SFI Autoresponder

[Nancy]

Just wanted to know if SFI ever considered an autoresponder similiar to Get Response. I personally think it would be a great idea. As it stands now we have to pay either Leaders Club or somehow get our affiliates to opt in to Get Response to send out an email series If SFI had a autoresponder affiliates would only opt in once and we could set up our series of letter to them from the SFI network.

I think I will put a thread on the SFI Discussion Board and find out some opinions on this.


Just a thought.

Nancy

[futureadvantage]

The reason most of the Affiliate companies do not furnish the full autorsponder system is due to someone will abuse the system by spam etc, It only take a handful of charges by someone hitting the "report spam" button, and the ISP will drop the account.

Also Note even the Contact Manager in SFI does not send
e-mail to those who are on the "full access Report" . I believe SFI sends three e-mail to those members and then they no longer are sent anymore notifications or sales letters by SFI.

Michael

[hazenenterprises]

Nancy -
I love the idea - I have heard that in-house autoresponders are the best way to go!

Unfortunately, as Michael stated, they seem to have there reasons. I am just glad we have the Contact Manager because that gives us another way to contact them (well, most of them).

Robin

[Nancy]

It was just a thought.

Now I understand a lttle more why, but how do you get around having the affiliate basically opt-in again if you use Get Response, or do you use the autoresponder at Leaders Club?

Nancy

[Richard]

Nancy,

The following is from SFI's Rules and Policies:

NO AUTORESPONDERS
The SFI system is built around an extensive e-mail communication system. Therefore, you may not use an e-mail address that uses an autoresponse (automatic reply) message. Thousands of our affiliates receive dozens of e-mail messages and notifications from us each week. If autoresponders are on, that means we GET BACK THOUSANDS of useless messages that we then must wade through one by one so that we don't miss the legitimate messages with your important questions, suggestions, etc. It's also a huge waste of bandwidth.
So, if you have an autoresponder on your e-mail, you must either SHUT IT OFF, or provide us with a different, separate e-mail address that you'll use for SFI communiques. If this is not done, we will designate your account so that you receive no notifications, newsletters, etc.

Hope this is helpful.

Richard

[Nancy]

;DJust so eveyrone here knows I don't use an autoresponder for my SFI affiliates. I know SFI sends out a series of emails to new affiliates each week. That's great.

Here is why I have asked such an explosive question, apparently. I have been with SFI two years, in that two year time span, I have NEVER received any type of communication from my sponsor. Not even a Welcome letter. I have tried to contact him, and once he answered me back with an "I don't know, ask someone else." After that if I tried to email him the email came back to me undelievable. I know he is very active and doing well in SFI, because he is always on the "leaders" list.

I want to be a different type of leader. I want to communicate personally with my downline. I know I can do this through Contact Manager, but if I see one affiliate having problems or not moving forward, I was looking for an easier way to contact them with a pre-written message. I don't want to infringe on SFI emails in any way or violate any of their rules, I just wanted an answer to a question. I thought my question was clear, I wondered why SFI didn't use the type of autoresponder we have with Get Response for our other affiliate programs. I will continue to do it as I have been. .

I know it is not a taboo question on this forum, I Thank God every night for this forum, I would not be where I am without it.

So just so everyone is aware---It was a simple question and I am not using an autoresponder for SFI in violation of their rules! They have a great system in place.

God Bless

Nancy

[shing]

This brings up an interesting question. (Thanks for asking yours, Nancy.) It seems that I remember that we were encouraged to send our SFI Affiliates notices about TOPS to show them how we market SFI. But we can't use the contact manager for anything other than SFI. Weren't we then encouraged to load our affiliates into an auto-responder with messages about opportunities that will help way back when?

Also, I have an EA training area for my EA's. Am I in violation then? The SFI agreement is a little vague to me as it makes it sound like our personal email we provide SFI shouldn't be part of an auto-responder.

Though I don't often use this method of communication for SFI, if the CM is especially busy, I will turn to GGS.

What are all of your thoughts on this?


