Advantages of Using an Autoresponder
An autoresponder allows you to capture the email addresses of your website visitors so that you can build your own opt-in targeted mailing list and follow up with your subscribers automatically. This is the tool most commonly used for sending an email newsletter. The autoresponder will automatically extract the prospect’s name and use this information in your follow-up messages. With an autoresponder, you can send personalized follow-up messages
addressing each subscriber directly by their own name. If you personalize an email message with a subscriber’s name, this prospect is much more likely to buy from you.

You can sell your products 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the help of an autoresponder. An autoresponder is also a handy tool that automatically follows up with a series of email messages at preset time intervals and works for you 24 hours a day. You will be able to develop your follow-up messages and set reliable time intervals.
For example, you could write a series of 7 messages that you want delivered to new subscribers and set each of those messages to be delivered to new subscribers every third day. So, when someone initially subscribes at your website, that person will receive one follow-up message instantly and 6 more messages over the next 18 days. All of this is accomplished without any additional effort from you, other than the one-time setup of the messages in your autoresponder.

Following up with your prospects could easily translate to a 100% increase in your sales or more. Your potential customers may simply forget about your initial message or they simply may have a bad day which is why it’s so important follow-up with your prospects at preset
time intervals at least five times after sending your initial message.
Autoresponders are great for sales letters. Suppose you posted to a couple of forums and newsgroups — you could offer a free report about your industry. You then post the email address of your autoresponder instead of the website and within seconds the forum user could be reading your free report via your autoresponder followup and your autoresponder messages could direct them to your sales letter for a related product. It’s 100% automatic. With your autoresponder, you can even set up predefined answers to the most likely questions. This can cut up to 80% of your normal customer service requirements.

Given below are some of the other key benefits of autoresponders:
They introduce your business to the prospective customer List out special offers for members
List out benefits of joining your website Compare your product or service with your  competitors Give testimonials of existing customers
Welcome letters for new members
Thank you messages for new orders
Order confirmation
Acknowledgement of a query or a receipt of payment from your customer
A reminder when their subscription or free access period is about to expire

Choosing and Setting up Autoresponders
It can be simple to set up and use an autoresponder, but choosing which one from the doAfqam E - books of autoresponders that are available can be difficult. Most web hosts offer a simple autoresponder that gives one email message in response to an email to a specific email address.
The problem with this type of responder is that one message is often not enough to keep the continued contact or deliver the content that you want to offer your visitor.
There are two main types of autoresponders. They each have their pros and cons.

Autoresponder Services
Autoresponder services are web based services that allow you to send a series of emails to a visitor who has either requested the email through a web-based form on you site (the service provides the html code for your site to use) or who has sent an email to a specific address the service has provided you to use.
The primary advantage of such services is that they are very easy to set up, and are very reliable. In addition, they are host independent. This means that your web host doesn't have to allow you to run any particular services on your site to have access to all the
features that an email autoresponder can provide. Afqam.com works perfectly well for most people. It has all the features you could ever need, and the price is very reasonable.

Autoresponder Programs (or Scripts)
The other choice for an autoresponder is to purchase (or lease) a program or a script (usually written in perl, requiring CGI access on your server.) Several of these are available.
These types of autoresponders allow, potentially at least, for increased flexibility. Some are quite powerful in their own right, while perl scripts can generally be modified to suit your needs for a fee. A good example of a script-based autoresponder that you can install on your site and never pay monthly fees to use is Autoresponse Plus at AutoresponsePlus.com
Autoresponse Plus offers the advantages of a system you can own along with all of the flexibility. It is available at a very reasonable price and most of the complexity often associated with such programs can be almost completely eliminated because professional installation is available for a small fee.