Email Auto Responders

Email auto responders are software programs designed to automatically answer your email with a pre-defined response message you created.

Machine intelligence?

Way back when digital computers first became a reality (1950) Allan Turing (considered by many as the spiritual father of computing) speculated that some day computers will “evolve” to a point where machine intelligence is so far advanced that computers will play a enormous role in society.

He wrestled with the question: “What is ‘intelligence’?”

Surely it cannot be mathematical ability - because even the most rudimentary calculator can out-perform a human.

Music appreciation? No, not that either because the fact that I listen to Beethoven does not make me more intelligent that the unfortunate folks who listen to M&M (although I would like to think so)

Turing eventually argued that the best test for “artificial intelligence” is when a computer program is able to have a conversation with a human without the human realizing that he/she is talking to a computer. This became widely known as the “Turing test” for artificial intelligence.

To date, no computer program succeeded in passing The Turing test – the holy grail of computing.

Or perhaps they have…?

Are you being fooled?

Part of Turing’s theory is that when intelligence can be imitated, then it is as good as the real thing, which brings us to our topic of email auto responders.

Do you know that you are “fooled” by computers pretending to be humans on an almost daily basis?

A significant percentage of the email you receive looks and reads as if it was sent by a human when it is in fact a software program pretending to be a human.

Ignoring spam for a moment (because that is all computer generated), much of the email you receive from commercial companies are in fact auto responders designed to make you believe you are receiving email from a person.

It may not be a real conversation in the sense that you are discussing the weather or politics by email, but it comes real close to one.

The main difference is that you are “talking” or “asking questions” about a specific product or service – expecting to receive a reply from a person.

When you receive a reply, you naturally assume that it came from a human when in fact it did not – it was sent by a software program….ie you were fooled into believing you “spoke” to a real person.

Win-win

Before you feel violated and cheated ;-) the emails you receive are almost always designed to make sure that you feel “well looked after” as a client – in other words the intention is not to deceive you into spilling your deepest, darkest secrets. The intention is rather to provide the information or service you requested quickly, efficiently and in a pleasant, non-intimidating way.

It simply would not be practical for your favorite online shopping site to send you a personal “How are you” note to make sure you are satisfied with the goods you bought, or to tell you that they now have that book you were looking for in stock – because it would take to long for a person to write all those emails.

Still, it is important for the vendor to do everything in their power to provide the best possible, personal service to you. The obvious answer is to use automation.

In the offline (non-internet) world the same necessities and problems apply – but it is much more obvious to you when you receive letter in your mailbox that it was not written by a real person. Just the printed signature is a dead give away.

The same concept of using computers to send personalized mail to clients and prospects migrated to the internet, but became much more cost efficient and effective. For a start the vendor does not have to pay postage or lick all those stamps – and the email arrives in your inbox within minutes of it being sent to boot!

(A little side-thought: Don’t you think it will be a good punishment to make convicted spammers lick a few million stamps? :-)

Anyway, back to the issue at hand: The concept of “form letters” can (and was) easily extended to send automated replies to specific enquiries, for example when you ask for stock availability or when your order is confirmed.

From your (the client’s) perspective, you are getting fast, effective and (you think) personal service – which is great. From the vendor’s perspective they maintain contact and build relationships with their clients without hiring an army of typists and stamp-lickers.

Both you and your favorite vendor wins in this scenario. First of all you receive virtually immediate answers to your questions and the vendor wins because they can provide good service to far more customers at a reasonable cost.

Faster pace of business

Back in 1996 the idea of using email auto responders might have made you a rich person if you could implement it effectively, but not today.

Cars, air travel, cell phones and cable TV all conspire to make the world seem smaller. The speed of business transactions and decisions are increasing every day – and the internet had a big hand in this.

Customers have instant access to your services and those of your competitors.

If they want to watch the latest rerun of “Star Wars” on their satellite TV system, they simply press a button on the remote and pop a bag of instant popcorn in the Microwave.

Need something to eat? One phone call and 30 minutes later Butlers arrives with a freshly made pizza.

Instant gratification!

At a typical brick and mortar vendor you will be VERY surprised if you walked in and were IMMEDIATELY attended to by a knowledgeable client service person who knows you by your first name. In fact, you may probably become a bit paranoid when that happens. :-)

On the internet on the other hand, we have all come to expect answers in minutes rather than days and weeks.

