What a reply does to the lead and their campaigns
The moment someone writes back, their sequence stops and their lead status updates — no clean-up needed, and a Not interested reply pulls them out of everything.
Where: Automatic — visible on Replies ("Sequence stopped on reply" under the lead's name), on the lead's status in Leads, and in the campaign's Replied/Interested counts
How to do it
- Send a campaign. When a person replies, MailFleet logs the reply in the queue and stops their sequence in every campaign where they were active.
- Open the conversation in Replies: under the lead's name it reads "<campaign> · via <mailbox> · Sequence stopped on reply".
- Check the lead in Leads or in the campaign's Leads tab: their status is now Replied and their activity line says "Replied".
- If the reply was a clear no, the thread's intent is Unsubscribe, the lead's status is Unsubscribed with the activity "Not interested — removed from all campaigns", and they are out of every campaign, not just the one that emailed them.
Good to know
- A real reply sets the lead's status to Replied and moves every active enrolment of that person — across all your campaigns — to Replied, so no further step is scheduled from any of them. A LinkedIn reply does the same. A task that is already open for them, or a LinkedIn action already queued, is not withdrawn automatically — complete or skip the task yourself.
- A Not interested reply (an explicit opt-out phrase such as "unsubscribe", "remove me", "not interested", "stop emailing", or the AI reading it as a clear no) sets the lead to Unsubscribed and removes them from every campaign whatever the campaign status. They then appear under Settings → Blocklist → Blocked people and can be returned to New with Unblock.
- Out-of-office and automatic replies never do any of this: the lead is not marked Replied, the sequence is not stopped, and campaign counts do not move (see the out-of-office article).
- In the campaign's numbers a person counts once as Replied, however many times they write, and once as Positive when their reply is marked Interested, Meeting request, Meeting booked or Won. Out-of-office and automatic replies never count.
- The reply is credited to the campaign that actually emailed the person — first a send from the mailbox that received the reply, then their latest send, then their newest enrolment — so reply rates stay honest when someone sits in several campaigns.
- If the campaign feeds a LinkedIn campaign on reply, the person is handed over at that moment.
- Webhooks fire in real time when a reply starts a conversation: Reply received on every real first reply, Reply — interested for Interested/Meeting, Lead unsubscribed for a Not interested reply (Settings → API & webhooks). A follow-up inside an existing thread only sends Reply tagged (when it gets a tag). Automatic replies never trigger Reply received, Reply — interested or Lead unsubscribed — only Reply tagged with the OOO tag.
- A real reply from a person who was out of office ends their return-date hold immediately.
- Once a person has replied, MailFleet leaves it to you: sending a reply from the queue keeps their sequence stopped. To email them again in a sequence, use Push To Campaign on the conversation (another campaign, or one of this campaign's subsequences), or enrol them from Leads.
- The Behavior tab of a campaign's Settings lets you stop a sequence on Clicks or Opens as well, but Replies is always on ("Replying always stops it").
Questions people ask
Someone replied but their status still says Contacted — why?
Their reply was probably an automatic one (out of office). Open the thread: an "Out of office" label means it was not counted as a reply and nothing was stopped.
Will a reply to campaign A stop campaign B?
Yes. Any real reply stops every active sequence for that person, in every campaign.