How to Schedule Email Autoresponders in WordPress

Looking for a way to schedule email autoresponders in WordPress? This post will show you how to schedule emails automatically today!

Approximate read time: 4.5 minutes

Did you know people forget most things within 24 hours of it happening?

If you’re one of those people, you’ve probably realized how important it is to set reminders. Well, it’s just as important to set reminders for your customers, too.

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And with a simple change, you can create an autoresponder email for WordPress that brings customers back automatically.

This post will show you exactly how to do it.

Let’s get started.

What is an email autoresponder?

An email autoresponder is a service that sends an email as soon as a particular action is taken.

This could be filling out a form, clicking a button, or something else. But it simplifies the process of connecting with visitors and customers.

While simple autoresponders are easy to use, the real power is in scheduling your autoresponders.

With the right plugin and automation tools, and autoresponder tools, you can set up an automated email campaign that helps create loyal customers.

While you can get a free autoresponder with tools like Constant Contact or FluentCRM, only one plugin makes things easy and advanced.

How to schedule WordPress email autoresponders

You’ll need to download and install Formidable Forms on your WordPress site to get started.

Formidable Forms is the most advanced form builder for WordPress, and it comes with many great features to make things easy, including the Form Action Automation add-on.

You’ll need a subscription to Formidable’s Elite plan for the add-on (and plenty of other great features).

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So, get that installed and activated, and then it’s a few easy steps:

Enable the Form Action Automation add-on
Create your form
Customize the form action
Display your form

Step 1: Enable the Form Action Automation add-on

First, we need to enable our add-on to use it.

To do this, head to your WordPress dashboard and go to Formidable → Add-ons. Then, find the Form Action Automation add-on and install and activate it.

Once that’s installed, head to Formidable → Forms to start the next step.

Step 2: Create your form

For our example, we have a business called Good Air, Good Life, where customers can buy the best air filters for their houses.

So, first, we need an order form for customers. To start the form, click Add New in the top left.

Then, we’ll choose the Order/Billing form template to speed things up. You can start from a Blank form if you want to start from scratch.

Next, we’ll give our form a name and click Create.

Now, the plugin takes us to Formidable’s simple drag-and-drop form builder, which makes form building easy for any experience level. If you’ve used a mouse, you can use Formidable’s form builder.

Since we chose the Order/Billing form template, most fields are ready to go.

You can customize your form to fit your needs. Formidable offers 150+ pre-made templates to speed up your form-building process, so there’s sure to be a template for you.

Now that we’ve got our form set up, we’ll click Update before we move on to the next step.

Step 3: Customize the form action

Now, it’s time to set up our autoresponder settings.

We want to remind people that it’s a good idea to change their air filters every 3-6 months, so we’ll set up an autoresponder that will send in three months reminding them.

First, we’ll go to Settings and the Actions & Notifications tab. We’ll click the Send Email button to create a notification to be sent.

Next, we’ll give the action a name (customers don’t see this), and then we’ll customize the To section.

We want it to send to the user’s provided email address. So, we’ll click in the To field and select the three dots to the right.

There’s a list of the fields you used in our form. So, we’ll choose the Email field [3].

We’ll customize our email template with the Subject and Message fields to remind our customers.

Now all that’s left to do is set up our automation. So, we’ll scroll below the Message section and select SETUP AUTOMATION.

Here, we’ll customize our automation to Ignore the trigger action setting above and instead send the notification 90 days after the creation date.

That way, once customers submit their order form, the automation will schedule their reminder email for 90 days.

Pretty cool, right?

So, the last thing we need to do is click Update to save our changes and then display our form!

Step 4: Display your form

To show our form, we’ll simply head to our Order page.

Then, we’ll add a WordPress block and search Formidable to add the Formidable Forms WordPress block.

Display your form with Formidable's WordPress block

Next, we’ll choose our form from the dropdown menu, and that’s it!

When we update our page, the order form will be live and ready to go!

Ways to use an email autoresponder

Sending a simple thank you email or contact email is only one basic way to use an autoresponder.

But, as you saw from our example above, there are more creative ways to use this tool to your advantage.

Here are a few more examples that could help you:

Schedule appointment reminders
Deadline reminder on a to-do task
Send out additional forms as necessary
Send a failed payment email to offer an alternative payment method
Email content submitters to let them know their content is posted
Send a landing page to email list subscribers for free content

No matter what your use is, there may be a way where email autoresponders can benefit you.

And whether it’s a contact form for small businesses, lead generation for email marketing automation, or a simple blog — Formidable is the WordPress plugin for you.

From signup forms to email marketing, Formidable handles it all.

Are you ready to schedule your WordPress email autoresponder?

If you want to add an autoresponder in WordPress, you know how.

This guide took you through creating your email autoresponder and how to schedule it to send in the future with Formidable Forms and its automation features.

And best of all, it pairs with all the top email services like Constant Contact, Mailchimp, and more. So, you can easily upgrade your email list open rates with Formidable’s help — whether on a free plan with 500 subscribers or a pro plan with millions.

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How to Schedule Email Autoresponders in WordPress

What is an email autoresponder?

How to schedule WordPress email autoresponders