How are Out of Office replies handled?
When a mail server answers your campaign email instead of a person — an out-of-office notice, a vacation autoresponder, or a 'we have received your request' acknowledgement — WarmySender recognises it and does not treat it as a reply. Your sequence keeps running, and your reply rate is not inflated by it.
Automatic detection:
We look at the hidden markers mail systems attach to auto-responders, at the shape of the subject line, and at the wording of the message. Out-of-office phrasing is covered explicitly in English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish; the hidden markers are recognised whatever the language.
An out-of-office reply does not end the sequence:
It is treated as 'this person is away, not saying no'. The follow-ups keep going out on their normal schedule, so you do not lose the lead and you do not burn a follow-up on a message nobody read. It is also excluded from your reply statistics.
If one slips through (rare):
Occasionally an unusual phrasing — an internal custom auto-reply, or a language we do not yet cover — is read as a genuine reply and the sequence stops. Two ways to put it right:
- In the campaign: open the Prospects tab, find the person, open the actions menu on their row and choose 'Resume sequence'. They rejoin at the next step they have not received yet.
- In your Inbox: open the message and change its label to 'Auto-Reply / Out of Office'. The sequence picks up again on its own and the message stops counting towards your reply rate.
Either way, emails already sent to that person are never sent again, and nothing goes out immediately — the next step is scheduled at your normal pace.
Best practice:
If the same phrasing keeps being read as a real reply, send it to [email protected] so we can improve coverage. Detection is refined from real examples.
For the full picture — including what happens to genuine replies, ticket acknowledgements, and how your reply rate is calculated — see /documentation/does-an-out-of-office-reply-stop-my-campaign.