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Outbound problem

Our reply rate counts out-of-office messages as replies

Out-of-office notices and "remove me" messages sit next to real interest, LinkedIn replies never reach the email totals, and every tool defines a reply its own way. The reply rate ends up meaning whatever the tool says it means.

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What it looks like

  • Reply rates jump in holiday weeks, when half the replies are out-of-office notices.
  • Two campaigns show the same reply rate, but one produced meetings and the other produced unsubscribes.
  • The email tool and the LinkedIn tool each report a reply rate, and nobody adds them together.
  • A rep reports twelve replies and has two real conversations.
  • Nobody can say how many positive replies the team got last week without opening every inbox.

Why it happens

A sending tool counts a reply when any message arrives in the thread. An automatic out-of-office notice and a bounce-style auto-response are messages, so they count. Some tools try to filter them and some do not, and each uses its own rules, so the same campaign would score differently in two tools.

Replies also arrive in different places: each mailbox in each email tool, and each LinkedIn account in the LinkedIn tool. A total that covers all of them, with the automatic ones removed, does not exist in any single tool.

What teams try

  • Trusting each tool's reply number

    It is the easiest option and the least comparable. The definitions differ between tools and change when a tool updates its filters.

  • Tagging replies by hand in each tool

    Accurate while people keep it up. Tags differ per tool, they are skipped on busy days, and they do not roll up across tools.

  • Counting only meetings booked

    A good outcome metric, but it hides which campaigns start conversations and takes weeks to show a problem.

  • Reading the replies before the weekly meeting

    It gives a feel for quality and no number you can track from week to week.

How OutboundManager handles it

OutboundManager reads the text of every reply from every connected tool and classifies it with the same rules, so a reply means one thing across email and LinkedIn.

  • Each reply is classified as interested, not now, not interested, wrong person, opt-out or auto-reply. Classification is rule-based on the reply text, not an AI guess.
  • Human replies are every email and LinkedIn reply that is not an auto-reply. That is the number on the overview, the rep scorecard and the campaigns table.
  • Positive replies are counted separately, so a campaign that only collects opt-outs does not look healthy.
  • Reply rates are per send and built from real replies. Opens and clicks are not imported.
  • A manager can re-classify a reply that the rules got wrong, and the totals follow.

Related integrations:InstantlySmartleadWoodpeckerLemlistHeyReachAll integrations

Reply queue with interested replies on the left and an open thread with a reply composer on the right

The unified reply queue: human replies from every tool, classified and answered in their original thread. Demo data.

Fix it this week

These steps help whether or not you ever use OutboundManager.

  1. Agree one definition for the team: a reply is a message a person wrote. Out-of-office notices and automatic acknowledgements do not count.
  2. Report two numbers, not one: human replies and positive replies. The gap between them says more than either alone.
  3. Check how each of your tools treats auto-replies, and switch on its out-of-office detection where it has one.
  4. Add LinkedIn replies to the same weekly total as email replies, even if someone counts them by hand for now.
  5. Sample twenty replies from your "best" campaign and sort them by hand. If fewer than half are from a person, the reply rate is not telling you much.

Questions

How are replies classified?

By rules applied to the reply text, into six classes: interested, not now, not interested, wrong person, opt-out and auto-reply. No language model is involved. A manager can change the class of any reply.

Are auto-replies deleted?

No. They are stored and classed as auto-reply, and they are left out of human reply counts and reply rates. You can still see them by filtering the reply list.

Do LinkedIn replies count too?

Yes. Replies from HeyReach and from Lemlist LinkedIn steps are classified the same way and counted in the same totals as email replies.

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