Have you ever been informed by email that the person you emailed is away and won’t be returning your emails for the upcoming week?
What if the company replies through email, thanking you for your interest and promising to get in touch with you within a day or two?
Or perhaps a message informing you that the message you attempted to send could not be delivered?
These are various variations of what we usually refer to as an autoresponder.
A computer program that automatically responds to emails submitted to it is known as an autoresponder.
This clear definition, however, hides the significant variations across the numerous autoresponder types currently in use.
Mail transfer agents and email providers were the first to include auto responses.
They would notify you via an autoresponse if they were unable to deliver an email to you.
Even if they weren’t extremely complex, these emails were useful.
Because autoresponders have been implemented into the marketing plans of many businesses, all of that has drastically changed in recent years.
Companies now employ autoresponders to instantly provide feedback and information to potential customers.
This could involve sending an autoresponse to email inquiries with pricing information, further product information, and a time-frame for when a representative from the business will get in touch.
These “client touches” are a valuable asset in the world of marketing because they increase conversion rates by retaining the product or service in the buyer’s mind for a little while longer. They also give the business an extra chance to give the potential customer more information about the product.
In general, autoresponders are set up using either a server-side paradigm or an outsourced ASP model.
The company or service that wants to include an autoresponder in their business model enters into a contract with an outside supplier under the Outsourced ASP model.
The user will then often be given access to a web-based control panel by the outside provider.
From there, the business or person can specify exactly what they want the autoresponder to say in response to each email they receive as well as how to handle various email kinds and other variants.
The business normally pays the autoresponder provider a monthly fee in exchange for these services.
Server-side autoresponders fall under the second group.
Server-side autoresponders are simply programs that a business may install on their own server and run for themselves rather than paying someone to implement for you on a monthly basis.
Although while this procedure is often not as straightforward as buying a program and uploading it to the server, it has substantially simplified in recent years.