One of the great advantages of having a website for your business or organisation is that it provides a virtual employee working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and no need for holiday cover.

The problem

The disadvantage is that it is highly unlikely that a small business can afford a 24 hour human workforce to respond to clients who engage with the website.  This creates the risk that by the time you respond to an e-mail, a competitor has already beaten you and won the business.

The solution

A smart way to address this problem is through the use of e-mail auto-responders and e-mail forwarding.

E-mail Auto-responder

An auto-responder allows for an automated e-mail response to be sent to the potential customer when an e-mail is sent to a defined e-mail address.

For example, you could set up a page on your website that gives the option to ask for more information by sending a mail or form to info@<Your e-mail address>.  You then can create a rule within your web hosting Control Panel that will automatically send a predefined e-mail as a response.

he response can thank the person for the enquiry stating you will respond in xxx hours / days.  It should also include additional information that is relevant to the enquiry and not available on the website.  If possible include links to additional resources and ask questions you would normally ask as part of the process.  This will continue the engagement and hopefully prompt a response.  This will then mean that you are better placed to respond when you are back in the office.

There are dedicated services like Mailchimp that allow you to set up a sequence of auto responses, set at defined time intervals if you require a more sophisticated solution.

E-mail Forwarding

This allows rules to be set in the Control Panel to automatically forward an e-mail sent to a specific address to a different address.  You may want to do this so that e-mails are sent to a general address and then automatically forwarded to a personal address.  This will ensure that you personal address is not bombarded with enquiries.

It also means that you can pick up enquiries when you are out of the office and then decide if they need to be responded to.

Free Auto-Responders and E-mail Forwarding

The great news about these services is that the functionality is usually provided free by most reputable web hosting services through a Control Panel.

If the web host also provides a large amount of e-mail addresses, you can set up different e-mail addresses with different responses tailored to the nature of the enquiry.  The options are endless and can really help engage potential clients.

I am pleased to advise that Digital Ark provide this functionality as standard with all web hosting packages.  Even our Web Starter web hosting package provides 1000 e-mail addresses which should be more than enough for your needs.

Screen shot of the Control Panel showing e-mail options

If you would like more information or assistance, please e-mail info@digitalark.co.uk.