Auto responders are special email and newsletter management programs designed to make it easy for you to manage how, when and to whom your emails and newsletters get sent to with your minimal involvement. Essentially they help you to become efficient and save you lots of time.

Imagine a scenario where each time someone registers on your website to receive emails, a newsletter or a product, their registration information lands in your email box as an email and you then need to add their details to your contact database, check which product or information they require, then send a reply telling them where to get it.

If they have requested a newsletter series you need to keep track of which ones you have sent out to them and also ensure you send the articles one by one in series, and track their responses.

Multiply this process by the number of your clients and you can easily find yourself in a situation where managing your mail becomes your primary task rather than building your website. As you can see the more successful your online business becomes in terms of attracting visitors, the more time you will need to spend managing your mail.

Autoresponders automate the whole process of managing your email/newsletters from collecting email addresses, tracking, scheduling and distributing information.

Things can you do with autoresponders:

• Generate automatic responses to enquiries sent through your website so your visitors are assured that you have received them and will be responding soon.
• Send out frequently requested information such as product or price lists on request.
• Group your registered clients and automatically send different emails or newsletters to selected groups of your visitors.
• Schedule a series or newsletters e.g. a training course to be sent out to a subscriber automatically.
• Include your own adverts, affiliate product links, or sales products in your emails.
• Include links to download products such as music, programs, PDF reports, software or any other electronic products you want to distribute.
• Capture leads into your database e.g. when visitors register or opt-in by filling a simple form on your website this is automatically added to your database and can be set to start sending out your newsletter automatically.
• Keep track of email addresses so you don't send the same information to the same person twice.
• Manage subscriptions so you don't fall foul of anti-spam and privacy laws.

There are 3 main types of autoresponder.

Free Autoresponders

Usually, these are hosted online at your providers website, not on your website hosting.

Subscription Autoresponders

These are hosted by the programs owners not in your webspace. You pay a monthly subscription, usually less than $20.00. Once you subscribe you are provided with user name and password and can then access these through a simple control panel.

Script Autoresponders

These are software programs you install yourself on your website host database. You need technical skills and access to the administration of your website to use these.

Visit our website for a comparison of the types of autoresponder and find out which will suit your needs best.