You know the rule: 95% of your prospects don't buy from you on the first contact. And you know the game: follow-up on them with a series of sales messages through your autoresponder.

Following-up on your prospects is one of the holy grails of Internet marketing. Failure to do that would result in you losing out on many more sales that you would have closed. However, knowing the importance of follow-up is one thing, but knowing how to do it right is a completely different ball game altogether.

You may have done the hard part of building your mailing list to a sizeable one through your Internet marketing efforts, and so the rest is a numbers game. Follow-up on each and every one of your subscribers, and you will get the sales. But if you are still not making any sales, then there can be only one reason: your follow-up messages suck. Big time.

Below are some of the cardinal sins that you can ill afford to make in your follow-up messages, and how to put them right.

i.) You recklessly included red flag words like 'free', 'special offer', 'pre-launch', 'guaranteed', 'make money', and the likes in your messages. These words will trigger the spam filters. And when that happens, your prospects will never get to read your offer, because your messages will be neatly tugged away into the junk mail folder.

You will face an even bigger problem if your message is being reported as spam. Major email services like Yahoo or MSN may ban your email address from their systems for good.

ii.) You focus too much on talking about your wonderful products. The fact is this: people simply hate to waste time reading about how good your product is; they only want to know how the product can benefit them. So make sure you focus on the benefits of your product.

Another point to take note of is the fact that many Internet marketing experts agree the usage of words like 'you' and 'your' will increase the chances of closing the sale, because using these words will bond you and your prospects closer together.

iii.) You desperately try to squeeze many offers into one single message. This will confuse your prospects, and they will soon lose interest in what you have to offer totally. The key here is to be patient, and promote one offer at a time. In this way, your prospects will have time to think about what they want to do with your offer.

iv.) You simply cut and paste the sales messages provided by your affiliate program. This just won't do, because generic sales messages may not have the power to grab attention and win the trust of your prospects. So you would have to re-edit all those messages, and write them in your own words to make them sound as motivational and inspiring as possible.

v.) You fail to add a personal touch to your message, because you have been greeting your prospects with a lazy 'Hi there'. The fact is that people do respond better when they are referred to by their names. So search your autoresponder for the feature where it allows you to refer to your subscribers by their names, and then implement it.

vi.) Your messages do not have powerful calls for action. You may have written the most interesting sales message, but what it lacks is a compelling closing sentence. And because of this, your prospects will find it very difficult to say 'yes' to your offer.

You should start from the beginning to warm up you prospect, and then finally throw in a powerful call for action like 'Either you click here, or you'll regret for the rest of your life!'.

Internet marketing is all about the numbers game, and it will certainly help if you have thousands of subscribers in your mailing list. But the real success lies in how well you follow-up on your subscribers, and then finally convert them into your paying customers.