Reply and Bounce Tracking
Introduction
Section titled “Introduction”Opens and clicks tell you who engaged. Replies and bounces tell you more: who wrote back, and which addresses do not work. BetterMerge can track both, plus send follow-ups in the same Gmail thread, through three optional mailbox features:
- Bounce detection: marks emails that could not be delivered, and stops future campaigns from emailing those addresses.
- Reply detection: marks recipients who replied, so you can see replies in your campaign report and sheet.
- Follow-up on same thread: sends a follow-up campaign as a reply in the original conversation instead of a new email.
Why These Features Need a Separate Setup
Section titled “Why These Features Need a Separate Setup”BetterMerge only asks Google for permission to send email. It cannot read your inbox, which is why your mailbox stays private.
Replies and bounces arrive in your inbox, though, so detecting them needs extra access that the main app does not request. That is why mailbox features are optional and set up separately, with help from our support team.
You stay in control: you can turn mailbox features off at any time.
How to Turn It On
Section titled “How to Turn It On”Mailbox features are set up with help from our support team.
- Open Settings → Optional features in BetterMerge. The Mailbox features section shows whether bounce detection, reply detection, and same-thread follow-ups are active for your account.
- Click Contact support, or email support@bettermerge.com, and ask to enable mailbox features.
- Our team will walk you through the setup.
Once setup is complete, the status in Settings → Optional features and in the campaign editor changes to Active. If mailbox features stop working, for example because their access was removed, the status changes to Not Active.
What You Get
Section titled “What You Get”Bounced Emails
Section titled “Bounced Emails”When an email hard-bounces, BetterMerge:
- marks the delivery as bounced in the campaign report and in your sheet’s status column;
- counts it in the campaign’s bounce total; and
- sets the contact to Bounced, so all future campaigns skip that address. See Manage your contacts.
Temporary delivery delays are recorded as delayed rather than bounced.
Replies
Section titled “Replies”When a recipient replies, BetterMerge marks their delivery as replied in the campaign report and your sheet. A reply does not unsubscribe anyone; the contact keeps receiving future campaigns unless they unsubscribe.
You can use replies in segmentation rules for follow-up campaigns, for example to follow up only with people who have not replied.
Follow-ups in the Same Thread
Section titled “Follow-ups in the Same Thread”With same-thread follow-ups, a follow-up campaign lands as a reply under your original email. Recipients see the whole conversation in one place, which makes follow-ups feel natural and personal.
- Check the status before an important follow-up. Make sure mailbox features show Active so reply-based segmentation uses current data.
- Keep bounced contacts suppressed. Only change a bounced contact back to a sendable status if you have fixed the address.
- Pair with email verification. On the Pro plan, email verification skips many invalid addresses before sending, and bounce detection catches the ones that still fail.
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