What exactly is an autoresponder, anyway?

August 18, 2009 By

An email autoresponder does just what the name suggests: It responds to incoming messages. Automatically.

Most email programs will let you set up simple email autoresponders. For instance, you may have seen (or used) “out of office” or “on vacation” messages. When one of these autoresponders is active, any incoming email will trigger an automatic and instant reply.

You set up the reply before you leave for your vacation, and anyone who emails you, whether they’re a spammer, your boss, or your grandma, gets the same form-letter response, usually within a few seconds of sending their email.

You don’t have to send the response. You don’t even have to see the incoming mail. Your email program will do it all for you.

More uses for simple autoresponders

If you use email filters (some programs call them “rules”), you can introduce a little more customization into your personal autoresponders. For instance, you could:

  • set up one vacation autoresponse to be sent to people in your address book, and a different one for people you don’t know
  • automatically send a copy of your latest prices to anyone who emails you with the subject line “price list” (even when you’re not on vacation)
  • instantly reply to anyone who sends you a forwarded email (the subject line has “Fwd:” in it) to tell them you never read forwards

What autoresponders are not

Notice that so far I haven’t said a word about marketing, about building an email list, or about sending a newsletter or communicating with subscribers. Those are all meaty topics that I won’t get into in this particular Heart-Centered Tech Tip (look for future installments, though!).

No, all I’m talking about today is one simple piece of technology: An email message that gets sent automatically under a certain circumstance.

This technology can be very useful. It can save you time. In certain specific cases (like the price list idea above) it can improve your customer service.

But autoresponder technology is not a substitute for human interaction. It can be (quite easily) misused (have you ever left your vacation message on by mistake? See what I mean?). And autoresponders alone certainly can’t handle the varied messages you need to send.

Not everyone needs autoresponders

If you are happy with your current email setup, and if the people you’re corresponding with are equally happy, then you don’t need to set up a bunch of autoresponders. And you certainly don’t need to go buy a paid solution!

One good rule of thumb is that if you frequently find yourself sending almost the same reply, consider whether you could use an autoresponder. If you’re answering the same questions over and over, it might be time to set one up (it might also be time to set up a Frequently Asked Questions page on your website, and simply start referring people there, but that’s another post).

The true power of autoresponses

Think of an autoresponder as one tool in your toolbox. It’s great at what it does. But it becomes much more useful when you combine it with other tools (like a blog, a sign-up form on your website, an email newsletter, and the ability to personalize the autoresponses).

And even a whole toolbox is useless if you don’t have any building material to work with. All the sophisticated email management tricks in the book won’t help you if you have nothing to say, or don’t know what you want to say.

So: What are you here to say? Let’s have a conversation! Leave a comment… or a question about autoresponders if you have one. I’ll be covering more uses for them, in combination with other web tools, in future newsletters. Thank you!

Until next week,
Wendy Cholbi, your friendly neighborhood swim-goggle-wearing technology-to-English translator

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Are you smarter than a third-grader?

September 16, 2008 By

This week’s tip is brought to you by the most amazing third-grader on the planet: my daughter.

As I was checking over her math homework tonight, she told me that kindergarteners (remember, to a third-grader, they’re babies) don’t use UPSC. I said, “youpie-what?” and she patiently explained that UPSC stands for a four-step method of problem-solving, which I immediately realized was the answer to my dilemma (finding something fun to write about here), because you can apply it to pretty much anything. Here you go:

  1. Understand
  2. Plan
  3. Solve
  4. Check

I’d love to apply this to a word problem that begins “If a train leaves Cincinnati at 50 miles per hour carrying 150 pounds of grapefruit…” but I’m going to use a tech example I’ve been working with for several weeks: A clogged email inbox.

Step 1: Understand. What is the problem here? I’m buried under an avalanche of emails, that’s what.

Let’s examine this a little bit, though. If the burying were the only problem, I could solve that by closing my email account, or not using my computer — not viable solutions for me. So part of my problem is the sheer number of emails I get, and another part of my problem is locating and managing the emails I care about. A third part could be actually having the time to deal with these important emails.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Clarifying my goals, I want to:

  • receive fewer non-important emails
  • deal with the important ones as they arrive (keep my inbox as close to zero as possible)
  • not spend a lot of time on this process (I want to save time, not spend it)

Step 2: Plan. So let’s check out some options. Right now, I’m only going to address the first goal, which is reducing the sheer number of emails (specifically, non-urgent or non-important emails) I’m getting.

The most obvious type of non-important email is spam. And you can pour a huge amount of time and energy into avoiding spam, with marginal results. So the simplest thing to do about it is to immediately delete (marking as “spam” or “junk”) all spam emails, and not spend one more second thinking about it.

However, remember (as I wrote in this post) that you should not hit the spam button for email that’s not really spam. And I have two more posts about dealing with non-important, but non-spam, email. One is setting up email filters, and one is using RSS for things like newsletters to keep them from cluttering your inbox.

So my plan might look like this:

  1. When I check email, delete spam immediately and don’t think about it.
  2. Set up three email filters for the three most profligate senders (or categories)
  3. Set up an RSS reader and subscribe to three newsletters that I currently get by email

Step 3: Solve. I’ve got my plan. So now I can just do it. The spam-deletion thing is something I can do easily each time I check my email. The email filters and RSS do require a commitment of time and energy to set up, so let’s say I take half an hour for each of these tasks, and put that into my schedule.

This is where it’s tempting to say “Yay! I’m done!” While it’s great to celebrate these accomplishments, there’s one more step. The step that turns this process into a self-tuning path to constant improvement.

