business with reasonable pricing and a great application that is simple to use.

Postmaster Online – According to Postmaster Online, their amazing new automated email marketing machine will "Increase Your Sales by 50%, Cut the Time You Spend on Email in Half...And Slash Your Monthly Marketing Costs by over $100.00"

Aweber - When AWeber's founder, Tom Kulzer, created the first autoresponder follow up service in 1998, he instantly became the market leader. The product swept Internet marketers off their feet. It was an astounding and immediate hit – a 5-star marketing invention. Since that period Aweber has continued to lead the industry with exciting new features and enhancements. AWeber has the market understanding, the technology, and development plans in place to remain a dominate player in the followup autoresponder market.