How stop-on-reply works
How Distro stops follow-ups when a prospect replies, which replies count, what out-of-office and automatic replies do, and when a sequence keeps going.
When a prospect replies to a campaign email, Distro stops sending them follow-ups from that campaign. You don't need to switch anything on: it's part of how follow-up triggers work, and the default trigger for every follow-up is If no reply.
What happens when someone replies
- Prospect replies to your campaign email
- The reply arrives in the mailbox of the Google account that sent it
- Distro picks up the reply and classifies it
- Their place in the campaign is stopped (status: Replied)
- Before any later follow-up, Distro checks again for a reply
- Distro picks up the reply. It reads new mail in the sending Google account's mailbox and keeps only messages that belong to a Distro conversation: replies in the thread of a campaign email, or replies that reference one. Unrelated mail in your mailbox is ignored and not stored. See How Distro detects replies.
- Distro classifies it. A message written by a person counts as a reply, whether it reads as interested, not interested or neutral. Automatic messages don't (see below).
- Distro stops that person in that campaign. Their status in the campaign's Recipients table becomes Replied, and the conversation appears in Outreach → Inbox.
- Every follow-up is checked again just before it's sent. Even if a follow-up was already waiting for its send slot, Distro re-checks its trigger at the last moment, so a reply that arrives during the wait still prevents it.
Which replies stop a sequence
| Incoming message | Stops follow-ups? |
|---|---|
| A person's reply (interested, not interested, or neutral) | Yes, for that campaign |
| A reply asking to be removed ("unsubscribe", "remove me", "stop emailing") | Yes, in every campaign, and they're never emailed again |
| Out-of-office reply | No. Follow-ups continue as scheduled |
| Other automatic replies (messages marked as auto-generated) | No |
| Spam-challenge messages ("verify you're human") | No |
| Hard bounce | Yes, in every campaign, and the address is blocked |
| Soft bounce (temporary delivery problem) | No |
Distro's sorting is rule-based and careful, but not perfect. If an automatic reply was really written by a person, or the reverse, you can correct it (see below).
What stop-on-reply covers, and what it doesn't
- Per person, per campaign. A reply stops the person who replied, in the campaign they replied to. If they're also in another campaign, that campaign continues for them.
- Not per company. Colleagues at the same company who are in the campaign keep receiving their emails.
- Not meetings booked elsewhere. Distro doesn't connect to your calendar, so booking a meeting without replying doesn't stop the sequence.
- Steps meant for repliers. If a follow-up still ahead uses the trigger If replied or No matter what, a plain reply does not stop the sequence, because that step is supposed to reach people who replied. Unsubscribe requests and hard bounces always stop it.
Correct a reply Distro sorted wrongly
If a person's reply was sorted as an automatic reply (so the sequence kept going):
- Open the conversation in Outreach → Inbox.
- In Sort as…, choose Human reply, Interested, Not interested or Neutral.
From then on, the person counts as having replied, so any remaining If no reply follow-ups are skipped. If someone asked to be removed and Distro missed it, block their address in People → Unsubscribed (Block address) as well.
When a reply can't be seen
Distro can only act on replies it can see. A reply won't stop follow-ups if:
- It went to a Reply to address in a different mailbox, not the Google account the campaign sent from.
- The prospect wrote a brand-new email instead of replying to yours.
- The sending Google account is disconnected, so new mail can't be read. See Google account disconnected.
If a sequence continued after a reply, work through A prospect replied but the sequence continued.
Email + LinkedIn campaigns and LinkedIn campaigns
In Email + LinkedIn campaigns, Stop on reply is always on: a reply by email or on LinkedIn stops every remaining step for that person, on both channels. For LinkedIn campaigns, see how LinkedIn replies are handled.
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