What Is Email Autoresponder and How It Works?

Recently updated on February 26th, 2023 at 11:12 am

Today, email autoresponder is a powerful tool that can instantly drive significant revenue to businesses. Email marketing is considered to be the most valuable asset of every successful online business, and it wouldn’t happen without an autoresponder.

Imagine you have an email list of 1 million subscribers and you want to pass your message to everyone without having to contact your recipients individually – email autoresponder is the best solution. Here in this article, we will answer what is email autoresponder and how it works.

What is Email Autoresponder?

Email Autoresponder is software, which allows you to send a series of emails automatically. Email marketing would not exist without email autoresponders and it is the main core of a successful email marketing strategy.

The main upside of using an autoresponder is that you don’t have to write your emails manually, the program is designed to automatically send emails to as many people as you like at one time.

The most exciting part about an autoresponder is that you don’t necessarily need to trigger it to start sending emails. All you need is to connect it to your sign up form and once someone subscribes to your list it will deliver your recipient a sequence of messages in your chosen time intervals.

The first message sent by autoresponder should be a welcome message. There you can start building up a relationship by introducing yourself or your brand.

The next email follow-up series is totally up to your marketing goals. Either you want to build your brand awareness or you want to sell something – an autoresponder is your best friend.

Today if you want to market your products or services on email, you have to use cloud-based email marketing platform, in other words – Email Service Provider (ESP). Autoresponder is an integrated function of ESPs, but normally Email Service Providers are called as Autoresponders.

How Email Autoresponder works?

Nowadays, email autoresponder has a lot of built-in features that can help to grow your online business in several ways. It can save you a lot of time as you can find everything you need for your marketing asset in one place.

So what exactly email autoresponder does?

1. Automatically sends emails

Let’s say that your marketing objective is to sell your own product and you have a sign-up form on your website – a field where a visitor can enter his name and email address. Once a visitor subscribes to your email list his data goes straight into your email marketing campaign on your autoresponder.

There you have written a fantastic sales offer, but you don’t want to send it right in the beginning as it is not the best email marketing strategy to follow. You want to “warm-up” your subscriber before pitching any sales offer, so you are going to take him through an email marketing funnel.

It is a good idea to have your sales funnel spread across several days, so you want to contact your potential buyer regularly on different days.

Autoresponder allows you to schedule and send emails ahead of time meaning you don’t necessarily have to be interacting with the software at the presence of sending your email.

2. Helps to write and design your email content

Today, many autoresponders contain integrated functions to help you build high-quality content for people. Organize all your creative assets with your autoresponder – upload and store images, use and design pre-built email templates, or simply drag & drop the files you want to use.

In addition,  if you want to make your content mobile-friendly (and you should), there’s no need to have any knowledge in coding. Your autoresponder can provide responsive content design features for you.

Want to get professionally written emails for your business? Check out the best email writing agencies and tools.

3. Manges your contacts

An autoresponder can assist with your email list a lot. Firstly,  performing email hygiene allows you to notice inactive subscribers that are not taking any actions towards your emails.

Such unengaged subscribers can have a negative impact on email deliverability as well as on the analytical metrics of your campaigns. Therefore, it is highly advised to regularly look after and clean your email list. It all can be done with the right email service provider.

4. Creates email-marketing campaigns

Every single email autoresponder has a feature to prepare a series of emails that can be sent within different time frames. You can build your email marketing campaigns with autoresponder by creating content and scheduling it ahead of time.

Every email marketing campaign has its own objective and an autoresponder helps to achieve it. You can monitor your campaign’s progress,  and see what’s performing right or not with autoresponder’s analytical features.

5. Builds and designs landing pages

Your landing page is the place where your subscriber’s journey starts. A good overall design and content really matter for the best chances of conversion.

Autoresponders have features helping you to build, design and even integrate landing pages to your website. With the right autoresponder, you don’t need to look for external landing page building platforms. Everything can be done for you in just one place.