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Yesterday, I shared with you my strategies for planning out a new list with the big picture concepts of setting goals, and identifying the ideal audience that will be reading your messages. How did you do?

Today, we get into the nitty gritty of creating your new list.

Although I want each day’s tasks to be 10-15 minutes, today’s steps will likely take a little longer. Don’t worry, we’ll keep it short tomorrow.

In Day 2 of the Autoresponder Challenge, we’ll take these steps inside Aweber:

• Edit the list settings of a new list (should take about 3 min)
• Set up the verified opt-in confirmation message (5 min)
• Create message #1 (the welcome message) (10 min)
• Create a very basic web form which we’ll get online during Day 3 (3 min)

Once again, I have a new mindmap for you, which I use to shortcut the time it takes me to create a list. I also give this mindmap filled out to my outsource team when I want them to actually create my list for me.

Download the mindmap | Get Freemind

I’d suggest you use this map as a template and each time you do a new list you can begin with the version from the previous list to saver yourself a lot of time, too!

Let’s get started…

Initial List Settings

When you login to your autoresponder service (remember, I’ll be using Aweber, so you’ll need to adapt these instructions especially if you are using something different), you’ll see a link near the top that says Create and Manage Lists. On the next page will be a list of the ones you already have, and another link to the right that says Create New List.

For the initial list settings, you need to determine certain elements that will help your readers identify your messages. You’ll be setting up:

• The list name
• List description
• From email address
• Subscription alerts email
• Title of your company
• Website URL of your company
• Logo of your company

The list name is not too important – only that it needs to be unique to the system, and easily identifiable to you. However, this name WILL be seen by your subscribers, although it will not be displayed prominently. For my new list, I’ve picked the very appropriate bobtheteacher2.

The description will be shown to your readers when they want to edit their contact info or unsubscribe. So this should ideally be a short & sweet reminder of what the list is going to do for them.

The next setting will show up when your readers get your email. The “from name” usually appears before the subject line and should be your full name. I use Bob Jenkins or Bob The Teacher. I haven’t split test this feature yet (because you can’t really do that easily), but you want to utilize the from name as part of your email “headline”.

Some people like to use ** in front of their From Name which they think helps them stand out, and when their readers sort their email alphabetically, they’ll show up first. I don’t do that, but I can see how it could be effective. However, it seems more like a “trick” to some degree and therefore less likely to be from a friend or colleague.

Some people also like to put noreply@domain.com in the email address field to discourage replies. But that doesn’t really connect to your readers very well. Personally I use a unique email for the site the list is based on, and forward that email to a gmail account I have set up for replies like that (separate from my normal gmail account). This way, I can have one of my virtual assistants filter through the crappy mail and forward the relevant and respondible replies that I get. This is a huge time saver!

The title, website, and logo are obvious, but you should know where this will show up.

These settings will display in default settings in some of the templates that Aweber has, and in the field codes you can insert into your messages.

More importantly perhaps, these will show up on your readers subscriber options page, which is the same as the unsubscribe page. So if you have a good logo that spells out the main benefits you do for people, I’d use that. For now, I’m using the same logo I use at the top of my blog.

By now you likely know of my philosophy: Take Action Revise Later. All the settings you’re working with today can be changed later. So don’t spend too much time on this right now.

Confirmation Email Set Up

Having a new subscriber doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t get them to confirm their request for information (known as a “double opt-in”).

So your confirmation email needs to get their attention and make it easy for your new subscriber to get confirmed.

Aweber has a few default subject lines you can use, but I like to start my subject line with either “IMPORTANT:” or “Step 2 of 2″. The step 2 of 2 I typically use on my membership sites where step 1 was to create their account.

For this particular list, I’ve set up the subject line: “IMPORTANT: Confirm your request for Bob The Teacher lessons” (don’t use the quotes obviously).

In the body of the confirmation email you don’t have a lot of space. Just 500 characters (less than 4 tweets), and less than 10 lines of text. So get to the point: remind them what they signed up for and what they’ll get when they confirm.

Ideally, people do this immediately after they fill in your opt-in form, but some don’t confirm until the next day or a day later. So you want to make it very obvious why it’s to their benefit to finish their confirmation process.

Finally, you have the closing of the message. Be sure to thank them and include your name and a link back to your website. My closing is:

Thanks in advance for confirming!
Bob Jenkins
http://AskBobTheTeacher.com/blog

I include the full URL because this part of the message is text only; if you don’t include the http:// the link won’t be active in most email readers.

At the bottom of the confirmation settings page is an option for where people go after they’ve clicked the confirmation link. If you don’t have that page set up yet, you can leave it blank for now. You can also redirect people to your blog, or a resource you recommend. Be careful with this though as it can result in a lot of unsubscribes if the page they go to isn’t explained in the body of the confirm message.

