Issue with "reply to" | Community
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A
Anonymous
April 21, 2015
Solved

Issue with "reply to"

  • April 21, 2015
  • 5 replies
  • 2943 views
Hi Community, 

I sent out an email from our CEO but I wanted the reply's (especially the out of offices) to be sent to a different email address.  I set the reply to, to be our marketing email, and it worked for most of the emails, but the CEO still recieved several out of offices, why is this and how do I fix it? 

Thanks! 
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Best answer by SanfordWhiteman
@Kristen J There is no real-world standard for the Out of Office recipient -- some mailservers will send to the Reply-To, some to the From, and some to the envelope sender (which you won't see). This type of message hovers somewhere between a bounce and a reply, so semantically it can be difficult to determine the single "right" recipient to receive the knowledge that a message was received but will not be read immediately: is it the person who "owns" the original message who is the stakeholder, or is it the person who "owns" the (theoretical) replies to that message?

5 replies

Oz_Platero
Oz_Platero
New Participant
May 25, 2016

Hello Kristen,

Unfortunately this is an equation with many variables.  See these two articles that give an explanation of how this works in detail.

webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MtdgfARneAEJ:stackoverflow.com/questions/3178429/out-of-office-repl…

See the answer with 5 votes.

RFC 3834 - Recommendations for Automatic Responses to Electronic Mail

Thank you,

oz

    A
    Anonymous
    June 16, 2015

    Hey Kristen, I moved your question to a better location for more visibility.

    SanfordWhiteman
    SanfordWhitemanAccepted solution
    New Participant
    April 21, 2015
    @Kristen J There is no real-world standard for the Out of Office recipient -- some mailservers will send to the Reply-To, some to the From, and some to the envelope sender (which you won't see). This type of message hovers somewhere between a bounce and a reply, so semantically it can be difficult to determine the single "right" recipient to receive the knowledge that a message was received but will not be read immediately: is it the person who "owns" the original message who is the stakeholder, or is it the person who "owns" the (theoretical) replies to that message?
      P
      pierceu25628284
      New Participant
      September 10, 2015

      Thanks Sanford, this is exactly what I was looking for.

      A
      Anonymous
      April 21, 2015
      Hi Kara - thanks for your help! But why did most of the out of offices go to the marketing inbox and only some went directly to the from address? 
      A
      Anonymous
      April 21, 2015
      The "out of office" replies fire automatically and are not truly a "reply". A reply is when someone physically clicks on the button to respond. Because you had the CEO's email in the From field, the autoresponders go to his or her address.  

      I had the same thing happen to me and I learned this the hard way. I would set up an email that looks like it would belong to the CEO but have it be a generic inbox. 
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