# Replies & email threads

Learn where coach replies to your recruiting emails show up, how in-app reply tracking organizes conversations, and how to reply without leaving ProductiveRecruit.

Every email you send through ProductiveRecruit goes out through your own connected Gmail account, so a coach's reply behaves like any other email you get. It lands in your inbox. With reply tracking on, it also shows up inside ProductiveRecruit, grouped into a conversation with everything else you've exchanged with that program.

## Replies land in your Gmail inbox

Because you're sending from your personal Gmail (not a shared or masked address), you never need a separate inbox to check for coach responses. Open Gmail the way you always do and a reply appears as a normal reply-to-thread, subject line intact, your original message quoted underneath.

If you're not seeing replies you expect, start with [Connecting your Gmail account](/docs/email/connect-gmail) to confirm your account is still connected and verified. A disconnected or expired connection is the most common cause.

## Turn on reply tracking

Go to your email setup and flip on **Track replies**. For a Gmail account, Google will ask you to grant read access, which is what lets ProductiveRecruit see the replies coming back. Once it's on, new coach replies appear in your ProductiveRecruit inbox within a few minutes of arriving.

> **Your email keeps working exactly as it does today**
>
> Reply tracking reads replies so it can thread them next to your outreach. It doesn't reroute your mail, delete anything, or send on your behalf. Coach replies still land in your Gmail inbox as usual, and you can turn tracking off at any time from the same switch.

## Your inbox, grouped by conversation

With tracking on, your emails page groups messages into **conversations** instead of a flat list of sends. Each one carries its program, subject, the latest snippet, and a count of unread messages, sorted by most recent activity.

Three filters tell you where each conversation stands:

- **Unread** — a coach message you haven't read yet.
- **Needs your reply** — the coach spoke last, so the ball is in your court. This is the list to work through first.
- **Awaiting reply** — you spoke last and haven't heard back. This is your follow-up list.

You can also narrow to a single college program, or to conversations where your email was opened or a link was clicked. See [How email tracking works](/docs/email/email-tracking) for what those signals mean.

## Reading a conversation

Opening a conversation shows the full back-and-forth in order, your sends and the coach's replies together in one timeline.

Long quoted text from earlier in the exchange is collapsed by default so you're reading the new message, not the same paragraph five times. Attachments on either side are downloadable right from the message. Opening a conversation marks it read and clears its unread badge.

## Replying without leaving the app

Hit **Reply** and write directly in the thread. Your reply goes out from the same connected account, threaded properly, so it lands in the coach's existing conversation rather than starting a new one. If several coaches are on the thread, your reply goes to all of them.

The reply composer gives you the same tools as the main one:

- Start from a saved [template](/docs/email/templates-and-variables) if you'd rather not start cold.
- Attach up to 3 files (PDF, PNG, or JPEG).
- **Save draft** to come back to it later. Your draft sits at the bottom of the thread where you left it.
- Send yourself a test copy first if you want to see how it reads.

## What counts as a reply

Not everything that comes back from a coach's address is a real response, so ProductiveRecruit sorts that out for you:

- **Out-of-office auto-replies** appear in the thread so you have the context, but they don't count as engagement. They don't mark the conversation unread, don't move it into "Needs your reply," and don't notify you.
- **Bounces and delivery failures** are never threaded as replies at all.
- **A genuine coach reply** marks the conversation unread, moves it to the top of your inbox, and notifies you.

## Conversations from before tracking

Emails you sent before turning on reply tracking still show up, but they're read-only. Those sends predate the identifiers that link a reply back to its original message, so a new reply on one of them can't be matched to the thread. You'll see a note on the conversation saying so, and no reply box. To continue one of those, reply from Gmail directly, or start a fresh email from the program's page and carry on from there.

## What's next

- Understand opens and clicks alongside replies in [Opens, clicks & views explained](/docs/tracking/opens-clicks-views)
- If a coach isn't responding at all, check [Deliverability & sending limits](/docs/email/deliverability-and-limits) to rule out a sending issue.
- Still nothing back? See [Why isn't a coach replying?](/docs/faq/no-coach-reply)

Source: https://productiverecruit.com/docs/email/replies-and-threads