How to handle people replying to your marketing emails 

Every time you write an email to your customer, it’s an opportunity for you to get feedback and strengthen that relationship. But as your business starts to scale, how do you handle the volume of reponses? You might be tempted to switch your email address to “noreply”. Please don’t do it.

As of 2025, Microsoft requires that Reply-To addresses on bulk email are valid and capable of receiving replies. Google has tightened its sender requirements as well. Using a noreply address doesn't just frustrate customers anymore. It can get your emails blocked.

Replies are also one of the strongest positive engagement signals for mailbox providers. When recipients respond to your emails, it tells spam filters your messages are legitimate. Using a noreply address removes this signal entirely and may indirectly increase spam complaints, since frustrated recipients who can't reply sometimes mark the email as spam instead.

One thing you can do to handle the volume of replies is to split replies among different people. You could give each customer their own contact within your company. Then when they reply they get the same person every time.

Another thing you can do is aggregate all the responses in to helpdesk software. I’d recommend using helpdesk software that is invisible to your customers. When they reply to you, you wouldn’t want to send them an automatic response with a ticket number.

• Noreply addresses kill customer relationships and hurt your sender reputation. As of 2025, Microsoft requires that Reply-To addresses on bulk email can actually receive mail.
• Route all customer replies to helpdesk software so your team has shared visibility, conversation history, and response time tracking.
• Assign each customer a named contact within your company. When they reply, they hear back from a real person, not a ticket system.
• You can set this up in about an hour: create a support mailbox, forward replies to your helpdesk, and respond from there.
• Treating every marketing email as the start of a conversation (not a broadcast) improves deliverability, reduces churn, and surfaces product feedback you'd otherwise miss.

You might be handling replies from your personal inbox right now, and it's probably working fine. But as your team and customer base grow, that approach breaks down fast. Someone goes on vacation, a customer follows up on a thread from three months ago, or a new hire needs context on an account. Without a shared system, things slip through the cracks.

LiveChat AI found that businesses that respond to customer emails within one hour are 7x more likely to convert that lead. About 65% of customers expect a faster response than they did five years ago, and roughly 60% define "immediate" as within 10 minutes.

Stripe talked about how everyone has access to every email within their organization. I’m advocating that at least for customer replies, you want to bring communication in to one place.

• Faster onboarding: New hires can read previous conversations and get up to speed without shadowing someone for a week.
• Team-wide visibility: Everyone can passively stay current on customer issues, even if they're not the one responding.
• Cross-channel awareness: You can spot when the same customer contacts you through email, chat, and social, and respond coherently.
• Seamless coverage: When someone's out, a colleague can pick up the conversation with full history instead of asking the customer to repeat themselves.
• Accountability metrics: Track response times, identify bottlenecks, and make sure nobody falls through the cracks.

So how do you handle your marketing emails at scale? Route them to a helpdesk. Here's how:

You need a real email address that customers see when they hit reply. This doesn't have to be complicated. We use a single addressfor both newsletter replies and onboarding email replies. Keeping it simple means fewer things to maintain.

The address should be a real person's name, not a generic "support@" or "team@." Customers engage more when they feel like they're writing to a human being, even if the replies are managed by your whole team behind the scenes.

Most helpdesk tools work by giving you a long, unique forwarding address. You set up your support mailbox to auto-forward everything to that address, and every reply lands in your helpdesk automatically.

In Google Workspace, the easiest approach is to create a new group and add your helpdesk forwarding address as the only member. This avoids the need to configure individual forwarding rules and makes it easy to add more destinations later.

Once replies are flowing into your helpdesk, respond from there instead of your personal inbox. This means every reply is visible to the team, logged in the customer's history, and counted in your response time metrics.

If you get pulled into a meeting or go on vacation, a colleague can jump in without the customer noticing a gap. That's the whole point of this setup: the customer experience stays personal even when different team members are responding.

How Customer.io makes this easier: If you're sending marketing and onboarding emails through Customer.io, you can configure your reply-to address at the campaign level. That means different campaigns can route replies to different team members or mailboxes, without changing your main sending address. Combined with Customer.io's webhook actions and native integrations, you can automatically route replies based on campaign type, customer segment, or lifecycle stage.

This setup takes about an hour and solves a problem that only gets harder as you scale. You get the structure and metrics of a proper support workflow without sacrificing the experience of a customer hitting reply and hearing back from a real person.

The companies that treat marketing email as a two-way channel, not a broadcast medium, are the ones building real relationships with their customers. And those relationships show up in the numbers: better deliverability, lower churn, and a steady stream of product feedback that no survey could replicate.

Happy emailing,
Colin

Does using a no-reply email address affect deliverability? Yes. Noreply addresses prevent recipients from responding, which removes a key positive signal for mailbox providers. When people can't reply, they're more likely to mark your email as spam instead. As of 2025, Microsoft explicitly requires that Reply-To addresses can receive mail, so no-reply addresses may cause your emails to be blocked entirely.

What's the best reply-to address for marketing emails? Use a real person's name whenever possible (e.g., colin@yourcompany.com) rather than a generic address like marketing@ or info@. Customers are more likely to engage when they feel like they're writing to a human. If volume gets too high for one inbox, route replies to a shared helpdesk behind the scenes so the experience still feels personal.

How do I handle a high volume of email replies without overwhelming my team? Set up forwarding from your reply-to address to helpdesk software like Help Scout, Zendesk, or Front. This gives your whole team visibility into replies, lets people cover for each other, and tracks response times. The key is choosing a helpdesk that's invisible to the customer, meaning they never see a ticket number or automated response.

How fast should I respond to marketing email replies? As fast as you can. Research from 2025 shows that businesses responding within one hour are 7x more likely to convert a lead. About a third of customers expect a response within one hour when they email a company. Even if you can't resolve the issue immediately, acknowledging the reply quickly shows customers someone is listening.

Should I use a shared inbox or helpdesk software for email replies? Helpdesk software is the stronger choice for most growing teams. A shared inbox works in the early days, but it doesn't give you response time metrics, conversation assignment, or the ability to see when the same customer contacts you through multiple channels. The helpdesk doesn't need to be complicated. Route replies there, respond from there, and you've got structure without sacrificing the personal feel.

Can marketing email replies actually improve my sender reputation? Absolutely. Replies are one of the strongest signals to email providers that your messages are wanted and legitimate. When recipients respond to your emails, it tells Gmail, Outlook, and others that you're sending real, valuable communication, not spam. This makes every future email you send more likely to land in the inbox.