Creating Autoresponders - Simply Support

Introduction to Autoresponders

An Autoresponder will automatically send mails to recipients when given conditions are met.

Whether you are responding to the same type of email on a daily basis or you would just like to add an automatic response to emails sent to a specific email address, you can accomplish such a task using the “Autoresponder”. An autoresponder will send a standard response email message (based on text you specify) to anyone who sends an email to a specific email address which you specify) at the time of setup.

Creating an Autoresponder

Click on New Email Campaign button to get the options Regular Campaign and Autoresponder Campaign.

Clicking on Autoresponder Campaign will redirect you to the Autoresponder page.

Step 1: Campaign Details

You’ll need to provide basic details of campaign in Campaign Details. The email your customer’s receive will be displayed to have come from the email in From Email field. For that reason, the email address you provide in From Email field should be verified beforehand sending campaign.

Here’s how to get your From Email verified

Provide an email address in From Email field
As you shift your mouse pointer from the From Email field, verification message is displayed next to it
If your email is not verified yet, click on Verify Now button

4. After clicking on Verify Now button, an email from Amazon Web Services will be sent to corresponding email address.

5. To confirm that you are authorized to use the email address, click on the URL provided in the email

6. Once your email address is verified, the verification message in green is displayed next to your ‘From Email field

Detail information of fields in Campaign Details section is provided below

a. Campaign Name : Provide desired name for your campaign

b. From Name : The email your customers receive will be displayed to have come from the name you provide in this field

c. From Email : The email your customers receive will be displayed to have come from the email address you provide in this field

d. Email Subject : The information you provide here will be displayed as subject of the email

e. Assigned to : The user or group selected from the dropdown is owner of the campaign

f. Track Opens : To track the email recipients that opened the email

g. Track Clicks : To track the email recipients that clicked the links within the email

h. Track Bounces : To track the email bounces

i. Track Complaints : To track complaints

7. Click Next

Step 2: Select Subscribers

After providing information in Campaign Details, you will need to select a list from Select Subscribers. You can also segment your list by providing conditions. If you have too many lists, you can search for appropriate list through search option. If it requires creating a new subscription list, you can do that, too. You can click on Create Subscription List to create a list from within Select Subscribers view.

Segmenting Lists

You send tens of thousands of email campaigns to your customers every day, often for promotional purposes. Few email campaigns, however, target only a particular set of audience under specific criteria. You need not have to create all new subscriber list again. You can rather segment your existing list and send email campaigns to specific section of the list.

Here’s how to segment your list

In the Select Subscribers view, click on Segment dropdown next to desired list

2. You’ll have to provide conditions to segment your list. Learn more about conditions.

3. Click Apply

After segmenting, you can select the subscription list and click Next

Step 3: Select Trigger

There are two types of events for an Autoresponder to trigger:

1. Campaign related events :

i) Opening a campaign :

Autoresponder will send email to a recipient only if he opens the previous campaign sent to him.

In the below case, this autoresponder campaign will execute only if customer opens Day 1 campaign.

ii) Clicking on any link :

Autoresponder will send an email to a recipient if the customer clicks on any of the links present in the campaign template selected.

If you select this option, the campaign that you are selecting should have hyperlinks present in it.

iii) Clicking on specific link :

In this case, the Autoresponder will send email to a recipient only if they click on a specific link in the campaign template selected.

In the above screenshot, Autoresponder campaign will send email only if the customer clicks on the twitter link.

2. Date field related events :

Here Autoresponders are triggered based on certain date conditions specified by you. All date fields available in both Contacts and Leads module are shown in this section. Custom fields with datatype as date-time are also shown here.

Example: You can trigger autoresponders for someone’s birthday, support start date, support expiry date, etc.

Similarly, you can select other options like Day(s) before/after, Week(s) before/after, On same day, etc.

Select on which week days you would like the campaign to be sent :

By default all week days are selected. If you want to run only between Monday to Friday, you can remove Saturday and Sunday by clicking on the close button on the respective days.

Set time :

You can schedule at what time you want the autoresponder to trigger.

All autoresponder campaigns will send mails according to your timezone selected in My Preferences. Below, we have selected timezone as UTC +5.30.

Step 4: Select Template

After selecting subscribers list, you’ll need to select an email template you’d like to send them. We recommend you to build your email template beforehand creating email campaign. As we discussed before, default email templates have preview whereas custom email templates are displayed in green.

Here’s how to select an email template

Click on desired email template
After the selection, preview is displayed to help you make adjustments in style

3. If selected email template did not meet your requirements, you can choose a different email template by clicking on right and left arrows.

4. After selecting appropriate email template, click Next

Unsubscribe Link

Adhering to the anti-spam laws, we’ve made it mandatory for you to have an unsubscribe link in your email template. Learn more

Step 5: Send Campaign

A summary of the autoresponder with the conditions specified by you is shown. You can modify the conditions based on your requirement from here.

Once you are satisfied with the trigger conditions, you can start the autoresponder by hitting on the “Start Autoresponder” button.

Detail View of Autoresponder

After hitting the “Start Autoresponder” button, you will be navigated to a detail view of the autoresponder as shown below.

How to edit an Autoresponder campaign which has started ?

An Autoresponder campaign cannot be edited only if the campaign status is in running state. In order to edit this autoresponder you need to stop the campaign by clicking on stop campaign button as shown.

Once it is stopped, you can make the required changes and start it again by clicking on the Start Campaign button.

Does Autoresponder send the same email twice to a contact ?

No, the autoresponder will only send an email only once even if the condition is satisfied.

Does Autoresponder send the emails the day I create ?

It depends on the time that you have mentioned in autoresponder campaign. If the time has already elapsed, then the autoresponder will automatically send emails in the next cron (minimum 15 mins interval) to those people who satisfies the given conditions.

If the time has not yet passed, then it will wait till it reaches that time to send the campaign.

I want my Autoresponder to send at any time if condition is met

If you want the autoresponder to send a campaign at any time, then we would recommend you to mention the time as 00:00:00. Autoresponder time can be set only in 24 hour format. It will run according to the time zone that you have selected in My Preferences.

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