What is Auto Mailer?

How do I prepare my auctions for Auto Mailer

There are two ways to prepare your auctions.

• If your auction requires shipping charges you need to include special shipping tags in your auctions page so that Auto Mailer can recognize your shipping charges. Don't worry! You can include the tags so that they don't make your pages ugly. Here is how to write your tag if your auction is a not a dutch auction and your shipping charge is $5.

  
  shipping-code:5

  This code must be on line by itself i.e. no other words must be on the same line as itself. You can make this code invisible to a casual user by using the font color the same one as your background color. For example if you include the code like

  
  <font color=white>
  shipping-code:5
  </font>

  then Auto Mailer can still figure out your shipping fees but your bidders won't be able to see this code -- assuming that your background color is white. Just include appropriate shipping code for each auction and you will be ready to use Auto Mailer. That's the end of this tutorial and you don't have to read of the rest of this tutorial if you never do any dutch auction. Congratulations!

• If you use dutch auction your shipping code must specify how much you want to charge shipping fees if someone wins more than one item in one auction. Let's say you have a dutch auction for 4 identical t-shirts and you charge $5 S&H for the first t-shirt and $1 for each additional t-shirt. Then your shipping code is

  
  shipping-code:5:1:1:1
  

  Let's say you have a dutch auction for 4 identical t-shirts and you charge $5 S&H for up to 4 identical t-shirts then your shipping code is

  
  shipping-code:5
  

  Let's say you have a dutch auction for 40 identical t-shirts and your chrage $5 S&H for the first t-shirt and $1 for each additional t-shirt and the maximum shipping fee is $7. Then your shipping code is

  
  shipping-code:5:1:1
  

  If you sell hundreds of items and anticipate one buyer winning hundreds of items at once then you can break up the shipping code into multiple lines. For example let's say you have a dutch auction for 21 identical t-shirts and you charge $5 S&H for the first one $1 for each additional one then your shipping code will be

  
  shipping-code:5:1:1:1:1:1:1:1:1:1:1
  
  shipping-code:1:1:1:1:1:1:1:1:1:1
  

  Notice that these long codes are necessary because you anticipate that someone will win all 21 t-shirts. If you don't anticipate anyone from winning more than 10 t-shirts, say, then you only need to write the code to cover up to 10 t-shirts.

How do I write my template email letter to make full use of Auto Mailer?

• If you have <email> tag in your template letter Auto Mailer will automcatically replace it with the email address of the buyer.
• If you have <title> tag in your template letter Auto Mailer will automatically replace it with the correct title.
• If you have <item> tag in your template letter Auto Mailer will automatically replace it with the correct item number.
• If you have <bid> tag in your template letter Auto Mailer will automatically replace it with the correct final bid price.
• If you have <ship> tag in your template letter Auto Mailer will automatically replace it with the correct shipping price retrieved from your auction page.
• If you have <total> tag in your template letter and Auto Mailer will automatically replace it the correct total (= bid + shipping.)
• Here is an example template letter used to create this email.

How much does it cost to use Auto Mailer Service?

It costs 1 UC to send 1 auto email.

The latest prices for Universal Credits can be found here.
More information about Universal Credits can be found here.
Universal Credits are also good for other premium services.