Auto-reply
A message sent automatically in response to an incoming email, such as an out-of-office notice, a ticket acknowledgement or a mailing list command reply.
What it means
RFC 3834 sets the rules. A responder should not answer messages marked Auto-Submitted with any value other than no, must not answer when the return address is null, may skip messages from mailing lists, and should send its reply to the Return-Path address rather than to From. The reply should itself carry Auto-Submitted: auto-replied, and may be sent with a null envelope sender so it cannot trigger a further response.
For bulk senders, auto-replies arrive at the reply address and sometimes at the bounce address. Bounce processing should recognise them instead of counting them as failures; Postmark, for example, classifies them as their own AutoResponder type.
Related terms
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- RFC 3834: Recommendations for Automatic Responses to Electronic Mailrfc-editor.org
- Postmark API: Bounce typespostmarkapp.com
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes