Why are responses and bounces not tracked by YAMM?

If the tracking report from your Google Sheets doesn't update with responses and bounces, please read this article to understand why and find solutions to this tracking issue.

After sending a mail merge, you did receive some answers and/or bounces (delivery failures) in your mailbox.

warning However, your merge statuses didn't turn into RESPONDED or BOUNCED in your spreadsheet but stayed EMAIL_SENT (or other statuses like opened or clicked).

1. Gmail labels are missing in your emails sent

At the end of a mail merge, YAMM should automatically tag your mail merge ('YAMM - Your subject line') using Gmail labels.

To track bounces and responses, YAMM scans your mailbox and checks if there are any replies/bounces under these labels.

So if your answers/bounces are not tracked, it's usually because these labels are missing. YAMM can't then detect them, and your tracking report doesn't update accordingly.

not_interested If the Gmail label of your campaign is missing on a response/bounce, YAMM will not be able to record it.

Please find below three solutions to get your responses/bounces tracked in my Google Sheets, depending on your situation.

1.1. All your emails have already been tagged correctly

Check if all emails from your campaign are tagged with the right label.

If your responses and bounces are already put under the Gmail label, all you need to do is refresh your spreadsheet and open the tracking report again (Add-ons > Yet Another Mail Merge > Open tracking report). That is enough to update the tracker.

done Open your tracking sidebar again, and all responses/bounces will be updated in your spreadsheet.

1.2. Some emails have not been tagged with your subject line

If the rest of your campaign has been labelled, but only a few haven't, you should:

Type your campaign subject line between quotation mark "New YAMM feature" in the Gmail search bar.
Select all emails.
And then drag them to the corresponding folder/label from the left menu.

Then refresh your spreadsheet and open the tracking report again.

done Place all emails under the right label and open the tracking report to see responses/bounces.

1.3. None of your emails was tagged with the Gmail label

If the label doesn't exist, you should make sure that YAMM automatically creates the right one.

warning The label must be created by YAMM automatically, and not manually by you!

To do that, the best thing is to add your own email address at the bottom of your Google Sheets and send the same campaign to yourself (check this article: 'Resend your mail merge to the rest of your list on the same sheet').

That should trigger YAMM to add the label with your campaign subject line on the new email sent to yourself.

Then repeat 2. by placing all the previous emails into this new Gmail label.

done Add yourself to your spreadsheet and send the same email to yourself to trigger YAMM to add the label on this new email. Then put all previous emails under this label.

2. The bounce email is sent from a different thread

Depending on your recipient's mail server, Gmail cannot automatically put the bounce message into the correct thread. YAMM doesn't detect bounces and update the response spreadsheet with the correct statuses if bounce emails are sent in different threads from the initial YAMM emails. Learn more about Gmail threads.