If a business is not able to supply services and information to the cell-phone-wielding-remote-controlling-pizza-eating customers we have all become, then that business will not survive in the economy of the 21st century.

So, perhaps an idea of email auto responders a few years back could have made you a million bucks, but today, if you don’t use similar technology it might cost you a million bucks in lost opportunities.

Times they are a-changing!

The online bookstore example

Lets explore the concept of email auto responders a bit more by using a practical example:

Let’s say you want to buy a book on the internet.

You visit an online vendor to buy the book, but you can’t find it in their online catalog.

If you don’t decide to use another vendor, you go to their contact page or you send an email to the contact address they specify.

A quarter or half an hour later you receive a cordial note in your email inbox thanking you for your enquiry and giving you some information on when the book will be available.

A few days later, you receive another email from The Online Bookstore to tell you that the book has arrived and they reserved a copy for you – just click here to order it.

You go online and two minutes later you buy the book.

A day or so after the courier delivers your book, you receive another email from the vendor to make sure you received the book, that it was in good condition and thanking you for your business.

Even though all of these emails were addressed to you personally (with your first name) and signed by a real, contactable person, chances are it was sent by an email auto responder.

Auto responder or not, you are still pretty impressed with the service you received!

In fact, when The Online Bookstore emails you again two weeks later to recommend another book in your area of interest that just arrived, you are hooked!

Now compare that to your “old” brick and mortar book store. You spend an hour or so searching for the book you want. Then you ask the sales person to give you a call when it arrives. IF you ever receive that call you are surprised, get in your car, drive to the shop, wait in a que for a couple of minutes and get your book…and you will never hear from that brick and mortar shop again.

Worse yet, that brick and mortar shop will never hear from YOU again after you discovered our auto responder armed Online Bookshop!

Are you still wondering why Amazon is the largest bookstore on the planet and they don’t even have a physical shop?

The small business example

Lets take another example:

Let’s say you see an advertisement for widgets in the classifieds of your local paper.

The ad invites you to send email to a contact address for more information.

As you are a widget collector, you duly send an email.

Unfortunately (for you and them) this is a Friday evening and the office is closed, so you only receive a reply to your email the following Monday afternoon.

By this time the reply is irrelevant because you found another supplier. (Remember the cell-phone-wielding-remote-controlling-pizza-eating customer?)

The other supplier?

Allow me introduce you: The other supplier has a small web site and a range of auto responders.

When he decided to place a classified ad in the paper, our hero (Mr Entrepreneur) also built an email auto responder to handle the enquiries he hopes his ad will generate.

You see the ad for widgets and send an email to info@widgets.com as instructed.

Mr Entrepreneur's email auto responder picks it up and sends a response back to you within 15 minutes like this:

You were still browsing the internet and downloading your email when you received the reply from the vendor.

You read the email and visit the web site where you find good quality information on the abc widget and why it is such a good deal.

You decide email Mr Entrepreneur to ask for a quote for the green widget with the little blinking lights on it.

Once again, a few minutes later you receive another email form Mr Entrepreneur:

Pretty cool wouldn’t you say?

Especially considering that our Mr Entrepreneur is not even at work – he is out of the office secure in the knowledge that his business is running on full automatic while he is taking a well deserved rest!

It must be complicated and expensive?

By this time you are thinking: “Yes, its cool, but it probably cost a fortune or you need 15 years programming experience to set this up?”

The good news is that neither is true. It does not cost an arm and a leg and you need no technical knowledge at all to set up email auto responders.

Too good to be true? Then read on…

How email auto responders work

By this time you might be thinking that email auto responders are mystical, semi-intelligent “things” on a computer somewhere. In fact, you may even visualize agent Smith of The Matrix fame in your mind’s eye.

Please allow me to de-mystify:

Email auto responders are simply software programs designed to login to your mail server on your behalf and to process email according to rules you set up.

Nothing sinister or mystical about it at all! :-)

In the case of the Cozahost free auto responders, the software runs on our email servers, so you need not login to the internet (or to your email) in order for the auto responders to work.

Once you create them, they will keep working – even when you go on that Hawaiian holiday for a week! :-)

Other types of auto responders run on your own PC and are designed to connect to the internet on a regular basis to download and process email (more about that later).

Categories of email auto responders

Email auto responders and be roughly divided into two categories: the first is “standard” email auto responders that are designed to answer email sent to a specific address with any of a number of rules to determine the message that will be sent in response to an incoming email.

