In addition to the standard “Out of office/On vacation” auto-reply option familiar to many Gmail users, you can also set automatic email responses in your Gmail account for other types of emails.

Step-by-Step Guidelines

1. Enabling and Creating Templates in Gmail

First, you need to create and enable templates in Gmail Settings.

Let’s assume you are receiving lots of emails offering contributions to your blog in the form of guest posts. Therefore, the focus should be on this particular keyword “guest post” and you should prepare a well-structured and clear response template (so-called canned response).

You will need this email text later in the next steps.

Now, you should enable Templates for your auto-replies. Select the Gear icon in the right corner of the Gmail screen to open the Settings menu.

Click See All Settings from the drop-down menu.

Select the Advanced tab.

Make sure your Templates are enabled. Otherwise, Enable this option.

Scroll to the bottom and select Save Changes.

2. Composing and Saving Auto-Response Templates

After enabling Templates, you should set up the relevant template for “guest post” emails in Gmail.

Go to Compose in Gmail to create the template for automatic replies. You can add a signature, but there is no need to fill in the Subject/To fields.

Insert the prepared text (see the example response in the above step) and select the More Options icon (three dots) at the bottom of the email.

Select Templates from the menu.

Select Save draft as template and then Save as new template in the following pop-up menus.

Name the template (e.g. Guest posting) and Save it.

3. Setting Up Auto-Reply Filters

Now, you need to set up an auto-reply filter in Gmail.

First, select Show Search Options in the search box at the top.

Then, you should define the criteria for the auto-reply filter. It can be a subject, name, or any other field. In this case, it will be the keyword “guest post”, simply meaning any incoming email text containing these words. Next, click on Create filter.

Select the drop-down menu next to Send Template and choose the name assigned to your template (Guest posting in this example) for automatic replies. Finally, select Create Filter.

Gmail will automatically save the new filter. To double-check, go again to See All Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses, where you will find all filters. You can edit the filter if you want to add extra criteria or delete it if no longer required.

No matter how well you set up the auto-response process in Gmail, some emails might still trigger incorrect responses. Therefore, consider adding the following line to the footnote of your template:

(This email response is automated based on the keywords used in your email).