How WarmySender handles automatic replies and out-of-office messages
Not every message that lands back in your inbox is a person answering you. Mail servers answer too — an out-of-office notice, a "thanks, we've received your enquiry" acknowledgement from a help desk, a "this address is no longer monitored" notice, or a bot that files your email as a support ticket. WarmySender recognises these and treats them differently from a real reply, so a robot on holiday duty never ends a sequence you meant to keep running, and never flatters your reply rate.
The short version:
- An automatic reply does NOT stop your sequence. Your follow-ups keep going out on their normal schedule.
- An automatic reply does NOT count as a reply in your numbers. Your reply rate stays honest.
- A genuine reply from a person DOES stop the sequence, if you have 'Stop on reply' switched on for that campaign.
- If something slips through and a sequence stops when it shouldn't have, you can put that person back on track in two clicks — and the emails they already received are never sent twice.
What counts as an automatic reply:
We look at the whole message, not just the words in it. That includes the hidden markers most mail systems attach to auto-responders, the shape of the subject line, and the wording of the message itself. Common examples we recognise:
• Out-of-office and holiday notices — "I am currently out of the office until 14 March", "Ik ben afwezig", "Ich bin nicht im Büro", "Je suis absent", "Estoy fuera de la oficina".
• Ticket acknowledgements — "Thank you for contacting us, your request has been received. Ticket #48120."
• Automatic confirmations — "This is an automated response, please do not reply to this message."
• Delegation notices — "I have left the company, please contact Sarah instead."
• Vacation autoresponders in several languages, including English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish.
Why this matters more than it sounds:
If a holiday notice were treated as a reply, three things would go wrong at once. Your sequence would stop for someone who never read your email. Your reply rate would look better than it is, so you would draw the wrong conclusion about your copy. And the person would come back from leave to nothing — the follow-up that would have caught them was cancelled while they were away. Handling auto-replies properly is really about not losing the lead.
What happens to a genuine reply:
When a real person writes back, the campaign does what you told it to do. If 'Stop on reply' is on — it is on by default, and it is what most people want — that person stops receiving follow-ups the moment their answer arrives, and the conversation moves to your inbox. Their reply is counted in your reply rate, and it is credited to the email they actually replied to, so you can see which step in the sequence earns the answers.
If you switch 'Stop on reply' off, the sequence carries on regardless. That is occasionally useful for purely informational sends, but for outreach it is almost always the wrong choice — nobody enjoys receiving follow-up number three after they have already answered.
If a sequence stops when it shouldn't have:
Detection is very good but it is not perfect. Someone's company may use unusual wording, or a language we do not yet cover, or a human-sounding message written by a bot. If a sequence stops for a person who never really answered, here is how to put it right.
Option 1 — Resume from the campaign:
- Open the campaign and go to the Prospects tab.
- Find the person. Their status will show that they replied.
- Click the actions menu on their row and choose 'Resume sequence'.
- Confirm.
They go straight back into the sequence at the next step they have not received yet. Nothing is sent immediately — the next email goes out at your normal pace, in your normal sending window.
Option 2 — Relabel the message in your inbox:
- Open your Inbox and click the message.
- Change its label to 'Auto-Reply / Out of Office'.
- Save.
The person's sequence picks up again on its own, and the message stops counting towards your reply rate. This option is worth preferring when you have several similar messages to correct, because relabelling also teaches you which phrasings to watch for.
The one thing people worry about — answered:
Resuming never re-sends an email somebody already received. The sequence remembers exactly which steps went out to which person, and continues from the one after. Your first email cannot be sent twice, no matter how many times a prospect is stopped and resumed.
What you will see in your numbers:
- Reply rate counts genuine replies only. Automatic replies are excluded from it entirely.
- The reply is credited to the specific email in the sequence that earned it, so a follow-up that outperforms your opener shows up as such.
- Automatic replies are still visible in your Inbox, labelled 'Auto-Reply / Out of Office', so nothing is hidden from you — it simply does not distort your reporting.
Good habits:
- Leave 'Stop on reply' switched on for outreach campaigns.
- Skim the 'Auto-Reply / Out of Office' messages in your Inbox once a week. Notices that say someone has left the company are worth acting on — update or remove that address rather than keep emailing it.
- If you keep seeing the same unusual phrasing treated as a real reply, tell us at [email protected] and paste the wording. Detection improves from real examples.
Frequently asked questions:
Does an out-of-office reply use up one of my follow-ups?
No. The sequence is not advanced or stopped by it. Your follow-ups go out exactly as scheduled.
Will an out-of-office message inflate my reply rate?
No. It is excluded from reply statistics.
Someone's assistant replied on their behalf. Is that automatic or genuine?
That is a genuine reply — a person wrote it — so the sequence stops. If you would rather keep emailing the original address, resume the sequence from the campaign's Prospects tab.
A ticket system replied and my sequence stopped anyway. What do I do?
Resume the sequence from the campaign's Prospects tab, or relabel the message as 'Auto-Reply / Out of Office' in your Inbox. Either works; both continue from the next unsent step.
If I resume someone, will they get the first email again?
No. Emails already sent to that person are never sent again.
Does resuming send an email straight away?
No. The next step is scheduled at your normal pace, inside your normal sending hours.
Which languages are covered?
English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish are covered explicitly, and the hidden markers that mail systems attach to auto-responders are recognised regardless of language.
Can I switch this off?
There is nothing to switch off — an automatic reply is never a reply, in the same way a delivery receipt is not a reply. What you do control is 'Stop on reply', which decides what a genuine reply does.
Related reading: how out-of-office notices are detected at /documentation/out-of-office-handling, and what your campaign statistics mean at /documentation/analytics.
Still stuck? Contact us at [email protected] with the campaign name and the address involved. For instant answers, you can also open warmysender.com/documentation, click 'Copy Prompt to Clipboard,' and paste it into an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT along with your question — for example: 'In WarmySender, an out-of-office message stopped my sequence for one prospect. How do I put them back into the campaign without re-sending the first email?'