So you press the send button on your email distribution and then anxiously watch as everything from opens and clicks, to bounces and spam complaints roll into your email reporting interface. But in addition, you may receive hundreds or thousands of "reply-to" emails coming back to someone's inbox at your company. Who's watching your reply mailbox for these messages, such as unsubscribe or challenge-response requests, bounces and blocks?

These email messages, most generated automatically, go back to your sending address and not your bounce-handling address. As you can see from the chart below, based on analysis of recent distributions of EmailLabs' Intevation Report, these "reply-to" emails account for less than 2% of the total mailing list, but they can affect list integrity if you don't act on them promptly.

Here's how to manage these six kinds of email replies:

1. Out-of-office replies: They are the biggest category of reply emails. They don't require any action. But do understand that during holidays and vacations their numbers may skyrocket and have a modest negative affect on your email's performance.

Sample: I will be out of the office on March 3 and will not be able to check e-mails.  If you have an urgent need, please contact...

2. Auto-acknowledgements: These also don't require you to act on them, but you should consider removing them because these are automated replies that usually come from "support@" or "info@" email addresses without a human being behind them.

Sample: Thanks for your email. We will try to respond within the next 24 hours.

3. Inactive addresses: These can be address-update notifications or announcementst that the owner has abandoned the address. Update your mailing list as necessary.

Sample: Hi, as of February the 1st 2006 I am no longer working at Company X. Please direct your request to?.

4. Challenge-response requests: This is the smallest category, but the most important. You must reply to these automated requests before your subscriber's email system will allow your message to be delivered. You usually just have to do it once, but if you don't reply, your emails will get blocked or diverted to a spam folder.

Sample: The message you sent requires that you verify that you are a real live human being and not a spam source.

To complete this verification, simply reply to this message and leave the subject line intact.

5. Blocks and bounce reports: The vast majority of bounce messages and blocking/filtering notifications will go to your bounce-handling address, but a small percentage will be sent to your reply-to address. These need prompt action if possible, because they are telling you they blocked your email because of suspected spam or reported an address as permanently undeliverable. You need to clear up the block report and remove the undeliverables before you send your next campaign or newsletter.

Sample: ** EMAIL BLOCKED: Reason:    message contains 5+ bad words

6. Feedback, rendering problems and unsubscribe requests: These are personal messages from a subscriber often relaying problems with the email itself such as a link not working or feedback on your email itself. Additionally, some recipients may not use your unsubscribe link and request to be removed from your list directly via email. These are clearly important to act on immediately.

Sample: I just received your latest email and opening it crashed my computer. I've tried it a few times with the same result. Please re-send if you are able to eliminate the bug that is causing this - I find your newsletter helpful.

Andy.

One last note: Besides the reply mailbox, you should also check the "postmaster@", "abuse@", and mailbox tech folks call the "catch-all", which collects all the email that has no other home. Some of these messages can end up in these boxes, too.

Comments (3)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name

Email

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment