Email Reply Management (ERM) hands you as much or as little control as you want. Some teams don't want ERM touching their MAP at all — they just route each reply to the right inbox. Others automate everything a human would normally do next. Most land somewhere in between.
If you'd rather a person always handle next steps, forwarding is for you: based on the category, each reply gets routed to the right person on your team to take it from there. If you want to automate the whole thing, MAP actions are for you, and your creativity is the only limit. Most teams combine the two — forwarding for some categories, full automation for others.
Here are a few use cases to spark ideas for what you can automate.
1. Suppress a lead based on how long they're out of office
Say you want to suppress a lead who'll be out of office longer than a set amount of time. ERM handles this cleanly — and it's a great example because it uses all three pieces of the pipeline: categorization, data extraction, and actions.
Step 1 — Categorize the reply as Out of Office
This category ships out of the box with allGood, but you're free to extend the prompt.
Category: Out of Office
Automatic out-of-office replies, vacation responders, or messages
indicating the recipient is away.
Step 2 — Extract the return date
Pull the return date out of the reply, when the sender includes one in a usable format.
Field: returnDate
The date the sender says they will return, formatted strictly as
ISO YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2026-08-15), if mentioned. If the year is left
out, assume the year is the current one.
Step 3 — Suppress the lead if the return date is far enough out
This is the most involved step. You only suppress the lead if the return date is past a set threshold — two weeks out, in this example.
Action: Sync Lead
marketingSuspended = true
allGoodCategorization = allGood - Lead OOO until {{ extractedFields["returnDate"] }}
Only if:
{%- assign cutoff = "now" | date: "%s" | plus: 1209600 -%}
{%- assign back = extractedFields.returnDate | date: "%s" | plus: 0 -%}
{%- if extractedFields.returnDate != blank and back >= cutoff -%}true{%- endif -%}
2. Create a new lead when an old one leaves the company
When a lead leaves their company, their auto-reply often names a replacement contact. ERM can create that new lead in your MAP automatically — but only once you actually have enough information to do it.
Step 1 — Categorize the reply as Left Company
This one also ships out of the box, but feel free to extend it.
Category: Left Company
The person is NO LONGER at the organization — the address you
emailed is dead or will be. Look for "no longer with," "has left
the company," "departed," or an auto-reply naming a replacement
contact. The replacement contact is a DIFFERENT person, not a new
address for the same one. If the sender says they're the same
person reachable at a new address, classify as Changed Email
instead.
Step 2 — Fetch the old lead's company and extract the new contact's info
First, fetch the original lead's company from HubSpot. Then extract the replacement contact's name and email, if the old lead provided them.
Field: newContactFirstName
First name of a replacement contact, if mentioned.
Field: newContactLastName
Last name of a replacement contact, if mentioned.
Field: newContactEmail
Email address of a replacement contact, if mentioned.
Step 3 — Write the action
To show off a different MAP, this example uses HubSpot. First, suspend marketing to the original lead and update the custom allgood_categorization field to record why they were removed. Then create the new lead — but only if you have a first name, last name, and email for them — and set their company to match the old lead's. You can optionally unsubscribe the old lead as well.
Action: Unsubscribe old lead
Sync old contact:
allgood_categorization = Left Company - Removed Lead
Create new contact:
company = {{ hubspotContact.properties["company"] }}
lastname = {{ extractedFields["newContactLastName"] }}
firstname = {{ extractedFields["newContactFirstName"] }}
allgood_categorization = Left Company - Replacement Lead
Only if:
{{ extractedFields.newContactEmail != blank
and extractedFields.newContactFirstName != blank
and extractedFields.newContactLastName != blank
and hubspotContact.properties["company"] != blank }}
3. Unsubscribe a contact with the reason saved for later
This is by far the simplest use case here, but it's powerful for a different reason: it builds a human-readable audit trail. When a lead unsubscribes, you can opt them out in your MAP and write the reason to a custom field, so your ops team can look back later and understand exactly why it happened.
Step 1 — Categorize the reply as Unsubscribe
Another out-of-the-box category — extend as needed.
Category: Unsubscribe
Messages requesting to be removed from mailing lists, unsubscribe
requests, or opt-out requests.
Step 2 — Unsubscribe the lead and log why
Opt the lead out in your MAP, then write to a custom reason field. This example uses Salesforce, but the pattern works with any MAP.
Action: Unsubscribe lead
Sync Lead:
allgood_reason__c = [allGood] {{ classification }}: {{ rationale }}
Wrapping up
Each of these examples is meant to spark ideas, not box you in — mix and match categorization, extraction, and actions however fits the way your team actually works. And if you want your categories classifying exactly the way you intend before you build actions on top of them, start with our guide on writing category definitions.
