How to setup a basic auto responder for Gmail / Outlook Express

So I decided its time to give something back and I think this will be help people who are just starting to use CL and other ad sites!

The worst thing about trying to earn on CL when you starting out is having to reply to people, its a waste of time and can be soul destroying when you end up getting a load of abusive emails back!

So to setup a basic auto responder:

1. Type out your reply in a txt file and save it somewhere.

2. Setup your gmail account in Outlook Express, now setup your email address to have a full stop in it somewhere, so if your gmail address is fredbloggs@gmail.com setup your email address as fred.bloggs@gmail.com, this means that any emails you reply to will go out with that address as the sender. I'll explain why were doing this in a second.

(Note: You can have a full stop anywhere at all in your gmail address and will still receive emails, its an old trick im sure many of you have read about)

3. It's time to setup our rule in Outlook Express, so go to > Tools > Message Rules > Mail and click the 'new' button.

1.Set the condition as: 'Where the to line contains people'
2.Select the actions for the rule as: 'reply with my message'

Now underneath click on 'people' highligted in blue and type in your gmail address without any dots in it and click add, then click ok. Where you can see 'message' highlighted in blue click it and select the txt file with your email reply in.

Ok all this.

4. Setup Outlook Express to do a send and receive every 45 minutes or so (Tools > options > Send / Receive messages section), this is the basic delay, it will ensure that you will not respond to any messages every 45 minutes, you can change this value to whatever you like but one of the key things about CL is getting plenty of replies before you start sending any emails out so try to keep this value quite high.

5. Your ready to go, now when you post your ads on your ad sites use your original email without the fullstops. What will happen is you will receive replies to your ad and the message rule will auto-reply to them, but it will reply to them with your email address with a fullstop in. So if anybody replies BACK to you AGAIN they will not be sent out another auto reply (because we really dont want this)

Now you can use multiple email addresses for this by adding them in the rule or setup a rule for each ad (if your using a different email address each time)

I know this is very basic but its good for people who are starting out using CL/gumtree because its FREE and has a delay function and will NOT respond to the same person twice.

Enjoy :-)

Awesome, thanks so much for this post, i have been looking for an easy auto responder with a delay, im looking at doing some CL stuff and this is going to come in handy. Also, is there a way to do it in Mozilla Thunderbird?

Would love to see your advanced auto-responder setup when you have some time..great post bro
Also, how would you do this for an html auto response?

Do the emails go through outlook now..i mean i no gmail likes to block emails if it is the same response due to spam..will this happend now that we are filtering through outlook? Can you setup domain emails through this?

and how do you setup your gmail accounts in outlook?

Thanks for the replies!

Originally Posted by Moody

Awesome, thanks so much for this post, i have been looking for an easy auto responder with a delay, im looking at doing some CL stuff and this is going to come in handy. Also, is there a way to do it in Mozilla Thunderbird?

Yes, you can do exactly the same thing, setup the accounts as normal and then setup the rules, if you need any help with that just let me know.

Originally Posted by callmybluff

Would love to see your advanced auto-responder setup when you have some time..great post bro
Also, how would you do this for an html auto response?

Do the emails go through outlook now..i mean i no gmail likes to block emails if it is the same response due to spam..will this happend now that we are filtering through outlook? Can you setup domain emails through this?

Sure thing, working on one at the moment. If you mean a html formatted message then you can specify that in the rule as normal, it can process .txt. eml and .htm files so just make out your response, save as htm and off you go (if thats what you meant!)

Unfortunately regardless of what client you are using whether its the gmail page or outlook express, gmail will treat spam messages the same, so if your sending out the same message over and over again then I think it can flag it as spam, there are a couple ways round this but the best one is to change up your response every few emails, this will mean an extra piece of software but it wouldnt be too hard to code.

Yeh you can setup domain emails through outlook express and infact i recommend it, providing you have a valid pop/smtp server to use. I think using gmail is going to eventually cause problems unless you have LOTS of accounts and a good piece of software to cycle through them.

I am currently using my vps as an smtp server though and its working good, you can setup an smtp server in IIS for windows server and then use this to send all your emails, depending on your provider you can probably get away with a couple hundred an hour (which is plenty for a lot of people) and you can still use your gmail account for the incoming mail.

Originally Posted by callmybluff

and how do you setup your gmail accounts in outlook?

If you click tools > accounts > then click the 'mail' tab at the top and click the new button, then its just a wizard that guides you through it, if your using gmail you will need the following settings:

pop server: pop.gmail.com
smtp server: smtp.gmail.com
account name: your email address
password: your password

You must then go into the account settings, click the servers tab and tick the 'my server requires authentication' tick box, then click the advanced tab and tick the top two boxes (this server requires a secure connection) and change the port numbers to 465 (for smtp) and 995 (for pop) and your good to go!

This method definately works, i used it before i bought a delayed autoresponder but it definately works.

