If you scroll down, towards the bottom you'll find a section called Vacation Responder. There, tick Vacation Responder On and fill in the dates for when you want any received emails to be replied to with the automatic response.
This isn’t about an off-key OOO message, but one where a rogue OOO message drove our department insane for a day and a half.
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From March 30th 2018 until April 02nd 2018 our office will be closed due to the holidays. From April 03rd 2018 we are back as usual for you and answer your requests as soon as possible.
“Thank you for the message. I am currently out of the office and will not be back until [date]. I shall reply to your message as I return. Should you require any immediate assistance, feel free to contact [person] at [phone number] in my absence. Have a wonderful holiday season.”
I can’t agree that holding on to a request for a week or so is akin to groveling.
COMPLETELY agree. Every time I see an OOO for a two-hour doctor’s appointment I have to fight the urge to reply with “How much are you paid?” because I know there is no scenario in which I would have to explain myself if I don’t answer an email for a few hours and if you are that important you better make a LOT more than I do.
“For example, if a hacker knows that the chief financial officer of a company is OOO, thanks to the information in the auto-reply message, an attacker could impersonate the CFO on email and target another individual in the company’s finance team asking them to make a payment or update bank details for them while they are offline,” says Sadler.
It’s possible I might quote from some responses to this in an upcoming column, so please note if you don’t want me to do that with yours!
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Before we leave you to your own devices, we have some sample messages featuring different ways you can automate text replies to serve your business.
Download our SEO checklist of important on-page elements you can optimize for on-page SEO and content optimization.
The marketing tactics of businesses should be focused on customizing the client experience to make each interaction meaningful and valuable. Personalizing your automated replies makes your customers feel good (if you do it right) because it helps you say something that’s actually helpful and targeted.
I emailed this person 3 times and never got a response. Thankfully they weren’t upset when we moved forward without their input.
“Thank you for your message. I am out of the office today with no access to phone. I will be back on April 5. In case you need any immediate help, you can reach [person] at [phone number].”
I’ve named the conference I was attending a couple of times in my out of office. That particular conference is a big enough deal in my field that some of the people emailing me were probably also in attendance, which made it worth specifying, in addition to setting expectations about email response times and overall availability.
Thanks for your message! I’m currently buried in snow and will get back to you once I’ve defrosted on January 2nd.
If you want to learn how to set up your OOO message with a self-hosted email, you can follow our quick guide called How to Create Email AutoResponder in cPanel.