Product Review

Auto Who?
Not a lot of people seem to know what these do, though the purpose can be guessed to some degree from the words themselves. Automatic responders or Autoresponders as are more commmonly known, are in their simpliest form, a set of online tools that would enable a user to automatically respond to an email that was sent to them.

So, say for example, you are going on a holiday to Peru, and have no intention of answering any of your email while you’re busy losing thousands of calories in the beautiful mountains of Peru.
If your friends are not dear to you, don’t tell them that you went on vacation and simply allow them get frustrated that you are not answering your email.
When you get back, you can gaily explain that Lithium ion batteries don’t work real well at 19,000 feet and above. That explanation might hold a few of them until they google it.
But is that any way to treat business clients or close family? Well depends on family… lol…Probably not. A short but polite autoresponder set up to automatically reply to any email that comes to you while your treking about the Andes would probably be far more informative…

As an informal Autoresponder it might say:

Hello,

I am currently measuring the speed of the glaciers in the Ande Mountains, and consequently won’t be able to respond to you until my GPS starts working again.

Warm Regards,

 And that would be that. Autoresponder in a nutshell!

But Autoresponders are used in business too, and sometimes they are linked together to form an autoresponder series.

Tomorrow, more on business autoresponders and some of the larger companies that host them.
Aweber, Getresponse and 1Shoppingcart.com are the three major companies that supply automatic responder services.

If you can’t wait until tomorrow, there is an article here on How Autoresponders Improve Customer support.