Outreach channels

Capability Reviewed · not yet fact-checked

At a glance

Summary

Reply executes multi-step email outreach: templated, personalized emails sent from your connected email accounts inside schedules and daily limits, with A/B variants, threaded follow-ups, three unsubscribe mechanisms, and reply handling you configure per sequence.

Problems it solves

• Follow-up discipline — steps happen without a human remembering
• Sending infrastructure: account assignment, daily caps, delays, throttled contact starts
• Copy testing with per-variant statistics
• Personalization at scale through variables, fallbacks, and spintax rather than manual edits

What Reply can do

• Send sequences from one or several connected email accounts, with optional matching of contacts to sending accounts by email provider
• Add A/B variants to any email step — clone, edit, pause, resume, or remove variants, and compare their statistics in the sequence Stats tab
• Personalize with contact, team, custom, and advanced variables, including conditional logic and fallback values for missing data
• Rotate wording with spintax — a Random variable picks one of your listed options per message sent
• Send follow-ups in the same thread by leaving the follow-up subject line empty
• Enforce sending discipline: max emails per day (up to 10,000), delay between sends, max daily emails per contact, and a same-domain daily cap that excludes common free domains
• Throttle new contact starts with Max new daily contacts — contacts wait in a Throttled state and enter Step 1 at your chosen daily rate, in add-full-amount or add-until-capacity mode
• Handle replies per sequence: mark the contact finished or continue the remaining follow-ups
• Offer three unsubscribe mechanisms: an opt-out text or link appended per email account, a custom opt-out link placed inside any step, and a List-Unsubscribe header toggle per sequence
• Send in plain-text mode (default for new sequences) — all HTML, tracking, and images removed while attachments still send
• Track opens and clicks when enabled (both are off by default), and send test emails from any step editor before launch

What Reply cannot do

• Exceed the per-account daily cap — 400 emails per day on paid plans, 200 on trial — regardless of sequence settings
• Track opens or clicks while plain-text sending mode is on, or thread follow-ups when the Step 1 subject contains symbols or prefixes like "Re:"
• Stop a contact when they answer a direct email — only replies to sequence emails set Finished; direct replies set Replied without stopping the sequence
• Place variables inside a spintax block — variable chaining within Random is not supported
• Apply opt-out links to test emails — they lack sequence and contact context
• Guarantee the List-Unsubscribe header is shown — visibility depends on the recipient's email provider

Required inputs

Contacts with valid email addresses (validate first — see Data enrichment); at least one connected email account; a sequence with email steps and templates; a schedule.

Produced outputs

Sent and scheduled emails, threaded conversations, per-contact statuses (Replied, Finished, Bounced, Opted Out), and per-step, per-variant statistics — opens, clicks, replies — feeding campaign analytics.

Use Reply when

• You want follow-up sequences executed automatically under real sending discipline — caps, delays, schedules, throttling
• You test copy and need variant-level statistics per step
• Compliance matters: opt-out text or link, one-click opt-out page, and List-Unsubscribe header are built in

Do not use Reply when

• You need transactional or bulk newsletter email — Reply's limits and threading model are built for outreach conversations, not broadcast volume
• You need marketing-automation journeys keyed to website behavior — pair Reply with a marketing platform instead

What you still need to build

• The copy itself and your testing plan — Reply distributes variants randomly and reports results; you decide what wins
• List quality: targeting and segmentation happen before the sequence — see Build a prospect list

capability: email_outreach
supported: true
interfaces:
  product_ui: live
  api: live
  mcp: live
  cli: live
required_objects:
  - contact
  - sequence
  - email_account
side_effects:
  - schedules_messages
  - sends_messages
  - updates_contact_statuses
  - updates_statistics
human_approval_recommended: true

Limits

• 400 emails per day per email account on paid plans, 200 on trial — the platform ceiling
• Max number of emails per day per sequence: configurable up to 10,000, never above the sum of account caps
• Max daily emails per contact defaults to 1; Manual email steps are exempt from the daily limits
• Recommended delay between sends: 120–180 seconds; the system adds roughly 10–15 seconds of its own
• Bounce-rate thresholds stop a sending step at 8% — see Bounce handling
• Full table: Limits

FAQ

How do follow-ups land in the same thread?

Give Step 1 a subject and leave the follow-up subject lines empty — Reply groups them into the original thread. If the Step 1 subject contains symbols or prefixes such as "Re:", follow-ups will not thread and will have no subject. Test emails always arrive separately, because tests are not linked into a thread.

What exactly happens when a prospect replies?

With replies handling set to Mark as finished, the contact stops receiving follow-ups and becomes Finished. Set to Continue sending emails, the remaining steps still go out. A reply to a direct (non-sequence) email sets Replied but does not stop the sequence. See Reply detection and Sequence stopping.

Why are opens not being tracked?

Opens tracking is disabled by default, and plain-text sending mode — on by default for new sequences — removes tracking entirely along with HTML and images. Enable opens or link tracking in sequence settings and turn plain-text mode off if tracking matters more than the deliverability gain.

Who receives variant A versus variant B?

Distribution is random per step — you cannot pin a contact to a variant, and a contact who received variant A in Step 1 may receive variant B in Step 2. Copying a step copies all its variants. Compare results with the A/B toggle in the sequence Stats tab.

Related

• Launch an outbound campaign — the full workflow
• Sequences · Sequence steps · Email accounts
• Sending schedules · Mailbox selection
• Deliverability
• Configure sending limits

Build with Reply

• REST API: docs.reply.io — sequences, steps, variants, and email-account endpoints
• MCP: agents.reply.io/mcp — sequence creation, settings, and sending operations