No one ever complained about receiving a nice thank you message for their time. In SparkInfluence, an auto-responder is just that type of message. Transactional by nature, an auto-responder message is triggered by a stakeholder taking action. The message sent can be anything you want, whether just a simple thank-you or language driving the stakeholder to follow your effort on social media. Why should you use them? Stakeholder engagement, for one. The more people feel that their action counted and is valued, the better the chances that they’ll take action in the future.
To get started, navigate into the Communications area.
Click the green Create New Email button on the right-hand side of the screen.
Select Auto-Responder.
Click Next and you’ll be taken to the “Let’s Dive Into The Basics” screen.
Here, you will add Email Subject, From Name (use something your recipients will recognize, like your name or the name of your organization or company), and From Email Address (this email address will receive ANY AND ALL replies to your email, including hard bounces and out-of-office replies).
If you want to personalize the To field, so that your stakeholders receive the message to Joe Smith rather than jxsmith@example.com, add those merge tags here. Email Content Pre-Header is a single line of text that will explain your email to Stakeholders. This applies to iPhones ONLY, and can be thought of as a tagline for your email. Both the Personalized To Field AND the Pre-Header are optional.
Click Save & Next Step, and you’ll be prompted to select a template.
Select Base Template if you’re creating a new message from scratch; you can also use/edit previously-created templates for your auto-responder, as well.
In the “Compose Your Message” email editor, you can customize nearly every single element of your message—colors, images, fonts, sizing, layout… you name it!
Be sure to click the blue Save button in the top right of the editor screen periodically so you don’t lose your work. If you want to check out how your auto-responder looks before you save it for later use, you’ve got some options. Click to drop down the Actions menu at the top left of the screen under “Compose Your Message”.
Clicking Preview will take you to a screen that shows you how your email will render on a desktop as well as on mobile.
Clicking Send Test will pop up a modal where you’ll have two options.
Entering an email address in the first field will send the draft message to that email. If you have added merge tags/fields to the body of your email (like a greeting, “Dear [first-name]” or anything else) and you want to test those merge fields, then search for the name of a stakeholder in the second text field. Remember, if searching for a full name, you must use quotation marks. Once you have selected your test stakeholder, sending the test will include their actual information in the draft message to the email address you’ve already specified. Please note that the stakeholder will NOT be notified in any way or get a copy of the test email. This is for your testing purposes ONLY.
Once you are satisfied with your auto-responder and ready to send, click Finalize Auto-Responder at the bottom of the “Compose” screen.
Once you have finalized this message, it is available for you to access and use during the widget creation process in the “Select a Follow-Up Email” field.
