Automated Email Reply Handling

[Anonymous]

We will soon start sending large volumes of emails from Marketo to our B2C customers, and we need an automated way to handle unsubscribe requests, filter "Out of Office" replies, and intelligently routes real email replies from humans through the proper channels.  Although we'd like to have each email response reviewed individually, with a large volume of replies this becomes difficult to maintain and scale.

Another example, if someone receives an email from Marketo, if they hit reply, Marketo would trigger an "auto-response" email to that individual based on the email reply.  The reply-to email would be a Marketo email address that would be able to route and trigger responses.

I've heard this referred to as "Reply Handling" and I've heard other email marketing automation tools (i.e. SilverPop) have features to handle this, and I was wonder if Marketo can support this or if anyone had any insight or guidance on other software that can help with this requirement.

[Anonymous]

We currently do not offer this feature.  You would have to rely on routing within the "reply to" inbox (e.g. move Out of Office to a folder, etc.).  We do not currently have a way to trigger an auto-response if they hit reply.

[Josh_Hill13]

Brian,

Depending on how you setup the Unsubscribe system, this would be handled automatically. Hard and Soft bounces are already handled automatically and you can adjust how some of that is handled by creating a few list handling workflows.

Reply handling can't be done, as Cheryl mentioned. What can be done is triggering an email off of a Clicked Link in Email or Clicked Link (web page). You can also do this off Opens, but that would be less reliable.

Perhaps you could adjust your plan to push people to reply webforms that can hook into Marketo and trigger events instead of letting people hit reply -- as those emails will go to the actual inbox and require a human.

[Ryan_O_Shea]

We're looking for this feature as well.  Our campaigns generate a lot of human replies, and we have found engagement rates go down significantly when forcing them to webforms instead of simply replying.  As we try to ramp these campaigns, the volume quickly becomes more than a simple folder filter in the Oulook inbox can handle.   A feature like MailChimp's "Conversations" or ExacTarget's "Reply Mail Management" would be very valuable in Marketo.

[Anonymous]

Please vote for the Automatically process incoming auto-response emails Idea that was submitted at the end of 2012.  If it gets enough votes, perhaps Marketo will seriously consider adding this sorely needed capability for anyone that has a large volume of emails.