An autoresponder is a system that automatically replies to an email.
So for example, when you go on vacation you probably set up your office email to automatically send an email to anyone who writes you, saying that you’re on vacation letting them know when you will be back and who they can contact in the meantime.
That’s a very basic example, but autoresponders are often used to automatically send an email (or a series of emails) when marketing. If you’re trying to build an email list, you’ll often give away something if someone signs up for your email list.
Could you imagine having to manually send out the free gift to (hopefully) hundreds of people as they sign up for your list? Plus, what if they sign up at 4am? You’re probably asleep at that time, and the person won’t get their gift for hours.
This is where autoresponders come in. They take all of the work out of your hands, and take care of it. You can set it up so that when someone joins your list, they automatically get sent an email. The email can include your free gift, or any other welcoming information you’d like to share.
What’s really cool is that you can also set up a series of emails to be sent to someone after they sign up. So for example, when they sign up they’ll get an email right away with their free gift (even if it’s 4am), and then 3 days later they’ll get a second email, another 4 days later their third email, and so on.
This is a great way to stay in contact with hundreds of people at a time, and you only have to set it up once!
Another thing that people generally lump in with autoresponders is that when you have one, the company also sends out your emails for you.
As you know, spam is huge, and if you tried to send out 500 emails from your personal address, besides taking forever to do so, you’d be labeled as a spammer and your emails wouldn’t get sent out.
But buy using the services of a company that has an autoresponder, they take care of sending out your emails (as well as holding your email lists as well), making it more probable that your customers will get their emails.
There are plenty of services to choose from, and in my next post I’ll talk about a few of the popular ones.