IntroA regular old campaign isn't always the best way to deliver content to your

loyal subscribers. Say you want to send an email on a reader's birthday. If

you woke up every morning and made a new list segment for every person

that has a birthday that day, you'd lose your mind. No one has that kind of

time for email. This is where autoresponders come in—they allow you to

create event-based emails that automatically send to your subscribers. In

this guide, we’ll walk you through how to set up an autoresponder, tips and

tricks for getting started, how to learn from your reports, and a few inspiring

examples to help you on your way.

Autoresponders come along with paid MailChimp accounts. You can upgrade

your account to a monthly or pay-as-you-go plan in your account settings.

The basicsAutoresponders use events and triggers to send emails to specific

subscribers. Unlike other MailChimp campaigns, autoresponders don’t send

to an entire list or segment all at once. Instead, autoresponders only send

when a subscriber meets the conditions of an event you define. An event can

be an open or click in one of your campaigns, a subscription to your list, or

an action that's combined with one of MailChimp’s other features.

How autoresponders work

Autoresponders operate on what’s called conditional logic. Conditional logic

works like so: if you choose A, then B will happen. This means that when

you're setting up your autoresponder, you're creating specific conditions for

an email to send.

There are lots of different events you can choose from to create the

conditions for your autoresponder to send. We’ll take you through them later

in this guide.

When to use autoresponders

An autoresponder is great to use when you have pre-written content that you

want to automatically deliver to your subscribers. Sometimes this information

can be based on an action take (or fail to take). Here are some scenarios:

When a subscriber signs up for your list

You can send them a welcome email, perhaps with a story, coupon, or

information about what they can expect.

When you have a lot of information you'd like to spread out over time

Maybe you'd like to help subscribers get started with your service. Avoid

overwhelming them by breaking up the educational content into digestible

bits that be sent over days, weeks, or months.

When you need to send a campaign annually

This might be for a subscriber's birthday or an anniversary. Set the campaign

to happen annually, and we'll take care of the rest.

When you want to send based on a subscriber’s interaction

Did they click on a link? Did they not? Follow up with more information about

a product, or let them know what they're missing out on.

When not to use autoresponders

The possibilities of autoresponders seem endless, but there are some

scenarios when this feature doesn’t make sense.

When you want to send a personalized note

Personalization only goes so far with autoresponders. It's hard to sound

human when you're delivering pre-written copy that sometimes goes to many

other subscribers. To send a truly personal note to a small group of your

loyal subscribers, it’s best to create a unique campaign and pen something

fresh.

When you want to send transactional email

A transactional email contains one-to-one content tailored specifically to an

individual user, like all the notification emails you get from Facebook or when

you leave items in an online shopping cart. It's different from bulk email,

which goes to many people with the same content. While autoresponders can

handle some one-to-one emails, like a welcome email to a new subscriber,

they weren’t optimized or designed to handle large amounts of this kind of

email.

Since MailChimp isn't designed for those customized one-to-one emails, we

built Mandrill on the same delivery infrastructure that powers MailChimp. It's

optimized for emails like password reminders, order confirmations, receipts,

and personalized notifications. Mandrill offers advanced tagging, reports,

inbound email processing, webhooks, and mobile apps to monitor your

transactional emails.

Setting upWhen setting up your autoresponders, complete the regular steps of setting

up a campaign and define the conditions for when each email will send.

Autoresponder options

When should it be sent?

You can decide within what time frame of the event (within an hour of signup,

the next day or week), at a specific time each day, and what days of the

week you want the autoresponder to go out. When you specify the days your

autoresponder can send, you're essentially saying that once all other

conditions of your autoresponder are met, your email can only be sent out on

the days of the week you specify. If you want a message to go out on an

anniversary date, you'll want the autoresponder to have the option to send

any day of the week. If you’re sending a link to read some great content on

your blog, you might want to send during office hours on weekdays.

What is the event/trigger?

The event is an action your subscriber does or doesn’t take that will trigger

your autoresponder to send. For example, if you want to send a follow up

email to all the users that clicked a link in your last campaign, the click

would be your event. Or maybe they opened a campaign, but didn't click

anything. That inaction can be an event as well.