You could however instead of the dot method, just setup a rule to filter out any message titles starting RE:

anyone having issues with gmail shutting them out? whats the limit?

in the past i used a domain email until it got blacklisted.......

how many responses can you do using gmail's smtp server with the same account?

just buy a server man

Originally Posted by graphicnut

just buy a server man

no, i can scan for other anonymous smtp servers there are a lot out there, but first i want to know gmail's limit

100 or 500 a day isnt it?

Anyone know where I can download outlook? I have this Windows Mail crap that came with Vista right now...

Originally Posted by Jared255

Anyone know where I can download outlook? I have this Windows Mail crap that came with Vista right now...

Isn't Windows Mail almost the exact same thing as Outlook?

I have been using it to mail CL replies for nearly 6 months without any issues. The message rules work the exact same way, no?

Guys, purchase Torple, it's worth every penny of that $49.99, and it is an excellent software.

Outlook autoresponders can be a pain. I would know because I used them in the past.

Outlook is the pro of tools, set as many rules as u want. Keywords in content send what message u like.

Originally Posted by lackote

no, i can scan for other anonymous smtp servers there are a lot out there, but first i want to know gmail's limit

What do you use to scan for smtp servers and are they anonymous?

Originally Posted by hardkulangot

i'm confused.. where should i put the full stop email?

anywhere at all man. if your email address is joebloggs@gmail.com you could use

j.oebloggs@gmail.com
jo.ebloggs@gmail.com
joe.bloggs@gmail.com
joeb.loggs@gmail.com

and so on

The trouble with sending from outlook express is that it shows your ip address in the email header, also your internet provider will probably shut you down or warn you for spamming.

Originally Posted by spud--1

The trouble with sending from outlook express is that it shows your ip address in the email header, also your internet provider will probably shut you down or warn you for spamming.

They not only warn me they change my outgoing SMTP port...

Originally Posted by myzona

They not only warn me they change my outgoing SMTP port...

yeh, its not really a good option.

Originally Posted by spud--1

yeh, its not really a good option.

you can use a paid service like dnsexit, look for mailrelay. I've not used them so I cannot say how good their service is but it's an option not to show your real ip address

Okay, dumb question & Im sorry if it has already been answered here but..

I am using Windows Mail to mail CL replies. I use gmail addresses for my CL ads & all replies are forwarded from gmail to an email account on my mail domain name. So since all of my replies are sent from the domain email (mail@domain.com), what is the best way to stop Windows Mail from resending the same message when someone replies back.

I realize the OP explained how to overcome this issue with Gmail stops but is it possible to do when all gmail replies are forwarded to a domain email & sent from there?

I know I can set up a rule that states not to reply to "re" email but a lot of times people will put "re" in the title of their initial email to me. Then a good percent of leads will never even receive the first reply.

Thx in advance for the help

Right, I've tried doing this in outlook express 6.0 but I didn't have the send and receive options that are available in 2003 and 2007, and vice versa about the new mail rules I had rules that were for organizing but not for sending mail like setting up the autoresponder with the message etc.

Could anyone post some pics or tell me what I'm doing wrong please?

Thanks

Originally Posted by spud--1

The trouble with sending from outlook express is that it shows your ip address in the email header, also your internet provider will probably shut you down or warn you for spamming.

You're not Spamming, you are answering emails....automatically. I know, try to tell them that.

Originally Posted by spud--1

The trouble with sending from outlook express is that it shows your ip address in the email header, also your internet provider will probably shut you down or warn you for spamming.

Last time I checked Gmail did not show your IP in the email headers, but Yahoo and Hotmail do.

Can anyone help me at all? Will give + rep

cheers

bruceorange: are you definatly using outlook express? Or are you using Outlook 2000 / XP?

thanks for this method, but I think this requires my PC to be on 24/7?
I might buy myself a VPS in that case ...

Originally Posted by xternall

thanks for this method, but I think this requires my PC to be on 24/7?
I might buy myself a VPS in that case ...

Yes, fraid so, VPS would be your best bet anyway, you can setup an smtp server and use that to send outgoing emails, this way you dont have to worry about the gmail sending limits and unless your sending 1000 + /hour you wont get any complaints. Drop me a pm if your struggling to find a good, cheap VPS.

Originally Posted by homenet

bruceorange: are you definatly using outlook express? Or are you using Outlook 2000 / XP?

Hi, I've got outlook express 6.0 in which I got with xp I have the mail options on it but no send and receive options...

wow this rocks. Thanks so much for this post!

For some reason it won't respond to the messages, can anyone help me?

thanks for the post homenet I like your nick and avatar specially

It's alright, I finally got it working! I think since I'm using free gmails if you use reply to all messages is better

I've got everything alright but the part about the full stop in between the e-mail.
I put it there but everytime I send an e-mail, the real e-mail address is used to send the e-mail. What should I do?