You are missing a great opportunity to reinforce your brand and let others know what you are doing if you use a boring or form generated away email auto-response. Be creative. Here’s a great one from my buddy Josh (twitter: @JW ) a few months back:
Congratulations! Your email has now joined the hundreds of others that are piling up in my inbox during the SXSW festival in Austin. Sadly, unless you’re my wife, immediate family, or we have some other previous conversation going on, the odds of me reading or replying to this email in a timely manner are worse than Keegan Jones at the craps table.
So… here are your options:
A) Set a reminder to email me again in 2 weeks
B) Ping me on the Twitters: @jw
C) If you ARE PRESS and you’d like to meetup at SXSW, email pia@gowalla.com
D) If you ARE NOT PRESS and you’d like to meetup at SXSW, email
veronica@gowalla.comIf you’re at SXSW, drop by our Airstream and say hellos. We’re at 5th
and Trinity.Thanks for rolling with the fun.
jw
This response reflects the image of their company, is completely and unabashedly honest, and has a bit of humor. It offers clear ways to still access Josh during a crunch period. This strategy if much better than relying on the canned vacation response your email account automatically generates.
- Look for ways in which your auto-response can reflect your brand
- Let others know what you are doing or developing
- After this, inform them when and how they can have access to you.
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