Do you have a regular campaign to which the autoresponder is tied?

If so, you’ll need that campaign set up and ready to go. Then you can tie

subscriber actions in that campaign to your autoresponder triggers.

Autoresponder events

Here's a short list of events you can use as triggers for your autoresponders:

Subscribe date

Send based on the date a subscriber signed up for your list. If you've

imported any subscribers manually or added them via MailChimp's API or

through a third-party integration, you can check Also trigger on import

option to send your autoresponder.

Campaign Event

Send based on campaign activity like opens and clicks for any scheduled or

draft campaigns.

Ecommerce360 activity

Events can be set up based on purchase data that was uploaded to the list

or captured in a campaign with eCommerce360 tracking turned on. Use this

trigger event in conjunction with segmenting to specify a particular product

that was purchased.

List data

List data events can be based on data collected in one of the fields set up for

your lists, like a customer's birthday. You can also choose the merge field

changed option to trigger your autoresponder when subscriber info is updated

in your list. For example, if you have a field in your list called "Payment

Status," you can set your autoresponder to trigger when the value for

"Payment Status" changes to "Paid."

Mandrill events

Triggers your autoresponder to send to your MailChimp subscribers based on

Mandrill activity. These autoresponders can trigger based on Mandrill email

opens, clicks, and sends.

List Segmenting

List segmenting works the same for autoresponders as for regular

campaigns. You can set up an autoresponder based on information you

collect through your signup form.

Planning your content

Because autoresponders send automatically, you won’t get to review the

messages you send. Here are a few questions you may want to ask yourself

as you’re getting started:

Is a series of autoresponders necessary?

If so, think about the flow of how a subscriber will receive them. Are there too

many? How's the pacing?

Is there an opportunity for a subscriber to stop receiving the series and

not unsubscribe from your list?

While a subscriber may want to get occasional updates about your products,

they might not want to see weekly reminders about your current special offer.

Most importantly, do these messages still sound human?

The key to a good autoresponder campaign is to not let the recipient feel like

it’s an autoresponder campaign. If your autoresponders start to run amok,

your recipients will respond by unsubscribing or clicking the spam button.

Time Zones

Everything that makes MailChimp work behind the scenes runs based off of

UTC. However, because you can set your account to display all times in your

time zone to make things easier to read while working, it's important to

understand that our engines will still refer to any and all timestamps for

campaigns or subscriber signups relative to UTC.

It’s important to know what time zone MailChimp operates on because

autoresponders send based on specific date and time information. When a

signup date is used as a trigger for an autoresponder, we look into our

database to see when a user signed up and we use that date and time to

send the autoresponder. This is when all that UTC vs. default time zone

information comes into play. Time zones that are after UTC will see that

users subscribing after a certain time get their autoresponders a day later

than expected.

There are a few ways you can work around this. If you’re concerned that your

autoresponder will send out too long after your event takes place, you can

set it up to send within the hour of your event. You can also plan your

autoresponder content to not be super time-specific. The last—and perhaps

most difficult—option is to do time zone math: determining what your time

zone is and how many hours it is ahead of, or behind, UTC.

For more information on how this works, visit our Knowledge Base.

ReportingViewing autoresponder reports is very similar to regular campaign reports.

Under Reports in your account, navigate to Autoresponders. There, you

can look at data from each autoresponder you’ve set up. You’ll see

information like open rates, click throughs, unsubscribes, and more.

Autoresponder reports will continue to update as subscribers meet the trigger

settings for that autoresponder and are sent the campaign.

InspirationHere are a few MailChimp customers we think do a great job with

autoresponders.

Tofugu

Tofugu is a site that teaches people Japanese via their online textbook. They

use autoresponders to help their customers feel great and stay motivated.

Skillcrush

Skillcrush wants to help you learn tech skills using online classes. They use

autoresponders to send a 10-day getting started bootcamp.

Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago

The museum delivers a wide variety of exhibits, hands-on experiences, and

education programs for the Chicago area. One way they use autoresponders

to follow a guest’s experience in their “Talk to Me” booth.

Education andsupportWe hope this guide has helped you get started with autoresponders. You can

find more information about using autoresponders in our Knowledge Base,

including step-by-step instructions on how to set them up.