How replies are matched

How LinkiFunnels ties each incoming email to a contact, a campaign, and the exact email they answered, and what it does with out-of-office replies and strangers.

3 minute read

When the Inbox is on, every campaign email carries its own Reply-to address, for example hello+s7k2q9x4m1p0d3a@mail.yourdomain.com. The part after the plus names that one email to that one person. Mail clients reply to it without the person noticing, and LinkiFunnels reads it to know exactly which email was answered.

Matching, in order

The Reply-to tag. A reply to a campaign email is matched to the contact, the campaign, and the step it answered.
The email headers. If a mail client drops the tag, LinkiFunnels follows the standard reply headers back to the email you sent. In a threaded sequence, that is the most recent email the person received in the thread. Replies to your answers and to a new email are matched this way.
The sender’s address. Anything else, such as an email someone typed to your sender address from scratch, is matched to the contact with that email address. If there is none, a new contact is created, the same way a form fill would. The email is the identity, see What a contact is.

What a reply changes

The sequence pauses for that person in that campaign. The next email waits until you choose Resume.
The contact page shows the reply in its activity.
Teammates who asked for it get a short email with the message.

Automatic replies

Out-of-office messages, vacation responders, and bounce notices are recognized by their headers and subject. They appear in the Inbox, dimmed, but they don’t pause the sequence and don’t send notifications.

Mail that is dropped

Email that fails the sender domain’s own authentication check (DMARC) is dropped before it reaches the Inbox. This keeps spoofed messages out.