With Track replies on, a reply to your campaign email passes through Personyze on its way to you. It is counted in the campaign’s report, the person can be targeted or left out by an audience rule, and the reply is forwarded to your Reply-To address as usual. Out-of-office and other automatic replies are recognised and left out.
Turn on Track replies
Track replies is the checkbox under Reply-To in the From & Reply-To row of the campaign’s Sending step, and in the email’s own sender settings. It is off until you tick it. The tooltip: “Replies go through Personyze first: each one is counted in the report, can be used in audiences (‘Emails replied to’), and is forwarded to the Reply-To above. Out-of-office and other automatic replies are not counted or forwarded.”
The box appears only where reply tracking works:
- on campaign emails, survey and meeting emails included — not on notification emails;
- for email sent through the Personyze mail server — not through your own SMTP server or email provider.
Two settings tick it for you: Leaves when they reply on the Target step, for every email before the last, and a follow-up’s Didn’t reply condition, for the email before it.
What happens to a reply
- The email goes out with a Reply-To that points to Personyze. Its display name stays your Reply-To’s name (or the From name), so the recipient sees who they are writing to.
- When the recipient answers, the reply is recorded.
- A reply written by a person is counted in the report, can be used in audiences, and is forwarded to you.
Where the reply is forwarded
To the address the email would have taken replies at: the email’s Reply-To, otherwise the sender’s Default Reply-To, otherwise its From address. It is read when the reply arrives, so changing the Reply-To later redirects replies still to come.
- The forward comes from the Personyze platform’s address with the person as its Reply-To, so you can simply press Reply to answer them.
- Its subject is “Reply to <campaign name>: <their subject>”.
- Under the person’s text a short note says who replied to which email of which campaign, links to the person in Personyze, and says that attachments and formatting stay in the original, which went to the tracking address only.
Automatic replies, and replies that are not forwarded
Out-of-office and other automatic replies are kept with the reply record, but they are not counted, do not match Emails replied to, and are not forwarded.
These are recorded but not forwarded:
- replies flagged as spam or as carrying a virus;
- replies whose sender fails authentication (DMARC);
- very large replies, over about 150 KB;
- replies to an email whose replies would go only to the shared no-reply address — give it a Reply-To of your own;
- replies above the hourly forwarding limits, per sender, per recipient address and per account.
Where replies show
| Where | What you see |
|---|---|
| The Performance step | A Replies card: “… of messages sent were answered by a person – out-of-office replies are not counted”. It appears once there is at least one reply. |
| The By email table | A Reply rate column: “People who wrote back to the email. Automatic replies such as out-of-office are not counted.” |
| The send log, All emails sent | Replied and when, on the person’s row: “This person replied to the email. The reply was forwarded to the email’s Reply-To address.” |
See Bounced, Spam complaints and Replies and the send log.
Target, or leave out, people who replied
- Audience rule. On a campaign’s Target step, the rule Personyze Actions State has the option Emails replied to. With Did or Didn’t and a time window counted from when the reply arrived, a follow-up campaign can reach or leave out the people who answered. See Targeting people by what they did with an email.
- In a sequence. A follow-up with the Didn’t reply condition goes only to people who did not answer the email before it — see Email sequences. Leaves when they reply takes anyone who answered out of the rest of the sequence — see Choosing who receives an email, and who leaves a sequence.
- Resend to people who didn’t open, on a row of the By email table, leaves out people who replied too.
Test sends keep your real Reply-To
Send me a test is never tracked, so a reply to a test goes straight to the Reply-To your recipients’ replies will be forwarded to. Use it to check where real answers go.
Related
- Writing the email — sender, Reply-To and the rest of the email
- The Sending step of an email campaign — the From & Reply-To row
- Choosing who receives an email, and who leaves a sequence — Leaves when they reply
- Email sequences — the Didn’t reply condition
- Targeting people by what they did with an email — Emails replied to
- Reading an email campaign’s report — the Replies card and the send log
- Troubleshooting email campaigns