> This page is part of the [Customer.io documentation](https://docs.customer.io). For the complete index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.customer.io/llms.txt).
> Last updated: July 10, 2026

# Inbound statuses and activities

We show activities for inbound messages to help you understand who replied to your messages. If you expect people to respond to a message as a call to action, then you can use these activities to track and troubleshoot responses.

 Have you set up inbound messaging?

You need to set up inbound messaging to see inbound metrics and activities. See [Getting started](/messaging/channels/sms/inbound/get-started/#set-up-inbound-message-handling) for more information.

## The Replied status

Most messages have statuses like `sent`, `opened`, `clicked`, and so on. For SMS and MMS messages, we also track `replied`. While sometimes your call to action might be for users to click a link, SMS lets you set an action item as a reply to a message with a particular keyword.

The `replied` status shows you if someone replied to your message.

[![The replied metric](https://docs.customer.io/images/inbound-sms-replied.png)](#6db31555f91ff25f3a0708595854ffa6-lightbox)

## Replies in the Activity Log

When you look at a person’s activity or the *Activity Log*, you can sort by the *Replied to SMS* activity. This will show you replies to SMS messages. Each activity shows the conversation and the complete reply.

You might look at these activities to see replies in context or troubleshoot messages to see if inbound messages did or didn’t contain the right keywords to trigger a reply.

[![The activity log showing inbound sms activities](https://docs.customer.io/images/inbound-sms-activity-log.png)](#3c7898cd5f4f94447721585c88d8e0db-lightbox)

## Use replies as conversion goals

Unlike events, you can’t use an inbound message directly as a conversion goal. You can, however, use a reply as criteria for a segment and treat segment membership as the goal.

So, for example, if your goal for a campaign is to get replies to a survey, you could create a segment containing people who replied to the survey and use that segment as your conversion criteria.

## Attributing replies to your messages

We attribute replies to the original delivery if the reply occurs within 72 hours of the original delivery. If the reply occurs outside the 72 hour window, we won’t attribute the reply to the original delivery.

This means that replies sent outside the 72 hour window aren’t counted as conversions or logged as a metric for a particular message, campaign, broadcast, etc.

*   *   [The Replied status](#the-replied-status)
    *   [Replies in the Activity Log](#replies-in-the-activity-log)
    *   [Use replies as conversion goals](#use-replies-as-conversion-goals)
    *   [Attributing replies to your messages](#attributing-replies-to-your-messages)

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