Given below are some of the other key benefits of autoresponders:

• They introduce your business to the prospective customer
• List out special offers for members
• List out benefits of joining your website
• Compare your product or service with your competitors
• Give testimonials of existing customers
• Welcome letters for new members
• "Thank You" messages for new orders
• Order confirmation
• Acknowledgement of a query or a receipt of payment from your customer
• A reminder when their subscription or free access period is about to expire.

It is a good idea to have a copy of the original email sent to the autoresponder forwarded to you. Some people don't understand exactly what to expect from the autoresponder and they put a message inside the body of the email. If you don't at least take a peek at these emails, you may accidentally ignore a question from a prospective customer.

Autoresponders can handle many more emails than you could ever process manually. Also, you can send a ten-page email just as fast and easily as sending a two paragraph email.

Choosing and Setting up Autoresponders

It can be simple to set up and use an autoresponder, but choosing which one from the dozens of autoresponders that are available can be difficult. Most web hosts offer a simple autoresponder that gives one email message in response to an email to a specific email address. The problem with this type of responder is that one message is often not enough to keep the continued contact or deliver the content that you want to offer your visitor.

There are two main types of autoresponders. They each have their pros and cons.

Autoresponder services

Autoresponder services are web based services that allow you to send a series of emails to a visitor who has either requested the email through a web-based form on you site (the service provides the html code for your site to use) or who has sent an email to a specific address the service has provided you to use.

The primary advantage of such services is that they are very easy to set up, and are very reliable. In addition, they are host independent. This means that your web host doesn't have to allow you to run any particular services on your site to have access to all that an e-mail autoresponder can provide.

Email autoresponder services have two main drawbacks -- they can be costly, especially if you need to use an autoresponder on more than one web site, and they lack a certain amount of flexibility -- whatever the service provides is what you get. There is a limited amount of customization that you can do with such a service. GetResponse is recommended for most people. It has good customization, and the price is quite reasonable.

Autoresponder programs (or scripts)

The other choice for an autoresponder is to purchase (or lease) a program or a script (usually written in the Perl programming language, requiring CGI access on your server.) Several of these are available. They offer the potential for lower cost, especially if you have multiple web sites to support. (But be careful to check the license agreement. Some license agreements require an additional fee if you are going to use the program or script on more than one site at the same time.

These types of autoresponders also allow, potentially at least, for increased flexibility. Some are quite powerful in their own right, while Perl scripts can generally be modified to suit your needs for a fee. A good example of a script based autoresponder that you can install on your site and never have to pay monthly fees to use is Autoresponse Plus.

Autoresponse Plus offers the advantages of a system you can own along with all of the flexibility. It is available at a very reasonable price, and a multi-domain license is also available for only modestly more. Finally, most of the complexity often associated with such programs can be almost completely eliminated because professional installation is available for a small incremental increase in cost.