For years, Buttondown's approach to replies has been minimalistic: you send an email, we send it to your subscribers, that email is sent from an email address that you own, maybe it has a reply-to address that you own too, and that's it. If people want to reply, they can reply to that email address, and you'll get it in your inbox. That's how email works!
This is a great system, and for many people, it's all they need. But it means there's a lot of stuff Buttondown can't do, because replies don't go through our system:
- We can't trigger automations based on replies
- We can't allow programmatic access to replies via the API
- We can't provide analytics around replies
- We can't provide a unified inbox for replies
- We can't surface those replies on the web
So, today, we're introducing a new features: reply tracking. Just like open and click tracking, this is opt-in — Buttondown will never track replies unless you explicitly ask us to.
To enable reply tracking, head to your account settings and head over to the "tracking" section. If you enable reply tracking, you'll be able to see replies to your emails in the analytics dashboard for your emails, as well as set up webhooks and/or automations to trigger based on replies.
(We haven't quite shipped the unified inbox or surfacing replies on the web archive yet, but it's coming soon!)