What’s An Auto-Responder?
Now if you are wondering what “auto-responder software” is, then maybe it’s time to find out…
An auto-responder (or autoresponder - without the hyphen) is simply a computer program that automatically answers email sent to it.
Historically, an auto-responder would only send one message, and that was it.
And still today on most web servers you can set up an email message to be sent immediately to someone who just emailed you.
Tip: With cPanel hosting, check under the MAIL section for Autoresponders.
You use this type of auto-responder to send a one-time message letting people know that you are on holidays (a “vacation message”) or even send them a “Thank you for your email - I’ll be in touch soon” message.
However, with the development of email marketing in the past decade, modern auto-responder software has become a lot more sophisticated, and is now the one really essential tool for those serious about marketing online!
The modern auto-responder allows you to set up a series of emails to be sent out at pre-set intervals, making it perfect for follow-up marketing!
Most auto-responder software also gives you the ability to broadcast separate messages to everyone in your database.
They also include routines that make it easy to collect, store and manage your mailing list information - i.e. the names, email addresses and other information on your customers and prospects who are on your “lists”.
The choices of which software you can use are :
- free or paid software to run on your web server
- free software hosted on someone else’s server
- commercial software with ongoing subscription cost
When I was investigating setting up my first list a while ago, I did try using software installed on my own server. Now there was nothing wrong with the software itself (Dada Mail if you are interested)…
The BIGGEST “problem” with hosting your own mailing software on your web server is…
Your web host!
Seriously! If your web server lives on any form of shared hosting, your mailing capabilities will probably be extremely limited.
Most web hosts will only allow you to send out a maximum of around 200 emails an hour. If you’ve got any reasonable sized list - even 1000 or so - it will take forever to send! I wanted to email around 4,000 people, which would’ve taken 20 hours to do!
And if you ever think you can do it by using your email client (Outlook Express or similar)… be warned that most ISP’s have even more severe limits to the number of emails that can be sent every hour.
Spam is another big issue, and the problems it can cause for you.
Just because you might do all the right things, doesn’t mean you are safe. Someone else using your server could cause immense difficulty by getting your (shared) IP address blacklisted, which means your emails won’t get delivered.
Please notice I choose not to discuss the second free option mentioned above. Just not worth the bother 
Especially considering the extremely competitive pricing and great features that come with quite a few of the commercial auto-responder software services!
And with pricing from just US$20 a month - the decision to go with a professional commercial service really is the only one that you should make! Since you are trying to run a business online, you should be using decent services to do it!
Let them worry about managing the server, the software and the deliverability issues… You’ve got enough to do!
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