There is a real art to using an autoresponder service correctly.

1. This may seem a simple tip, but it is designed to help you avoid one of the most common mistakes made by an autoresponder user, and it is to not send too may emails to the same recipient in a short period of time. Nobody likes to be bombarded by spam mail, try to make sure that you have a legitimate reason for sending every email, don’t just decide to randomly email your client list for no specific reason. Think of an autoresponder as a knife, a very sharp one, each time you use it incorrectly it will be blunted a little.
2. Always include a link or instructions informing the target recipient of the process involved in having themselves removed from your mailing list. Nothing is more likely to get you reported for spam mail, and ultimately have you placed upon one or more email blacklists, than ignoring removal requests. Most good subscription based autoresponders will have an automated function to take care of this for you, make sure you use it.
3. Don’t send emails that sound like spam; avoid using terms such as free, special offer, bonus offer and other obviously sales targeted terms. Not only will this help to make sure people are not annoyed by your emails and eventually report you, it will also ensure that you have a greater chance of avoiding email spam filters.
4. Be polite, we lose a lot of the human feel when communicating on-line. An email is much more likely to be well received if it is written well, make it personal by using the recipient’s name, and keep the content respectful. Never ever use blasphemous words, and it is best to take a purely neutral stance on matters of race, religion and politics, better still not to include any content which broaches these three, highly volatile subjects.
5. Do not overdo the use of HTML, graphics, sound, video or any other type of multimedia content, remember that some people are still plagued by slow internet connections, nothing is likely to upset them as much as a large email that takes several minutes to download, blocking their incoming mail queue. Also remember that many email providers will apply limits to the size of email they will receive and deliver to their users.
6. An email is not a link farm, do not send out emails full of product and affiliate links, this is seen as blatant spam, almost all decent affiliate sites have now imposed limits upon the usage of affiliate links within an email body, similarly for PPC advertising, all of the main ones have now banned this type of use.

By using your autoresponder carefully, with forethought and a little creativity, you can be sure of exploiting it too its fullest, while avoiding the huge problems associated with finding yourself on an email blacklist.

How not to choose an autoresponder