What is a positive vs negative reply?

Categorizing replies helps measure actual campaign effectiveness beyond raw response counts.

Positive replies:

• Express interest in learning more
• Ask questions about your offering
• Request meetings or calls
• Provide referrals to appropriate person
• Indicate future timing might work better

Negative replies:

• Explicit not interested responses
• Requests to stop emailing
• Hostile or complaint responses
• Unsubscribe requests in reply form

Neutral replies:

• Out-of-office responses
• Left company notifications
• Wrong person referrals without introduction
• Questions that don't indicate interest

Why categorization matters:

• Total reply rate overstates success if most replies are negative
• Positive reply rate is the meaningful conversion metric
• Negative reply patterns reveal targeting problems
• High negative rates suggest list or message issues

Tracking approach:

• Tag or categorize each reply in your CRM
• Calculate positive reply rate separately
• Monitor ratio of positive to negative over time
• Use negative feedback to improve targeting