Autoresponder


An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex.
The first autoresponders were created within mail transfer agents that found they could not deliver an e-mail to a given address. These create bounce messages such as "your e-mail could not be delivered because..." type responses. Today's autoresponders need to be careful to not generate e-mail backscatter, which can result in the autoresponses being considered E-mail spam.
Autoresponders are often used as e-mail marketing tools to immediately provide information to their prospective customers and then follow up with them at preset time intervals.
Such follow-up autoresponders can be divided into two categories:
Autoresponders are also incorporated into electronic mailing list software, to confirm subscriptions, unsubscriptions, posts, and other list activities. Popular email clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Gmail contain features to allow users to create autoresponses.

Autoresponder sequence

Used with autoresponders being used as part of a mailing list manager. These are used by marketers to deliver a queued sequence of messages to mailing list subscribers. Messages are sent relative to the date of subscription to the list or within single list systems, opt-ins that result in the addition of new mailing list tags.