Allen answers the DMs people send you first

With Auto reply on, Allen also handles the LinkedIn messages that arrive in your inbox from people it did not reach out to.

How it sorts them

Every new message is read once and sorted into one of four kinds:

• A prospect: someone who could buy from you. Allen answers in your voice and runs the same conversation as for a reply: questions, times, booking.
• A pitch: someone selling to you, whether an agency, a tool, a "free audit" or a partnership that is really their service. Allen sends one short, friendly no that mentions something from their message so it is clearly written for them, then stops. No questions, no second reply.
• Personal: a friend, a client, a colleague, a candidate, a recruiter about a job, anything that is not new business. Allen leaves it alone and says nothing.
• Spam: left alone.

Each one shows on the Activity tab as "Messaged you first", and the conversation drawer shows what Allen decided.

What Allen never touches

• Any conversation you have already written in. If you have ever sent a message in that thread, Allen stays out of it.
• Group chats, sponsored messages, and messages from company pages.
• Anyone who already has a one-to-one conversation with you is not sent a first outreach message either.

When you first turn it on

Allen looks back over the last seven days of your inbox once, so a buyer who wrote on Monday is not ignored because you connected on Wednesday. Older threads are not touched.

Turning it off

Auto reply off (the fifth switch) stops Allen answering incoming messages as well as replies to its own outreach. Allen still drafts a suggested answer for prospects on the Replies tab.

If a pitch gets a no it should not have

Tell us at support@tryallen.ai with the person's name. The sorting is good but not perfect, and you can add a rule under Train Allen such as "Treat messages from podcast hosts as personal, not pitches."