What Is FollowUpExpert

FollowUpExpert is a Windows application that works pretty much like the email program you use every day, whether it is Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Messenger, Eudora Mail or another email client. A quick explanation if you are using web-based mail (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail etc.): email programs work pretty much the same way; the only difference is that they run outside your web browser as separate programs.

I think I can safely assume that you are using email in your business; otherwise you probably would not be reading this. Usually when a new message from a customer arrives into your inbox you want to write back as soon as possible to give the information the customer needs. Later, you may put the customer’s email address on a special list to follow up a couple of days later, offering further help or to find out why he or she has not yet bought your truly amazing product or signed up for your services yet.

After the customer finally places an order, it may still be valuable to contact him or her from time to time offering additional products or services. Cross-selling and up-selling to your existing customers are excellent ways to increase your income; the existing customers bought from you because they trusted you; now that they are (hopefully) happy with whatever they paid you for, they trust you even more!

To effectively keep in touch with your customers, you may be forced to manage many address lists (prospective vs. existing customers, users of product ABC, subscribers to service XYZ... you get the idea). This involves moving people from one list to another, sending information about special deals and promotions, quickly answering questions they send in, delivering newsletters and so on, while making sure that you do not hit any particular address too often.

FollowUpExpert cannot do everything of course; it is not that smart. But if you are smart and take advantage of its features, you can definitely minimize the amount of mechanical work you have to do every day.

This is how it works. Not unlike your email program, FollowUpExpert connects to one or more email accounts. It downloads new messages and, depending on their content, sends predefined replies. It adds the senders to address lists and sends automatic follow-ups – as many as you like and with delays you defined.

The program has many additional exciting features besides the basic functionality described above. For instance, before it adds someone to its database, the software may send an email that says something along the lines of “Hey, do you mind if we contact you from time to time?” and wait for confirmation. It allows people to confirm their subscription and makes sure you are never accused of spamming someone. The software can also work with sign-up forms; example: a sign-up form that people fill out before downloading software or an e-book from your website.

Finally, you can also send important updates, newsletters and announcements containing colors and graphics using the built-in graphical message editor (WYSIWYG - What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get).

You can use FollowUpExpert for simple email tasks as well. For example, you can create an autoresponder that replies to incoming mail with a predefined message that says something along the lines of “Hello, I am away from the office”. Or an autoresponder that provides useful documents on demand over email (for instance Adobe Acrobat PDF files, Microsoft Word DOC files etc.).

Where do you go from here? You may choose to read this manual cover-to-cover and it may be well worth the time because by the time you finish reading it you are not only going to have been better prepared to use FollowUpExpert to the fullest but you may also be able to find many additional uses for this software. Another reasonable way to read this manual is to pick the topics that interest you most. There are some good starting points below.