If you have an online business website and keep receiving continuous mails from your audience that you find hard to tackle, you now have the option of setting up an e-mail autoresponder. Autoresponders can also prove to be helpful if you are planning to take a vacation and you may be unable to access your e-mail account for a few days. Learning how to setup an autoresponder is convenient and saves time and effort on your part by sending an automated email response to your customers.

An e-mail autoresponder is a configuration that can be used to send back an automatic mail reply to a received e-mail that contains particular keywords in its subject line or are addressed to a particular user. Autoresponders are generally used to send specific information about certain products or answer similar queries that website owners receive regularly and can prove to be a very strong marketing tool for websites.

If you are a website owner, most web hosting control panels enable you to set up an automatic responder to your mailbox in a simple way. Let us take a look on how it can be done:

Setting up an Autoresponder


For example, if you hold an account with NTC, all you have to do is follow a three-step process and you will have your automated reply ready for use:

  • Control Panel Login – First you need to log in to the NTC control panel. You can do so by clicking the control panel tab on the upper-right corner of the NTC page. You will be required to enter your personal hosting account details. Once you have done that, you will be logged into the control panel.
  • E-mail Manager – Once you can view the control panel, go to the e-mail options section and click on the E-Mail Manager icon.
  • Activate Responder – Now select the mailbox for which you want to activate the responder and click on the “set autoresponder” tab. Then type in your customized message that you wish to send and save the message. Your autoresponder will be successfully activated.

If you wish to make any changes in your responder settings, you can do so by selecting the mailbox for which you need to make the changes and go to the “action” tab and make the changes. These steps would be very similar for most web hosting services.

Autoresponder for Personal Accounts

Moreover, personal webmail services like Gmail and Yahoo! and social networking sites like Twitter are offering the option of sending an email auto reply. A Yahoo! or Gmail autoresponder is very easy to activate and can be reached through your account settings in the Vacation Responder section. It hardly takes 60 seconds to activate and can be deactivated automatically. However, they should only be used if you are away on vacations and cannot be available.

Social media management is also becoming a key issue for business. Autoresponse to queries made on social sites can be very beneficial for organizations.

An autoresponder for Twitter can be activated by signing up with Twitter DMer autoresponder software. You can select a message format, customize it and activate your autoresponder to send message to your new followers. It can prove to be helpful to reply to your followers and can be a powerful networking tool. Although automated reply may seem annoying to some people, for small business owners looking for a networking solution, they prove to be helpful.

Use the Autoresponder Effectively

While setting up an e-mail auto reply, a number of factors should be taken into account. Nobody likes an automatic reply to their e-mail and it can be frustrating for people. Creating a message that is communicative and effective is important. Here are a few tips to create an effective message:

  • Don’t Tell the Obvious – A very common automated reply seems to be “I have received your message” which seems to be an obvious thing since the sender is getting a response, or “I will reply as soon as possible” which is a very uncertain reply unless provided with a specific timeline. Avoid using such responses since they may annoy your correspondent.
  • Be Concise – Since the message is automated, it is unlikely to generate a lot of interest. The key is to keep the response brief and specific, telling people only what they absolutely need to know.
  • Keep it Light – If the automated message is activated on your personal mailbox, try to keep the message humorous to diffuse the bad mood. Also convey to your correspondent why you needed to activate autoresponder and appeal to their good nature.

Summary

Knowing how to setup an autoresponder can help people, specifically those operating online business websites to stay connected to their audience and save a lot of their time and effort. Since it is a prompt way to reply, it can be particularly useful when answering customer queries. However, automated response can only be successful if the message is effective.

Get back to your customer quickly!


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