2. Have you ever received an email telling you that the
person you emailed is on vacation and will not be
answering his email for the next week? What about a
company that answers with an email thanking you for
your interest and that they would get back to you in a day
or two? Or even an email saying that the email you tried
to send could not be delivered?
3. Each of these is a different version of what we commonly
call an autoresponder. An autoresponder is simply that, a
computer program that automatically answers email sent
to it. This simple definition, however, belies a world of
difference between the different types of autoresponders
in use today.
4. The first auto responders were incorporated into mail
transfer agents or email providers. When they could not
deliver a piece of email, they would send an autoresponse
to you letting you know as much. These types of emails
were helpful, but not particularly sophisticated.
5. That has all changed radically in recent years, as
autoresponders have been incorporated into the
marketing strategies of many companies. Today
autoresponders are used by companies to immediately
give feedback and information to prospective clients. This
might include sending an autoresponse to email inquiries
which include pricing information, more details about a
product, and a timeline for when they can expect
someone from the company to get back with them.
6.
7. Autoresponders are setup primarily in one of two ways,
with an outsourced ASP model, and a server-side model.
The Outsourced ASP model involves the company or
provider who would like to incorporate an autoresponder
into their business model contracting with an outside
provider. The outside provider will then typically provide
the user with access to a web-based control panel. From
there the company or individual can dictate exactly what
they would like the autoresponder to say to each email
received as well as how to deal with different types of
emails and other variations. For these services, the
company typically pays a monthly fee to the
autoresponder provider.
8. The second category of autoresponders is server-side.
Server-side autoresponders simply refers to programs that
instead of paying for someone to implement for you on a
monthly basis, a company can install the system on their
own server and run it for themselves. While this process
is typically not as simple as purchasing a program out of a
box and uploading to the server, it has become
significantly simpler in recent years.