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Web Site Promotion - Email Auto Responders

Email Auto Responders are a great tool for web site promotion. The 'auto' obviously stands for automatic, and the main intention of an auto responder is to automate the response to emails people send to you via your web site. The use of an auto responder allows you to operate on a 24 hour by 7 day basis. And the responses are sent within a few minutes.

The more that you use the Internet, the more that you will be inundated with people trying to sell you the benefits of their auto responder system. In fact there are hundreds of different auto responders available at varying prices, with varying features. And I must confess, comparing cost against features seems to bear little relativity. So beware, you can easily be ripped off!

What Do Auto Responders Do?

Let's look first at what auto responders do. The concept is very simple. Someone sends an email to you; rather than having to write a reply yourself, the auto responder formulates and sends a response automatically. The auto responder will have a number of pre-written replies (which you set up earlier) and depending upon the email it receives, decides on whether an automatic response is required, and if so, which specific email response it should send.

A simple basis of whether the auto responder intervenes is the email address of the recipient. For example, let's say I set up two email addresses for this web site. Assume that they are info and subscribe@ ancientrade.com.

I could set my auto responder to grab all email messages sent to subscribe, but ignore messages sent to info Anyone who sends an email to subscribe will automatically be sent a response saying something like "Dear so and so, Thanks for your request to subscribe to our news letter. Your details have been added to our subscriber list and you will receive our news letter monthly. Sincerely etc".

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I've used the email address as the basis of having the auto responder intervene in the email. But there are all manner other methods that can cause the auto responder to step in and handle the emails received. These might include specific words or phrases in the subject line or message body, the sender's email address, whether the message has an attachment to name a few.

In addition most auto responders provide the option of automatically sending follow-up emails at preset time intervals (say every two days). Other features might include a database to manage email addresses along with details about the person to whom the email belongs, automated mass mailouts to categories of the database, tools to write the email responses, as well as various statistical tools.

There are two main methods of using an auto responder. The first method is to install and manage the system yourself. The alternative is to sign up to a managed (by someone else) auto responder service.

If you want to manage your own service, then there are two alternatives. The first and most simple is to run software on your own computer (just as you are doing now with your email). The alternative is to install and run a software system on your web server (which is usually regarded as being more efficient). With a managed system, emails are (usually) diverted to the server of the firm with whom you've signed up. Thus their software manages the emails for you.

One note of caution. With a managed service I've always been a little suspicious as to how confidential all those emails are. You are in complete reliance on a firm over whom you have no control. I am not suggesting that such firms are unethical, and I am not intending to slur the auto responder industry. All I'm saying is that I've always just felt a little nervous about providing (what most people would regard as confidential information) another company with such information.

But before you sign up to buy or lease an auto responder, let me tell you a secret. If you are using Microsoft Outlook Express, you already own a reasonably sophisticated auto responder. If you use Microsoft Outlook, then you already own a very sophisticated auto responder. The main difference between the two email products is that Outlook allows you to set up automated follow-up messages, where as Outlook Express doesn't have any facility for follow-ups. I need to add that neither Microsoft products are geared for high volume and as such are not very efficient. But quite what high volume is I'm not entirely sure. As a ball park I would suggest though that if your subscriber base is less than 10,000 people, then both Outlook Express and Outlook will handle the demand fine.

Because auto responders need to run 24 by 7, using an Outlook system requires a computer with continuous internet connectivity and of course the application must always be running.

Whilst we're on the topic of auto responders, you might also want to read the section on mass mailings (click here).

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