Shawna

[Nancy]

Thank you Shawna,

You get it! I have been using my personal email when I see an affiliate having trouble, because I don't have that many affiliates, but it is growing, and it is going to become cumbersome and time consuming.

Contact Manager is great, but it has so many limitations. I guess I will sign up for GGS and take it to there, but again having to download all of the affiliates names and email addresses is a lot of work!

I know that is how many of you are doing it, and that's great, but there has got to be an easier way. And I would rather pay $9.95 to SFI and get some CV, rather than somewhere else.

How does Erich do it? I know he has tons of affiliates and I am sure he doesn't download them one by one into an outside autoresponder for his series of emails.

Thanks for responding so quickly, which is another reason this forum is so great. I wish it had been around two years ago!

Now that I have brought it up, maybe someone can figure a way to fix it. Not that it is broke!

LOL
Nancy

[shing]

Nancy,

Before you move on to that next step, let's make sure we understand the instructions from SFI. We need to make sure we're not in violation of our agreement. Wait to load them until we hear from someone who knows.

The big question then - Are we allowed to load SFI affiliate names into our auto-responder for communications with them? Or is that violating the vague agreement listed above? Is it vague to anyone else? Again, to me it looks like we shouldn't give SFI a personal address tied into an auto-responder.

I also want to stay in contact with my people. I don't think it's right to bring them on and then never contact them with helps and tools to succeed.

Shawna

[Nancy]

;DThanks Shawna for the sound advice. I will wait and see what others have to say. I too don't want to be in violation, but it is so vague.

Take Care

Nancy

[futureadvantage]

shing said:

Nancy,

Before you move on to that next step, let's make sure we understand the instructions from SFI. We need to make sure we're not in violation of our agreement. Wait to load them until we hear from someone who knows.

The big question then - Are we allowed to load SFI affiliate names into our auto-responder for communications with them? Or is that violating the vague agreement listed above? Is it vague to anyone else? Again, to me it looks like we shouldn't give SFI a personal address tied into an auto-responder.

I also want to stay in contact with my people. I don't think it's right to bring them on and then never contact them with helps and tools to succeed.

Shawna

I contact everyone, they all are placed into my followup system and remain there until they remove themselves from the follow-ups. If you do not follow-up with your own system you will have very few if any upgrades. Do not abuse the affiliates, but send as I have said before information that helps them build their SFI business "if they will".
1. Do not try to sell them something new, (another program)
2. You can include signature files that have other links they can follow.
3. If you count on SFI letters to new members to make a sale you might as well close up shop . . . If you want to spend good money on EAGLE, or Erich coop, or pay for ppc and see a list of 100 or 1000's of freebies then do not send follow-ups.
4. If you want to begin to see people upgrade, and grow you personally have to stay in contact with them.

Michael

[Nancy]

Thanks Michael

That is essentially what I am doing, through my personal email as I only have 13 affiliates at this time (it is growing a little each day). I am using Erichs email series and it is working well.

Thanks again LOL

Nancy

[troyzone]

rtracysr said:

Nancy,

The following is from SFI's Rules and Policies:

NO AUTORESPONDERS
The SFI system is built around an extensive e-mail communication system. Therefore, you may not use an e-mail address that uses an autoresponse (automatic reply) message. Thousands of our affiliates receive dozens of e-mail messages and notifications from us each week. If autoresponders are on, that means we GET BACK THOUSANDS of useless messages that we then must wade through one by one so that we don't miss the legitimate messages with your important questions, suggestions, etc. It's also a huge waste of bandwidth.
So, if you have an autoresponder on your e-mail, you must either SHUT IT OFF, or provide us with a different, separate e-mail address that you'll use for SFI communiques. If this is not done, we will designate your account so that you receive no notifications, newsletters, etc.

Hope this is helpful.

Richard

I believe that there is some confusion on the above-mentioned policy from the SFI site.

Most autoresponders (including Getresponse) have a trigger email address, and this is the email address that SFI is saying you cannot use in your own personal contact info in your SFI profile.

