subject: What is an Autoresponder? [print this page] What is an Autoresponder? What is an Autoresponder?
If you do some research online a lot of sites will describe an autoresponder as an email program that sends out email in response to an email it receives. The most common one is the "Out of office reply." If you are going on vacation or traveling for work then you can setup your email program to automatically send a prewritten message to whoever sends you an email while you are gone. However, this type of autoresponder is of limited use.
Another definition of an autoresponder is a series of prewritten emails that get sent at predetermined intervals. Basically, you can write a bunch of emails at once and then you can decide when you want those emails to go out. You can send them out one day after each other or a month apart. Or you can send one out today, another one out in three days, and then another one out in two weeks. It's up to you to determine. The use of an autoresponder in this way is great because it allows you to schedule when you want your emails to go out. You can plan ahead and don't have to worry about forgetting to send an email out. For example, let's say you have a newsletter that you want to send out. You can just put it in your autoresponder and tell it when you want it to go out. You don't have to worry about remembering to send it on a certain day.
Also, an autoresponder can automate the sales process no matter what industry you are on. A lot of times when a person visits a website they aren't ready to buy that moment. If you have an autoresponder you can offer them to join it, so they can receive free information from you. From there you can keep in touch with your customer and over the course of several emails show the value of the product, different features of it, and how it will benefit them. Once they have seen more information about it they will be more inclined to purchase it.
There are different kinds of autoresponders out there. Some autoresponders you can load on your computer and run it from there or you can run an autoresponder from your website. The benefits is it may be cheaper, but as your contact list grows the greater the risk you run for having a disaster. If your computer crashes and all of your email contacts are on it, then what do you do? Another option is to pay for a third party autoresponder service(my recommendation). These services are super reliable and provide a great way to manage all your email contacts. They provide standard web forms that you can add to your website to allow people to opt in to your autoresponder and you don't have to worry about losing all your contacts if your computer crashes.
That's pretty much all I have to say on that without getting into the knitty gritty details of setting one up. Have a great day!
