Sorry it has been a few days -well okay - couple of weeks. We are rebranding / rebuilding our main website and I have been spending a lot of time working on lots of free reports to give away.  One thing I have been thinking about more and more, is automating a lot more of the menial tasks rather than outsourcing it. Cheaper for one thing and smarter.

Why give someone else money if you don’t have too, right?

So I started researching autoresponders tools and the like to get ideas on costs for automating some of my enquiries.  Then I suddenly realise, I am taking away money from Peter to pay Paul that thats not the idea - I want to keep the money myself.  So I dig around on my PC and low and behold I find a FREE autoresponder tool, and I bet you have it on your PC too!

Trusty old Microsoft Outlook. I was playing around with the Rules settings and noticed there is a Autoresponder option and not only that you can send attachments, html messages and the like.  Granted it will not manage a newsletter list or anything but for simple enquiries it will do the job.

So I thought I would make my company look bigger than it is by adding a load of department emails to our contact us page.  So for advertising email blah , for  editorial email blah and so one.  Each one of these is hooked up to a different rule in outlook to automatically respond with PDF or email with the information they requested.

I think in the long run this will mean the replacement of a administrative member of staff - Okay I never had them i nthe first palce but I could have done.

Are there things in your business you could automate and if so why not do it.  it will take a bit of setting up initially but then once done it will literally save you hours of work, and it also builds in latency so you don’t have to worry abiout a big spurt of enquiries.

About the Author

I have spent the last 12 years working with Finance and Insurance companies using the Internet. I have also worked in that time or consulted with all of the major Insurance and Finance aggregators including MoneySupermarket, Confused, MoneyExtra, Moneynet and others...