For example, if you have a campaign at Getresponse named sfi-info, your trigger email address would be [e-mail]. What this means is that if someone were to send a blank email (or any email) to that address, they would be added to your subscriber list for that campaign (provided they double opt-in, of course), and they would instantly receive the first message in that campaign series.

On the same token, if you sign up for an SFI account and tell SFI that your personal email address is [e-mail], then after the SFI email system sends you something, your own autoresponder will automatically be sending your campaign message series back at it.

It is this practice that SFI has a policy against. You must use a personal email address in your profile's contact info, not an autoresponder address, so that SFI and others can contact you without being bombarded with a series of emails, wasting resources and bandwidth.

On the same token, you should also not have an autoreply set up on the personal email account that you use with SFI's system either, as this will also send SFI unwanted emails. This is another common practice that SFI is referring to.

There is nothing wrong with using an autoresponder system with a pre-written series of help emails for your SFI affiliates, in fact it is encouraged to contact your own affiliates and help them out as much as possible. How you contact your own affiliates is entirely up to you, whether it be via phone, postal mail, email, autoresponder message series, etc, and this is an entirely different issue altogether.

The SFI policy mentioned above pertains to your own contact info for your SFI account and the email account you specified potentially sending unwanted automatic emails back at SFI, not the follow-up methods that you use for your own affiliates.

I hope that I have cleared up some confusion on this issue. If anyone disagrees on my interpretation of SFI's above-stated autoresponder policy, please feel free to post and/or contact SFI directly for clarification on their policy.

Troy

[eikat2]

I was curious about the autoresponders too. I was wondering if there was a way to automatically add your affilites. I'm starting to get more each day, and I have to enter each one into getresponse, which can get more and more time consuming as you get more affiliates.

Eileen

[Nancy]

Thanks a heap Troy! I have a clearer understanding of it now. It makes perfect sense why SFI wouldn't want us to use autoresponders if it comes back to them. As always you have a very concise, clear way of explaining.

Eileen, Do you use get response for your follow ups? And if so, how do you get your affiliates to essentially opt in again? Also do you not use the get response email address that Troy mentions? I did a sample back to my email address, and before the message could be sent i had to opt in. I felt this was too much for my affiliates and they might just lose interest, which we don't want.

Also I don't start my series of emails right away, because of all the ones they receive from SFI, I only send them a greeting and welcome. Then I start my email about a week later. Does this sound right?

Any help would be appreciated.

Nancy

[Deb]

Eileen,

I believe you can upload a file of leads for get response. You can for GGS, anyway.
I'm using GGS, and what I do is copy the info from the geneology report and paste it in an excel file. Excel has a "paste special" feature that allows you to choose which columns to paste, so by the time I get it pasted, it's in the right format for GGS. GGS won't upload an Excel file, so I then copy and paste into a notepad, and upload it from there.

This takes a lot less time than entering them one by one, and gives me a permanent record of all my new affiliates in my notepad files.

Nancy,

I love your idea of starting a week late. I had a couple of people opt out because they had too many emails. I might rethink my scheduling too, now that the three day thing is over.

[Nancy]

Thanks Deb

I started doing the week between thing, because I got sick of all the emails I was getting from SFI and I almost opted-out. Glad I didn't.

Take care

Nancy

[eikat2]

Yes, I use getresponse. I manually enter the email addresses in as people sign up. Then in the initial email, I just say "hi this is Eileen, your SFI sponser, I set up this series of emails to help you get started. Follow the instructions below to confirm that you would like t o receive these emails...." Quite a few people opt in.

Eileen

[futureadvantage]

I believe that there is some confusion on the above-mentioned policy from the SFI site.

Troy

Thanks Troy,

Thanks for your explanation, on the real interpretation of the useage of autoresponders.

Michael

[hazenenterprises]

Nancy, etc..

I feel it is extremely important for us to send each of our affiliates a personal email. Like you said Nancy, not hearing directly from your sponsor ever is discouraging. I truly believe that if people realize they will have support then they are more eager to stay in and upgrade.

I have had a great response to my personal email I send to start and numerous questions from my affiliates which gives me the opportunity to build a relationship and some trust with them.

