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A good autoresponder reads like a person wrote it, even though nobody did in the moment. A few small writing choices make the difference.
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A good autoresponder personalizes with the submitter's name, sets a realistic expectation for when they'll hear back, uses a natural tone instead of overly formal boilerplate, and stays short. FormBridge supports this directly through its autoresponder feature and per-field merge tags like {{Full-Name}}.
"Dear Sir/Madam, Your correspondence has been received and will be reviewed in due course." Nobody talks like this, and everyone who reads it knows a template did the writing, not a person. That's fine for some transactional contexts, but for a contact form — where someone just reached out expecting to talk to a human eventually — it sets exactly the wrong tone before you've said anything else.
A better autoresponder doesn't pretend a person wrote it in real time. It just avoids sounding like nobody did.
Use their name, not a placeholder. "Thanks for reaching out" is fine. "Thanks for reaching out, Alex" reads like it was addressed to them specifically, because it was. In FormBridge, every field on your form automatically gets a merge tag based on its input name — a field named full-name becomes {{Full-Name}} — so dropping it into the subject or opening line is a one-time setup, not manual work per reply.
Set a real expectation, not a vague one. "We'll be in touch" leaves the reader guessing whether that means an hour or a month. "We typically reply within one business day" is more specific, more reassuring, and cuts down on people re-submitting the form to check if it worked — as long as it's a promise you can actually keep.
Skip the formality. "Dear Sir/Madam" and "Your correspondence" belong in a different century. Write the way you'd actually talk to someone who just messaged you: "Thanks for reaching out — got your message and will get back to you soon."
Keep it short. An autoresponder has one job: confirm the message arrived and say roughly when to expect a reply. It doesn't need three paragraphs of company background or a list of your other products. Say the two things that matter and stop.
Autoresponders are set up under Form → Email Settings → Autoresponder — a subject, a body, and the same merge tags available to your notification emails. Write it as plain rich text for something that reads like an actual message, or switch on the drag-and-drop builder if you want it visually branded to match the rest of your emails. Autoresponder branding (logo, colors, footer) is configured separately from your admin notifications, so the reply someone gets can look and sound different from the internal alert your team receives — which is usually the right call, since they're written for two different readers.
Use a merge tag tied to the name field on your form. In FormBridge, every submitted field automatically gets a merge tag based on its input name — a field named full-name becomes {{Full-Name}} — which you drop directly into the autoresponder's subject or body.
It should set an honest, specific-enough expectation rather than a vague one. \'We'll get back to you shortly\' is fine as a fallback, but \'within one business day\' or \'within 24 hours\' is more reassuring and reduces follow-up messages asking whether the form even worked, as long as you can actually meet it.
One email when we publish something worth reading. No spam — appropriately enough, we'd know.