When sending a large email communication particularly on behalf of a senior leader or executive, automatic replies such as out-of-office messages can result in a high volume of responses being sent back to the sender’s inbox.
Poppulo’s
Prevent Automatic Replies feature helps reduce these responses and the inbox clutter they can create.
How Automatic Reply Prevention Works
When automatic reply prevention is enabled, Poppulo attempts to prevent recipients’ email systems from sending automatic replies, such as out-of-office messages, back to the sender.
Your Enterprise Administrator can choose whether
Prevent Automatic Replies is enabled by default for your enterprise.
- If it’s enabled by default, you can turn it off for an individual email before sending.
- If it’s not enabled by default, you can turn it on for an individual email before sending.
Important: Whether automatic replies are prevented depends on the recipient’s email provider and configuration and cannot be guaranteed. Some automatic replies may still be sent.
Configure Automatic Reply Prevention by default for your Enterprise
Enterprise Administrators can configure the default behaviour in
Account Settings.
To configure the default:
- Go to Account Settings.
- Find Prevent Automatic Replies.
- Select the Prevent Automatic Replies checkbox to enable automatic reply prevention by default for email communications across the enterprise.When enabled, Prevent automatic replies for this email will be selected by default for email communications.
Communicators can override this default for an individual email before sending.
Allow Automatic Replies for an Individual Email
If your enterprise has
Prevent Automatic Replies enabled by default,
Prevent automatic replies for this email will be selected during the email send journey.
If you want to allow automatic replies for a particular email, clear
Prevent automatic replies for this email before sending.
When cleared, Poppulo will not attempt to prevent automatic replies for that email. Automatic replies generated by recipients’ email systems may then be sent to the sender email address.
Changing this option applies only to the individual email. It does not change the default configured by your Enterprise Administrator.
Why can’t Poppulo Guarantee that Automatic Replies will be Prevented?
Automatic replies are generated by the recipient’s email environment, not by Poppulo.
When
Prevent Automatic Replies is enabled, Poppulo includes information with the outgoing email that asks receiving email systems not to generate certain automatic responses. Whether that request is recognised and honoured depends on the recipient’s email provider and configuration.
Factors that can affect this behaviour include:
- The recipient’s email provider or mail server
- Organisation-specific email or transport rules
- Security gateways and other email-processing services
- The recipient’s individual mailbox configuration
As a result, some recipients may still generate automatic replies even when
Prevent Automatic Replies is enabled.
Which Email Providers Support Automatic Reply Prevention?
Support varies between email providers.
Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft 365 provide mechanisms for preventing automatic responses, including out-of-office notifications. Other email providers may also recognise indicators used to identify automatically generated or bulk email, but their behaviour can vary.
For this reason,
Prevent Automatic Replies is a best-effort capability. Poppulo cannot guarantee that automatic replies will be prevented for a particular recipient or email provider.
Technical Information
When
Prevent Automatic Replies is enabled, Poppulo uses recognised email headers to indicate to receiving email systems that automatic responses should not be sent.
These include:
Auto-Submitted is a standards-based header used to identify automatically generated email.
Precedence: bulk is commonly used to identify bulk email, while
X-Auto-Response-Suppress: OOF is a Microsoft-specific mechanism used to request that out-of-office responses are not sent.
Different email systems may interpret these headers differently, so automatic replies cannot be guaranteed to be prevented.
When should I use Prevent Automatic Replies?
Prevent Automatic Replies can be particularly useful when:
- Sending a communication to a large audience
- Sending an email on behalf of a senior leader or executive
- The sender does not need to receive recipients’ out-of-office responses
- Automatic responses could create unnecessary inbox clutter
If you need to receive automatic responses for a particular communication, clear
Prevent automatic replies for this email before sending.