I have 3 campaigns in GGS for SFI Affiliates. New, SS, and EA. I enter them into the one they need to be in and move them if they complete SS or upgrade to EA. The series is appropriate for each category encourage completing SS for the New, upgrading to EA for the SS and then actions and advertising methods for the EA so they can reach TL. My affiliates are getting these and I am receiving emails concerning questions related to these emails (that is how I know they are reading them - or at least some of them).

I too don't want to bombard them but an email from SFI (that they might look at as something impersonal that is sent to everyone) certainly won't do what an email from a real live person will do!

I have never been contacted by anyone in my upline except for Erich! He contacted me, corresponded with me and led me here when I upgraded to EA (as a means at that point of promoting SFI). Thanks goodness for those emails from him!

Robin

[shing]

Thank you, Troy. I figured it must be something like that when I read it, actually, but just wasn't sure when it was posted today. Thank you for clarifying it for all of us. Phew! Now we can relax a bit. I think that many of us begin all of this with little of no knowledge. As we grow into our WAH job, we learn SO MUCH!! At that point, it's probably good to go back and re-read the terms and conditions when we can actually understand them.

Shawna

[Nancy]

Let me see if I have this clear in my brain.....If I enter my affiliates in getresponse, get response sends them a email from me introducing myself, and telling them that I will be sending them a series of email from me to help them get started and to follow the instructions below in order to receive further emails. Then they click on the GR link and essentially opt in again with GR. Do I have this right?

Have you had any affiliates not follow through after this contact?

Thanks for your help.

Nancy

[futureadvantage]

Not sure what anyone elses response has been on the Getresponse / Aweber / other autoresponders. as to a %...

Generally I have gound it small...

I have better results when I offer a free gift, ebook, or with SFI you might offer one of the gift coupons, for some amount if the respond.

I have my own autoresponder on a server, so I am able to by pass the opt-in.


Michael

[hazenenterprises]

Michael,

I do not have a huge opt-in response either with my GetResponse campaigns.

I send my SFI Affiliates the email series through GGS and I know many are getting because I receive emails constantly with questions, etc.. I think the opt-in thing "scares" them away.

So....how do I get an autoresponder on my own server? You can just go ahead and tell me that that is over my head..... LOL.

Robin

[ljax]

Hi everyone,
I am new to all this and some of the short cuts being used is going over my head like GGS, what dose that mean? I know GR is Get Response...........help

Larry

[hazenenterprises]

Hey Larry,

GGS is Global Group Send - it is the In-house autoresponder that you can get through Leaders Club subscription.

Robin

[ljax]

Thanks Robin,
Is it free with Leaders club? Always looking for the freebee's ha,ha.

Larry

[troyzone]

Hi Larry,

GGS is $9.95/month on top of whatever leads/training package you subscribe to with the Leaders Club. You can find it here: globalgroupsend.com/

The nice thing about GGS (other than not having to have people opt in again) is your Leaders Club subscription leads are automatically uploaded into GGS. You don't have to manually enter your Leaders Club leads yourself, just any other leads that you want to use.

The major drawback of GGS is it doesn't have an automatic subscrption method, so prospects can't fill out a web site form or send a blank email to it to get subscribed to your autoresponder list like with Getresponse and Aweber. That's why many of us have two autoresponders, they each do different things.

GGS is mainly intended to be used with the Leader's Club own leads, but you can use your own leads with it as well, as long as you can prove that they opted in at some point if they later complain about spam. You don't have to worry about this with Leaders Club leads because since they're the ones collecting the leads, so they have all the opt-in information on record on their end.

Troy

[hazenenterprises]

Larry -

Of course Troy did a great job explaining as usual!

I use the GGS for my SFI campaigns since they are already in SFI under me and obviously want to receive information. I watch and if they opt out of SFI then I remove them from the campaign. GGS also has where they can opt out if they so desire.

Like Troy said, I use GetResponse for my NewsLetter because you can use the "Capture Subscribers" feature and create a form for them to complete on your site to request the Newsletter. I am now also using this on my Blog page also so they can automatically be notified when I update my blog.

Have fun!

Robin