You can set up your sequence so that people who reply to a stage won't receive follow-up stages. Here are a few scenarios you may encounter — we'll explain what counts as a reply:
Bounced emails: We can recognize bounced emails, and the associated email addresses are removed from your campaign. Follow-up stages will not be sent to these addresses. We do not count bounced emails as a reply in your analytics.
Out-of-office messages: Out-of-office messages do not count as replies; however, users can configure out-of-office detection in their Sequence settings. This setting will reschedule the next automated stage to send to their recipients upon their return. See more on this setting here.
Mixmax will not reschedule the upcoming stage if it cannot detect a return date or if the return date is more than 30 days from the date the out-of-office email was received.
If the recipient's return date is earlier than the scheduled stage, Mixmax will not reschedule for the upcoming stage.
Reply to an email that was not part of the campaign: If someone replies to an email that is not part of your email campaign — or sends you a separate email — we do not count this as a reply. In this case, you can manually remove the recipient from the sequence. We offer an advanced setting that lets you remove a recipient if you receive any email from them.
The email was forwarded to a new person, and that person replied: If someone forwards your email to another person, and that person replies, this is counted as a reply. The reply will be attributed to the original recipient.
The recipient clicks on a Poll or Survey: If your recipient clicks on a poll, a Yes/No question, or submits an answer to a Q&A Survey, this counts as a reply. If you would like to learn more, go to the polls & surveys page.
The recipient clicks on a calendar invitation: If your recipient clicks any button on any of Mixmax's calendar invitations from the sender's calendar, this counts as a reply.
Troubleshooting: a reply isn't showing as replied
If a recipient replied but their status in the sequence hasn't updated, here are the most common reasons:
Reply sent from a different email address: The recipient replied from an email address that's different from the one enrolled in the sequence. Mixmax can only match replies to the enrolled address.
Sequences sent through an alias: If you're sending sequences from an email alias, replies to that alias are not tracked by Mixmax. Recipients who reply to the alias address won't be detected as having replied.
Recipient replied to a different message: The recipient may have replied to a separate email or reached out independently rather than replying to a sequence stage. Whether this exits them from the sequence depends on your exit settings — check whether you have "exit on any reply" enabled.
How to investigate: Check your Live Feed to see if Mixmax received the reply. If the reply doesn't appear there, look at the original message source of the recipient's reply to confirm it was sent to the correct address and within the tracked thread.