The auto-responder is a very powerful tool, and by all omissions setting these things up and adding some original content into the system to engage the emails in a way that people open is an art. My experience of many auto-responders may not be a valid as it may seem, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. Having an auto-responder is something you will be recommended to use if you have a small business or you are starting out. If you are a blogger or just wanting to share images and video's again once you find a fan you want to retain there presence and continually entertain them with what you have to offer. The upside of this is you can contact your audience, the are many more pro's to many to mention here, but I will post a couple of the cuff, from my own user experience. Maybe even squeeze in a enjoyable moments from the other side of being on someone's list, and thirdly give a brief outline of what is important to check you are doing to get the most out of your auto-responder.

In this paragraph I will try and explain why an auto-responder capture mechanism needs to be fully understood, you will not find any legal jargon here, but it is always an idea to read the do's and don'ts of what your autoresponder recommends, because if you don't you will be using a tool that no longer works. Its a bit like having a dormant affiliate account you can promote and promote but if you are not earning affiliate revenue or points you are just simply wasting your time. 

1. What topic am I focusing on? You want to know this, remember this and stick to it.
2. What do I want to achieve from adding an auto-responder into the mix?
3. How much time should I dedicate to building a list and providing good content?

By asking these three questions you will be able to decide which auto-responder to use, this is possibly the most complicated because prices vary, then you might be confused about do I use a local company auto-responder, or you might by wavered by other colleagues and what they are using, perhaps you have joined a programme and they not only suggest but demand you use an auto-responder in order to have success with that team in that industry. 

The key thing to understand is there is a lot of options, sometimes it seems there are more options than there are auto-responders. If there is one bit of advice I can give you rather than recommend and explain the pro's and cons of a multitude of free auto-responders available is find one and master it, I am by no means a master and can hand on heart say I am some what of an underachiever with many things auto-responders, but trust me I would never lead you down an alley and tell you something untrue. 

Additionally if I find anything in the small print that I think you need to know about, again I try my best to make this available as an when it comes to my attention, but rather than waffle on and take anymore of your precious time I will explain three options you might want to consider to maximise your use of an auto-responder, from this you maybe able to gauge the settings against other responders, things you might be missing out on or key settings that may also be missing.

1. An option for sending out a page from your message online that you can share. This should come with a function either instantly bookmark or share on a microsite.
2. Added ability of easily adding the auto-responder to places that are outside of your website therefore giving you the elevation to build you list quicker.
3. An ability to important and export the list via CSV so you can build an understanding and easily research who it is you are talking too, Excel is very good.

Having a free auto-responder requires months and months of trial and error, a way around this is simply by Googling the auto-responder perhaps searching through PDF documents and saving, studying and improving for your own knowledge. Keep this safe, read it regularly, always look for updates especially if the auto-responder is new after-all it is the users who make life easier for yourself. If you are paying the chances are all these documents and step by step video's for success will be provided. Another reason for this is as the users contribute the options change with the auto-responder. In summary when you choose an auto-responder try and login monthly at least to check for hidden bonuses that will make your experience more beneficial and keep up-to-date with what other people are doing. 

Next I will tell about three other things you should be looking for and testing, because not eveyones results will be the same depending on your site or your information or indeed the tribe you speak to.

1. Pop ups, now I know some of you cannot stand pop ups or leaving page pop ups but the reality is they often work, the downside is they can mess up the code of your site any errors in the pages script can cause problems with RSS feeds or cause problems in your websites grade.
2. Squeeze frames, do you have the option of squeeze frames and what direction can you have them floating in and out. Squeeze frames are good to because they reduce the amount of bandwidth you use of arrivals at the door from Social Media Sites, also you can add Squeeze frames to other pages like Youtube but remember you always need a thank you page and if the auto-responder is a double opt in system you will also need this set up inside the auto-responders settings.
3. When you send out your message in HTML or plain text before sending or entering into the list of dated e-mails always either copy and paste the text or copy into a text editor, that way if you get logged out you will not loose the message.

Perhaps the last one is a bit of topic and I do not claim that this post is anyway comprehensive enough to have the full picture about auto-responders. Also even when you do all these things I will not say you will have any success in building and holding a list effectively. But what I hope will happen is you will build more of a memento, and interest in a tool that can help you and you business to grow, move closer to success and avoid some of the pitfalls that I have made myself.

The key thing to understand is regardless of what anyone tells you about swipe files or programming in a system that is guaranteed to work, and affiliates will know what I am talking about here, rather than get bogged down with this think more about you do when making a post or building a specific page on your site, every message you send out should reinforce or explain a little about the transition of where you want to take the person from there e-mail, the call to action. If you are just churning out video's then you can just give an idea of what they will see when they go there, again though the chances are when they go to that video they already know there is going to be another call to action at the video so tell them about that too, nobody likes a load of information sprung on them because it is just to confusing, and the chances are will just slow down productivity for themselves and make them feel like they are missing something, sooner or later they are just going to unsubscribe. Affiliate lists are slightly different , often its a bit like ad-swaps the e-mail provided for the list is based on an e-mail that is already getting hundreds of e-mails a day, the ratio of what e-mails with this e-mail that get opened are minimal. The reason why I tell you this and yes if you are paying this gets worse and is something you should look out for and continually trim down your list.

Many people use e-mails that are either duds to see what is on the other side or they use an e-mail that they know the chance of regularly reading your e-mail is minimal. If this all seems a bit much to take then I suggest you go to something like Feed-burner, especially if you ar a blogger of whatever description. This will save you having to lo-gin all the time and create new messages, and you can just concentrate on the body of what you share on the blog, the downside of this is there is no real bonus you can provide, if you intentions are good and you are a good sales person and show this in you messages then sooner or later people will want to invest or by into your dream. Lifestyles is another angle of this but right now I will end this post here. Good luck and I hope this has helped answer a few questions you might have or reinforced some decisions you have already made in your head. If you are new and looking for more advice, please feel free to add me here on ApSense, I like answering questions, an if you are an auto-responder company and wish to share with me something I maybe missing then again do the same thing.