Autoresponders, as the name suggests, provide a designated automatic response to an incoming email. You send an email to an autoresponder email address and you get back the requested information via email.
What Are Autoresponders?
An autoresponder is a utility created to work with email programs. It is set up to automatically reply to an email sent to it with a preprogrammed message. The autoresponder reply can be a single email message or a series of preprogrammed messages. Autoresponders are known by many names, such as infobots, responders, mailbots, autobots, automailers, or email-on-demand. They enable you to do drip marketing quickly and easily. Drip marketing is a strategy that involves sending out a number of promotional pieces over a period of time to a subset of your database.
Autoresponders have been around for many years. The first generation of autoresponders were basically used to send “Out of Office” notifications. If you were going to be out of the office for a period of time, you would turn on your autoresponder to let people know this in case they were expecting an immediate response to their email. The second generation of autoresponders, while still using very simple technology, were used to send things like price lists and e-brochures.
Today’s autoresponders work much the same way—you send an email to a specified email address and you get back the requested information via email. However, over the past few years, we have seen major changes in the technology being used. Today autoresponders are more sophisticated and the enhanced features have provided many opportunities for marketers and merchants alike, as outlined in the next section.