Running the pipeline

Managing replies

6 min readPipeline

When a contact replies to an email or LinkedIn message in Lemlist, Kai receives the reply via webhook, classifies it automatically, and updates the contact's status. Interested replies trigger an alert and surface in the Replies tab for rep follow-up.

How classification works

Kai reads the reply content with Claude and assigns one of five classifications:

Interested

The contact expressed genuine interest or asked a question that signals buying intent. This triggers a handraiser alert and moves the contact to the rep for follow-up.

Not interested

The contact explicitly declined. For ABM accounts, this triggers a 90-day cooldown. The sequence in Lemlist is paused.

Out of office

An automated out-of-office reply. The contact stays in sequence and the next step fires on its normal schedule.

Referral

The contact pointed you to a different person. Kai flags this for follow-up. The referred contact's details are surfaced in the Replies tab.

Other

Everything else: questions that do not signal intent, bounce notifications, or unclear replies. Review manually.

The Replies tab

All classified replies appear in the Replies tab in Kai. Each entry shows the contact's name, company, the reply text, Kai's classification, and three follow-up email variants Kai has drafted: Educate, Inspire, and Book.

The follow-up variants give the rep a starting point for the next email. They are not sent automatically. The rep reviews them, picks the best approach, edits if needed, and sends from their own inbox.

Interested reply workflow

When Kai classifies a reply as Interested:

The contact's status updates to Handraiser in Kai
A Telegram alert fires to the configured alert channel (if set up)
A task is created in HubSpot and assigned to the rep (if HubSpot is connected)
The contact appears highlighted in the Replies tab with the three follow-up variants ready

From this point, the rep takes over. Kai does not send any further automated touches to an Interested contact. The rep's job is to move the conversation forward toward a meeting.

Speed matters on interested replies. Research consistently shows that response speed is one of the strongest predictors of conversion from interested reply to booked meeting. Aim to follow up within the same business day.

Correcting a misclassification

Kai occasionally misclassifies a reply, most commonly confusing a polite decline for Interested, or an ambiguous response for Other. In the Replies tab, you can change the classification on any reply by clicking the classification badge. The corrected classification is used as a learning signal in the weekly self-review.