Building a Web Site For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Using Autoresponders

Autoresponders are programs that automatically send e-mail messages to visitors who request them. The visitor makes the request either by sending an e-mail to your autoresponder address or by making the request through a form on your Web site.

What you can do with autoresponders

Okay, so what? Well, the way you use an autoresponder all depends on what your message says. Say, for example, that your e-mail message contains your current catalog or the sale of the week. Sound like something useful?

You can even set up several different documents that people can request. This technique is useful if the products or services you sell or talk about can be easily organized into categories. For example, a Web site that sells software might put together one gigantic catalog or set up several links, such as Click Here to Receive Our Productivity Catalog and Click Here to Get Information on Graphics Software.

So far, so good. What you have is a perfectly spam-free way for people to get detailed information on demand, and the autoresponder does all the work for you. All you do is write up the documents and upload them once. From then on, the autoresponder takes care of all the drudgery.

But another feature of autoresponders borders on spammishness. You can set them up so that they send not only one message but also several different messages over a period of time. The basic idea is that it often takes more than one contact to close a sale, which is true, as anyone in sales ...