Their First Official Email From You!

I was going to save this step until Day 3, but the new set up at Aweber puts this step before the Web Form. So we might as well take care of it today.

Your welcome message goes out to your readers immediately after they confirm. It should remind people why they signed up and deliver (at least partially) what you promised them.

Right now, I haven’t set up a specific offer for this list like a free report or video. Later in the challenge I’ll have that more clearly in place. For now though, the message points out the big picture.

Yesterday, I shared what my goals are with this list in my own business and personal life, as well as my goals for my customers. For my welcome message, I pretty much copied these goals for my customers into the welcome message.

I’m also using the new Welcome Templates that Aweber has put together. When you go to edit the message, you’ll see the templates on the right; scroll down to pick one of the Welcome templates. I chose the green/white to match my blog.

You’ll then need to edit the text as you wish. You can add or modify the rest of the template as you wish as well. For example, I took out the request for topic ideas and replaced it with a banner for the IM Success Library (remember, that’s one of my goals to generate more traffic to the IMSL).

You’ll also want to copy what you have written in the HTML message and paste it in the text only.

A lot of people get confused about this, by the way: should you have HTML or text messages in your autoresponder.

The answer is “yes”.

You should have both. Let the subscriber’s email readers determine which ones they get. The effect on spam scoring has pretty much been eliminated with so much web based email these days.

Finally, I added the tag {!signature} at the bottom of both HTML and text emails. I’m not doing anything with this yet, but later in the challenge I’ll be editing the signature settings. For now, that will simply show up blank; but eventually all the messages I include the {!signature} line in will automatically populate with whatever I put into that setting. So eventually, when I have 50 messages, all of them can have the same message that can be changed on a periodic basis. This is a great way for your evergreen autoresponder messages to have a time-sensitive and current message.

Again, I’ll get into this more later. For now, I’d suggest you put that personalization tag into your message.

To make this more clear, I suggest you let me send you my welcome message so you can see exactly what my new message 1 looks like:

Set Up A Basic Web Form

The final step today is to create a very basic web form, like the one you just saw.

For now, we’re going to skip all the fancy settings (which can be changed later), and simply make a functional opt-in box.

I named my form “1″, made it an inline form. I kept the Aweber thank you page for now and checked the box to have it open in a new window. Soon I will have my own thank you page, but I like the new way Aweber has their default with an audio confirmation request. It’s pretty good – you’ll see/hear it when you use the form above.

I’m not including an already subscribed page yet, but when I finish the download page for whatever my opt-in offer is going to be, that’s the URL I’ll put into that setting.

Aweber also includes the opportunity to put in a “subscriber chicklet”. This is not a piece of gum, but a little widget that shows how many subscribers are on that particular list. This is great for social proof once you have a high enough number. I don’t want someone to see 13 readers though on my list, so I’m not including it for now.

You’ll notice though at the bottom of this post that I’ve included the chicklet for the number of people following this autoresponder challenge so you can see how it can have a “wow, I need to read this too if over 400 people are already reading…”.

For the design of the web form, I’m taking off the name field completely. After arguing with my mastermind partners and other colleagues in IM about how important it is to get people’s names into the opt-in form (so I can personalize the email messages I send), I’ve finally acquiesced that getting higher conversions is more important.

Why?

Well, I’d like to think that people put in their real names, but a lot of times they put in something weird, like adafdafaf. So when I send a message that says Hi adafdafaf, it doesn’t come across the way I want it to.

Second, I’ve seen my opt-in rates on some forms go from around 25% to over 50% simply by removing the name field. That’s twice as many people I get to teach. So for now at least, I’m just using email.

I change the email field label to “Best Email” to try to get the main address of my readers to ensure I’ll be more likely to get through to their preferred inbox.

After I made my initial, very basic web form, I then click on the Get HTML link on the main web form page, and I copy that java script code into my new list mindmap. That way, I can get to it easily whenever I want to put the form on the web.

Tomorrow We Activate The List

Now that the initial settings, first email, and web form is complete, the only thing left to do before my new list becomes active is to put the webform online. That step will be the main task for tomorrow.

Until then, take about 20-25 minutes to finish up today’s steps so you’ll be ready for activation tomorrow!

And if you want a video walk through of this process, grab my Discover Autoresponders Module 1 video. You can get that for free at either DiscoverAutoresponders.com or IMSuccessLibrary.com.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. The comments so far have been great. I appreciate the encouragement as I rebuild my list, and your energy as you do the process for yourself. Every comment is personally read by me, although I may not get to reply to each one. Feel free reply to each other as well, and remember to leave your Twitter ID if you want people to connect to you.

p.p.s. I’ll be posting Day 3 on the blog tomorrow, but if you want to make sure you don’t miss a single day of the 30 Day Challenge, make sure you’re getting my update alerts via email!

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