Replies and state

How statistics are calculated

Behavior Reviewed · not yet fact-checked

In short

How are statistics calculated in Reply?

Every rate divides one counter by a defined denominator. Delivery rate and bounce rate divide by Total people — Contacted plus Out of Office, Bounced, and Auto Replied — while open, reply, interested, meetings, and opt-out rates divide by Contacted only. A LinkedIn connection request without a note does not count as contacted.

At a glance

Aspect	Detail
What it governs	The formula behind every key email metric in the Sequence Stats tab and the Email dashboard in Reports
Trigger	An outreach event: delivery, open, reply, bounce, auto-reply, opt-out, booked meeting
Inputs	Contact counts by status, delivered and opened emails, replies across channels, inbox categories
Result	Counters and rates update; opt-out rate updates in real time
Configurable	Opens and link tracking gate the open and click counters — see Sequence execution
Does not	Count a LinkedIn connection request without a note as contacted, count auto-replies or bounces as contacted, or judge message quality
Plans	The metrics are the same across the Sequence Stats tab and the Email dashboard in Reports

Rule summary

Every reported rate is one counter divided by one of two denominators. Total people — the overall number of contacts in the sequence — is the denominator for delivery rate and bounce rate. Contacted — contacts who received at least one email, excluding Out of Office, Bounced, and Auto Replied — is the denominator for open, reply, interested, meetings-booked, and opt-out rates. The two are linked by one identity:

Total = Contacted + Out of Office + Bounced + Auto Replied contacts

Trigger

An outreach event arrives and the matching counter moves: a delivery, a tracked open or click, a reply on any channel, a bounce, an auto-reply, an opt-out, or a booked meeting.

What counts as Contacted

For the reply rate, Contacted counts all distinct contacts who received at least one of the following: an email step, a LinkedIn connection request with a note or message, or a LinkedIn message or InMail. Two boundaries matter:

A LinkedIn connection request without a note or message is not counted as contacted.
A contact reached via multiple channels is counted once (distinct).

Replies counts all distinct contacts who replied via at least one of: email, a LinkedIn message or InMail, or a LinkedIn connection request (with a note/message). The reply rate is based on historical data and may change over time.

The formulas

Each formula below is verbatim from the metric definitions:

Metric	Formula	Denominator
Total people	Total = Contacted + Out of Office + Bounced + Auto Replied contacts	—
Delivery rate	Delivered emails × 100 ÷ Total people	Total people
Open rate	Opened emails × 100 ÷ Contacted	Contacted
Reply rate	Replies × 100 ÷ Contacted	Contacted
Interested	Interested × 100 ÷ Contacted	Contacted
Meetings booked	Meetings booked × 100 ÷ Contacted	Contacted
Opt-out rate	Opted out × 100 ÷ Contacted	Contacted
Bounce rate	Bounced emails × 100 ÷ Total people	Total people
Not reached	Out of Office + Bounced + Auto Replied contacts; rate = Not reached × 100 ÷ Total people	Total people

The denominator split is deliberate: delivery and bounce rates use Total people, so they measure list quality across everyone enrolled; open, reply, interested, meetings, and opt-out rates use Contacted, so they measure engagement only among people who actually received something. Delivery rate excludes Bounced contacts but includes Out of Office and Auto replies; open and reply rates include neither. Interested counts come from the Inbox category. Total accounts is the number of companies involved, based on Total people.

Result

Counters and rates update as events arrive. The opt-out rate updates in real time; update timing for the other metrics is not documented. Hovering over Not reached on the Reports page breaks it down into Out of Office, Bounced, and Auto Replied contacts.

Deleting contacts and metrics

Action	Effect on metrics
Delete a contact	Total people decreases
Delete a team member (team reports)	Metrics do not change
Remove the Opted Out status from a contact	The opt-out value changes
Delete a contact that has the Opted Out status	The opt-out metric does not change
Delete the contact from the sequence and remove the Opted Out status	The contact is not included in the stats

Exceptions

Totals across multiple time ranges can exceed the overall total for a sequence — that is expected, not a bug.
CSV sequence reports use their own denominators: Click through rate = Clicked count ÷ Delivered count × 100 (Delivered, not Contacted), while Open rate % and Reply rate % divide by Contacted count and Bounce rate % divides by Prospects count. Deleted email accounts are still included in report stats.
Opens and clicks require tracking to be enabled — with opens or link tracking off, those counters stay at zero without meaning nobody opened. See Statistics do not match.

Configuration that changes this rule

The formulas themselves are fixed. Opens tracking and link tracking (Sequence > Settings > General Settings, both off by default) determine whether open and click data exists at all. Inbox categorization feeds the Interested metric — see Reply management.

Limits

Limit	Value
Opt-out rate refresh	Real time
Reply rate stability	Based on historical data; may change over time
Time-range totals	The sum across ranges may be higher than the overall total
Update timing for other metrics	Not documented

FAQ

Why is my delivery rate high while my open rate looks low?

Different denominators. Delivery rate divides by Total people and includes Out of Office and Auto replies as delivered; open rate divides by the smaller Contacted count and excludes them. The two rates are not directly comparable.

Does an out-of-office reply count as a reply?

No. Out of Office and Auto Replied contacts are excluded from both Contacted and the reply-rate numerator. They appear in Not reached instead — see Reply detection for how classification happens.

Why did my reply rate change for a past period?

The reply rate is based on historical data and may change over time — for example, as late replies arrive and distinct-contact counts update. Compare like for like before treating it as an error; see Statistics do not match.

Does deleting a contact clean them out of my stats?

Deleting a contact decreases Total people, but an Opted Out contact's opt-out metric stays unless you remove the status and delete them from the sequence. Deleting a team member from team reports changes nothing.

Build with Reply

REST API: docs.reply.io — statistics and reporting endpoints
CLI: agents.reply.io/cli — the reports commands