Unibox and AI labels
Replies to your campaigns, from every mailbox, in one inbox. Ballast reads each mailbox, matches replies to the lead and campaign, stops the sequence when someone answers, and lets you reply from the same thread.
Ballast is cold email software with every feature on every plan. Connect unlimited mailboxes, send sequences at a pace your domains survive, and handle replies in one inbox, priced by the emails you send.
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How replies arrive
- Ballast checks each mailbox that has sent at least one campaign email. IMAP mailboxes keep a live connection to the inbox and are also checked every minute. Microsoft mailboxes are checked every minute across all folders, Junk included. Replies usually show up within a minute.
- IMAP mailboxes are read in the inbox only, so a reply that Gmail files as spam isn't picked up.
- Ballast looks at the headers first and only downloads mail that belongs to your campaigns: replies to emails it sent, mail from your leads and bounce reports. The rest of the mailbox stays unread by Ballast.
- The first read of a new mailbox goes back to its first campaign email, at most 30 days.
What rules do, always
These run on every reply, with or without AI, and nothing leaves Ballast for them:
| Reply | What Ballast does |
|---|---|
| A person answered | The lead is marked replied, and with Stop on reply the sequence stops. A lead.replied webhook goes out. |
| Out of office | Labeled Out of office. The lead's sequence waits until the day after the return date it mentions (within the next 60 days), or 14 days if there is none. It doesn't count as a reply. |
| Other automatic reply | Labeled Automatic reply. Nothing else changes. |
| "stop", "unsubscribe" and short replies like them | Labeled Unsubscribe and the lead is unsubscribed everywhere. |
| Bounce report | Hard bounces mark the send and lead bounced and suppress the address. Soft bounces are only logged. |
AI labels (opt-in)
Turn on Settings, General, Label replies with AI to sort replies into Interested, Not interested, Meeting booked and the rest. It's off by default because a reply is someone else's words, and turning it on sends them to a third party. Owners and admins decide.
- What is sent: the reply's subject and its new text, with the quoted thread cut off, plus your labels' names and AI prompts. Not the lead's address or other fields.
- Where: an OpenAI model, with a Google Gemini model as the fallback.
- Only labels with an AI prompt can be picked. If none fits, the reply stays unlabeled for a person to decide. Edit prompts in Leads, Labels.
- Each AI label shows a one-line reason. A label you set by hand is never replaced by a later AI pass.
- Labels run their triggers however they were set: by AI, rules, a person or the API.
Turned off, rules still label out-of-office replies, automatic replies and unsubscribe requests.
Reading and filtering
- Filters in the side panel: All, Unread, each label with its count, No label, and each mailbox and campaign. On phones and with the panel closed, the same filters are in a menu above the list.
- A thread shows the campaign emails the lead got, folded to one line once a reply follows, then the replies. Quoted text is hidden behind Show quoted text.
- The lead card shows who the lead is and which campaign they came from.
- Mark a thread unread, or change its label from the label menu.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
j | Next thread |
k | Previous thread |
l | Label |
r | Reply |
e | Close the thread |
⌘ Enter | Send the reply |
Answering
Your answer goes from the mailbox the thread belongs to, to whoever wrote last, with Re: and the threading headers, so it lands in the same conversation on their side. The previous message is quoted below it. Answers need an active plan.
Answers don't count toward the mailbox's daily limit, and they don't add the mailbox's signature: type it if you want it.