Step 4: Check. Now I get to ask myself the question: How is this system working for me so far? It’s been a couple of weeks since I set up those email filters. I can go check the folders and see what’s been filed there. If I notice that the filters weren’t picking up what I thought they would, I can tweak. The great opportunity is this: when I see that these folders are filling up with emails that I really didn’t need to read, I can give myself permission to just unsubscribe! And even if I want to keep them around just in case, they still won’t be cluttering my inbox.

Same with RSS. If you’ve found that you’re not checking your reader, that could mean that you need to make it a habit…but it could also mean that the stuff in your reader really isn’t that important, and you can drop the desperate need to keep up with that particular pile. Bam! You’ve just saved yourself a bundle of time.

And now you can go back to the Understand step, and see what problem you want to tackle next, or maybe you have a clarified understanding of the problem you’ve been working on, thanks to the Check step. Look how far you’ve come!

Lather, rinse, repeat. Tweak, play, and remember to give yourself a gold star at the top of your homework paper. Third grade can be so much fun!

This week’s heart of the matter: Take it from a third-grader. The same four-step process that helps solve those pesky word problems in the math book can be applied to nearly any problem, and in fact it’s great for technological stuff because it can shift the “help, I’m overwhelmed!” into taking one step at a time.

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Email Overload

August 12, 2008 By

If your email inbox is routinely clogged, there are a few simple things you can do to reduce the gunky buildup. I wrote about email filters a couple of weeks ago, and next week I’ll discuss a nifty way to subscribe to newsletters that completely bypasses your email and stops spam in its tracks.

This week I’ll describe the difference between spam and, well, everything else, and explain why that difference matters.

Spam is unsolicited commercial email. “Commercial” means that it’s trying to sell you something, and I know you understand what “email” means (that stuff that clogs your inbox, remember?).

The “unsolicited” part is the trickiest. Plenty of commercial email is solicited: When you place an order with Amazon, they send you an order confirmation and a shipping confirmation. But does that mean they’re allowed to then put you on a mailing list and notify you every time a new Harry Potter novel comes out?

The best answer, the answer that applies to honest companies, is “not without your consent.” Ideally, companies will explicitly ask for your consent. Honest merchants (and I believe Amazon is one, just to be clear!) will tell you exactly how they’re going to use your email address and what you can expect to receive from them. They’ll also honor your request to unsubscribe and provide an easy way to do it.

Here on my blog, for example, I’ve done my best to include a privacy promise on every page with a sign-up form. My email list provider, AWeber, has very strict anti-spam policies, which means that no one gets on one of my mailing lists without completing an email confirmation step.

There’s an important difference between spam and solicited commercial email. If you agree to receive email from a company, and then they send you an offer that you’re not interested in, that’s not spam. It may be annoying, it may be poor marketing, and it may make you trust them less, but it’s not spam because you agreed to receive it.

In this case, please go ahead and delete the email. Exercise your right to unsubscribe. Email the company and tell them why you don’t appreciate the offer. But don’t call it spam when that’s not what it is. Please don’t click the “spam” or “junk mail” button.

Here’s why: That button is not a shortcut to unsubscribing. Clicking it triggers an official complaint to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) that the sender spammed you. These complaints are taken very seriously by ISPs and (legitimate) email service providers like AWeber. Basically, honest companies can get in trouble if too many people click the spam button instead of clicking the unsubscribe link (remember, honest companies always include a working unsubscribe link).

I’ll never defend spammers, and I’m glad ISPs have created easy ways to report them. I certainly don’t hesitate to click that junk mail button every time one gets through my spam filters, and you should do the same. Just don’t make things harder for companies that are following the rules.

This Week’s Heart of the Matter: Take back your inbox — but don’t stoop to the spammers’ level. If you want to read more about spam and what you can do about it, check out Randy Cassingham’s Spam Primer. The cute anthropomorphic spam can photo was taken at the Spam Museum in Austin, MN and posted on flickr by cursedthing.

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Email Filters

July 29, 2008 By

Has checking your email become a chore because of all the messages you receive?

I was already falling behind on my email before I went on vacation (and yes, we DID visit the Tillamook Cheese Factory, and it was delicious!!), and when I got back, a virtual avalanche awaited me. I knew I had to take action.

Most email programs have fairly decent spam filters, and if you’re not using yours this should be your first step (yours may be enabled by default). I still get a few spams in my inbox but they are fairly easy to identify and get rid of.

I’m not even really talking about spam, though. I’m talking about stuff like newsletters, non-urgent notifications, and even marketing emails from companies that I respect and whose products I value. This is stuff I signed up for, but it’s totally non-urgent, more like leisure reading. Having it pile up in my inbox obscures the truly important stuff, and contributes to a general feeling of overwhelm.

Email filters (sometimes called “rules”) are fabulous tools to deal with exactly this type of email. You create folders for specific recipients or types of email, and then set up instructions so that your email will be automatically directed to these folders instead of sitting in your inbox waiting to be read and filed.

For example, you can filter all emails from your Uncle Norman, who you love but who sends you nothing but pictures of his cats, into an “Uncle Norman” folder. You could filter this email newsletter into its own folder by looking for the phrase “Heart-Centered Technology Tips” in the subject line (this would mean other email from me, like class reminders, would still make it to your inbox).

So you’re still getting the email, but you can read it when you have time, and your inbox is cleaner. Your newsletters might be sorted into a general “Newsletters” folder, or if you’re like me and get tons of great newsletters that you never have time to read, you might have a “Newsletters” folder with subfolders for each newsletter.

Here are some helpful links on setting up filters in a couple of common email clients:

If your email program isn’t listed here, try googling “email tutorial” plus the name of your program, and then try the same search in YouTube for video tutorials.

Today’s Heart of the Matter: Take a single action — set up one email filter today. Of course you can do more, but at least commit to one. I set up a handful of filters for my email yesterday and already I’m seeing the flood in my inbox diminishing.

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