Typically email auto responders look for a word or phrase in the subject line of an email to decide which response to send.

For example, an email addressed to info@mywidgets.com with the word “prices” in the subject will be sent a response detailing product prices while a email to the same address with the word “contact” in the subject line will receive a response explaining how to contact the company.

Standard email auto responders

Standard email auto responders allow you to specify one or more email addresses to act as auto responders. Any email sent to any of those addresses will then receive a reply message you define.

Remember Mr Entrepreneur we discussed earlier?

In his case he created a new email address info@mywidgets.com and designed a well-worded reply message in response to enquires he will receive from his classified ads.

To illustrate how easy this is to do, we will explain the process by using the Cozahost email auto responders system (which is a free service for anyone with a Cozahost email account):

First Mr Entrepreneur logs on to the online management system provided by his ISP. (http://www.cozahost.com/support/ if you are a Cozahost client)

Then he creates a new email address. This should be a simple process where Mr Entrepreneur simply types the new email address required and press a button to create it.

Now he converts the new email address to an auto responder – once again this is a process where he simply clicks a link.

With his new email auto responder ready for use, Mr Entrepreneur now sets up his rules for dealing with incoming email.

First, and most importantly, he crafts a well written reply to any general enquiries. Then he builds subtly different responses for more specific enquiries he expects to receive.

For example, he might anticipate that potential customers might use the words “Price”, “Stock”, “color”, and so in the subject of the email and he builds a specific reply to each of these.

He does not strictly have to do this (he can just send the same general reply to all enquiries), but he knows that the more specific he can make the auto responder the higher chance he stands to convert leads to sales, and he knows that he can re-use the auto responder again and again – so it is a good investment of his time.

Mr Entrepreneur knows that many people will reply to the initial automated message (because they will probably think that it came from a person), so one of the rules he specifies for the auto responder is that any replies to the original message must come back to him directly.

While he is at it, he also instructs the auto responder to send him a copy of all the incoming and outgoing email so that he can follow up by hand if required.

And that’s it!

Mr Entrepreneur now places his add in the local paper, the yellow pages, prints flyers or whatever promotional technique worked best for him in the past – secure in the knowledge that each and every lead generated by his marketing efforts will be followed up immediately and professionally.

Simple! Falling out of a tree would be more difficult. :-)

Automatic follow up email responders

The second class of email auto responders can be described as software that will automatically follow up on enquiries received – more than once.

For example, if the auto responder received an email addressed to info@mywidgets.com with the word “prices” in the subject, it will send a response with pricing information, but it will also automatically follow-up after a few days with more information.

In other words, the “follow-up” email auto responders will also automatically send email (as follow-up) even when the client did not send a second email.

This is a very powerful concept, but it has the following dangers:

• You must be SURE that the client was not contacted since. For example, there is no sense in sending an follow-up email offering a special discount if the client already purchased – in fact this can do more harm than good!
• You must be sure that your follow up emails are not out of context. For example, if the client enquired about prices, don’t auto follow later with information about the color of your product. You do not want to send a general follow-up message that might confuse the potential customer again.
• Studies have found that excessive use of auto responders in scenarios not ideal for their use may actually loose you potential customers. If you send the wrong follow up you and your company looks incompetent.

This “second class” of auto responders are therefore a bit more tricky to set up and operate – mainly because you must take special care to avoid sending out of context emails – and this requires good integration with the rest of your systems (ordering, invoices, etc).

If this is not done correctly, you may end up thanking a client for an order he has since cancelled!

Not nice at all.

On the other hand, email auto responders will with designed follow-ups are one of the most powerful and effective marketing tools you can ever employ in your business. Bar none.

If you are aware of these dangers and able to anticipate the problems you might get with automated follow-ups, then the Mailloop software package is perfect for you.

It is an excellent investment that can give a return of hundreds of percent more than the initial capital outlay: provided of course you don’t try to use it as a hammer where a saw is required. :-)

In closing

Email auto responders are THE most cost effective and reliable way to follow up on leads and turn them into loyal customers.

If you are not using this free technology then you are literally loosing money.

Studies have shown that a large percentage of customers will require you to follow up seven times before they trust you enough to buy from you.

On the internet, where there is no face-to-face contact and you can’t use your beautiful personality to help make the sale, email auto responders are critical to your success.

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About the author

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