Avoiding AutoReply Endless Loop

AutoReply is an email message automatically sent in reply to any email message you receive.

It is typically useful in two scenarios -

1. You go out On Vacation and you want to let anyone who sends you an email know about it, so that they expect a delay in getting back to them.

2. You have a Help Desk system and you want to let customers know a ticket was generated for them, average response times, frequently asked questions and answers etc.

Consider This Scenario:

One of our Realtor clients recently went out on vacation and set a basic On Vacation autoreply with their web host. While the realtor was on vacation, he received an email from Washington Mutual. The autoreply email went out to let Washington Mutual know he's on vacation.

Unfortunately Washington Mutual too had an AutoReply system in place, designed to send an automated reply for every email message they received...

When our Realtor client came back from his short vacation, he was shocked to find 17,000 emails in his Inbox. Ouch!

The lesson?

If you're going to setup an AutoReply message, make sure you're either using a help desk system with a built-in AutoReply mechanism that limits sending a single AutoReply message per recipient per day (if two emails come in from John@Smith.com in one day, John will receive a single AutoReply).

Or if you're using an On Vacation autoreply, set the "Reply to" email address to "noreply@yourdomain.com". Make sure emails to noreply@yourdomain.com are bounced back. This will stop any possible AutoReply endless loop before it snowballs.