An autoresponder lets you send an automated email to your subscribers a specific number of hours or days after an event has occurred, such as after they have subscribed to your mailing list, after opening an email campaign or after they have been sent an email campaign. For example, if John signs up to your mailing list today, you can create an autoresponder to automatically send a welcome email to him 24 hours after he subscribes. Or when John opens an email you can send him a follow up email 24 hours later to ask him what he thought.
Autoresponders are often called the "marketer's dream tool", and in this article I'll show you how to setup a basic autoresponder to send an email to your subscribers 24 hours after they subscribe.
To create an autoresponder go to Campaigns > Autoresponders > Create new. Follow through the steps, you will notice that it is exactly the same as creating a regular campaign. On the last step you will see the autoresponder actions. From "Autoresponder event" choose "AFTER-SUBSCRIBE", then from "Autoresponder time value" type "24" (you can put any value here that you require or set it to 0 to have no delay) and then from "Autoresponder time unit" choose "Hour". Now click "Save and activate". Now anyone subscribing to your list will receive your autoresponder 24 hours after they subscribe!
Note: If you need to make changes to your autoresponder after it has started sending you will need to first pause the campaign before you can edit it. To pause an autoresponder click the gear icon to the far right of the Autoresponder (scroll right if you don't see it) and then click the Pause button.
Some ideas for using autoresponders:
- Send an automated welcome email to new subscribers
- Create an online course with new lessons sent by email each week after a student subscribes
- Automatically follow up with subscribers who opened a campaign to ask them what they thought or send them further information
- Automatically send a discount code or other reward to thank them for subscribing. Offering an incentive is a great way to grow your subscriber list
