How should companies handle out-of-office replies from transactional emails?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Mailjet shares using SMTP reply codes to handle auto-replies. By correctly interpreting the reply codes received from mail servers, businesses can automatically process and filter auto-replies, improving email deliverability and ensuring accurate engagement metrics.
Marketer from Email Geeks advises against using a no-reply email address to avoid frustrating customers who want to engage.
Email marketer from Neil Patel Blog suggests segmenting your email list and suppressing auto-replies for certain segments, focusing on engagement with real subscribers. He also recommends monitoring reply rates to identify and address issues.
Email marketer from Sendgrid recommends using dedicated IPs for sending transactional emails. They suggest that by using dedicated IPs, businesses have greater control over their sender reputation, making it easier to manage bounce rates and auto-replies effectively.
Email marketer from Reddit shares the importance of setting up a dedicated feedback loop to automatically process bounce messages and auto-replies. They mention that this helps in maintaining a clean email list and prevents the support team from being overwhelmed.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that they use a header on their outbound email to suppress auto responses using `X-Auto-Response-Suppress: OOF, AutoReply`.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests setting filters on inboxes to auto-archive emails with OOO or Out of Office in the content. Also agrees no-reply can be frustrating for a contact.
Email marketer from EmailOnAcid Blog emphasizes the importance of maintaining good email list hygiene by regularly cleaning out inactive or non-responsive email addresses. They suggest suppressing email addresses that consistently send auto-replies or bounce messages to improve sender reputation and deliverability.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow recommends implementing filtering mechanisms at the mail server level to automatically identify and remove out-of-office replies before they reach the support team's inbox. This reduces the manual workload and ensures support focuses on genuine inquiries.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor suggests using email automation features to handle auto-replies from transactional emails. By setting up automated workflows, companies can filter out auto-replies, ensuring that support teams only handle legitimate inquiries and engagement is accurately tracked.
What the experts say2Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise advises on proactively managing email lists to remove addresses generating automated responses. Dayman suggests implementing processes to automatically identify and suppress addresses sending OOO replies, thereby improving list quality.
Expert from Word to the Wise emphasizes the importance of processing feedback loops and using them to suppress addresses that send auto-replies. This helps to maintain a clean sending reputation and reduces the volume of unwanted messages.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools Help recommends using Google Postmaster Tools to monitor email deliverability and identify issues related to bounce rates and auto-replies. It advises using the feedback loop feature to manage bounce messages and auto-replies effectively, improving overall email performance.
Documentation from RFC Editor provides guidelines on handling bounce messages and auto-replies according to SMTP standards. It advises implementing VERP (Variable Envelope Return Path) to accurately track bounces and auto-replies, and configuring mail servers to properly process these messages without human intervention.
Documentation from Microsoft Docs explains the use of the `X-Auto-Response-Suppress` header to prevent auto-replies from being generated. The documentation states that this header can be added to email headers to suppress OOF (Out of Office) and auto-reply messages, particularly useful for transactional emails.