- Details
- Written by M. Kanev
- Last Updated: 29 November 2014
- Created: 25 April 2012
- Hits: 16777
Autoresponder is an automated email system that sends emails based on users' website registration or last visit date.
You can create unlimited email templates that will be sent to your website users based on specific settings.
There are two email template types that you can choose from:
- Autoresponder (based on user registration)
- Reminder (based on user last log in date)
Also, you can choose from two types of email sequence: Weekly, on a specific day of the week; and Monthly, on a specific date each month. This way you can create a series of emails that will be sent consecutively eg. Monday week 1, Monday week 2, Monday week 3 or 15th of month 1, 15th of month 2, 15 of month 3 etc.
Autoresponder is the only component that allows you to run an online training course or online school, where users will receive their lessons weekly or monthly, on a set date, based on their registration length. Each user will receive their next email not with everyone else, but at a time personalised for him/her.
Autoresponder features:
- CC email field
- BCC email field
- Create and choose different email categories to keep email campaigns organized
- Add Attachment to send .pdf, .jpg, etc. file to your subscribers
- Full HTML text editor to compose emails (Joomla settings inherited)
- Automated email sending via cron job or manual email sending via "Send Emails" button in the back-end
- Unsubscribe link in every email for quick Unsubscribe from your users
- Option to send messages to default Joomla users and/or JomSocial message system
- Option to send messages based on Joomla user group (Joomla 2.5)
- Autoresponder is very powerful component, please use it wisely. Don't Spam your users!
Installation, Setup and Use
- Download the component from our download area
- Go to the back-end Extensions -> Install/Uninstall
- Click on "Browse" button and navigate to the folder you have downloaded "Autoresponder"
- Click on "Upload File & Install"
- Go to Components -> Auto Responder
- Click on "Options" (top right corner of your screen) and review and edit settings if necessary (Profile integration: Joomla or Jomsocial, Number of emails: 40 to send by default so you don't trigger server limitations, Wait interval: 120 by default which means that every 2 minutes 40 emails will be sent - cron job is necessary for this setting to work, please see Cron Job example below)
- Click on "Save"
- Click on "Categories" -> "New" -> create at least one category and click "Save" - it is best to create different Categories for each email campaign.
- Click on "Email Templates" -> "New" and create your first email
- Enter "Subject" (mandatory field)
- "Alias" is system field that will be filled automatically for you
- User Groups - select one or more by holding Alt key and click on the Group names. Selected User groups will receive this email.
- Status: Published/Unpublished
- Enter CC/BCC (optional)
- Chose "Sending basis" (mandatory)
Note: Specify serial number of your email - 1 for first week/month, 2 for second week/month, 3 for third week/month and so on.
- Email type:
- Autoresponder (based on user registration)
- Reminder (based on user's last log in date)
- Sending period: Monthly (select Date of the month)/Weekly (select Day of the week)
- Sending serial - this is mandatory field that tells the system the order of this email in the line of autoresponder campaign (start with 1 and increase by 1 for each next email)
- Attachment - unique feature which allows you to send PDFs or Images along with your email
- Construct your email in "Email body"
- Click on "Save"
Note: Repeat these steps to create series of emails to be sent consecutively to your website users.
Set up a Cron Job at your Server back-end admin panel (cPanel, Plesk etc.):
wget -O /dev/null "http://YOURWEBSITE.TDL/index.php?option=com_autoresponder&task=sendEmails"
Change YOURWEBSITE.TDL with your actual domain name.