Email Autoresponders are perhaps one of the greatest advancements in sales and customer service technology that the Internet has brought to us.

Most people, when looking for information, want results easily and immediately. By the time someone in sales or customer service reads an email and finally gets around to responding to it, several days may have gone by. What if you inquire after work on Friday and no even gets around to it until Monday? By the time you receive the response you may not remember why you requested the information in the first place and simply delete the email as you would unsolicited spam. An autoresponder removes the human from the loop, by sending a response to the inquiry within minutes or even seconds.

If you have ever bought something online before you have received an order confirmation by email. That email order confirmation was sent to you by an autoresponder. This response was not generated by a human, but by a computer program on the website.

In many cases the response email that you receive is personalized with your name and other polite remarks. For instance, if you were on a bi-lingual website and you selected Spanish as the language of choice, the auto response would probably be emailed to you in Spanish.

There are two main categories of autoresponders. There are those that automatically email information to people who make requests or inquiries on a website and those that notify business owners, sales managers and webmasters regarding key activities on the website. Within each of these categories there are many different types of autoresponders and reasons for using them specific to the business or marketing objective trying to be accomplished.

Once you begin to utilize these devices for your business you will find that there are a variety of ways to optimize them so as to maximize their potential as a marketing tool. In future articles we will be discussing different types of autoresponders and the reasons for using them on your business website.

Autoresponders play a key role in any "magnetic" website that attract prospects and customers with offers. They are the "postmen" who tirelessly deliver the goods whether it "rains, snows or shines". You can put these handy devices to work for you immediately. Not only will you save time, money, but you will deliver a timely and accurate magnetic service to your prospects and customers.