Summary: Every prospect in a campaign carries a status. Some statuses are set automatically by workflow rules, and others are assigned by AI when a prospect replies. This article explains what each status means, how to change a status manually, and how to customize the prompts the AI uses to classify replies.
Who this is for: Anyone running campaigns who wants to understand prospect statuses — and admins who want the AI's Interested / Not Interested classification to match their team's definitions.
The two kinds of statuses
Alta uses nine prospect statuses, split into two groups.
Fixed statuses are assigned automatically based on the prospect's workflow progress. You can't pick one of these on a prospect yourself. No Response is the status you can configure in Status Settings — how long Alta waits, and whether a quiet stretch after a reply still counts.
New — Prospect was recently created and has not been contacted yet.
Pending Outreach — Prospect is scheduled for outreach but no message has been sent yet.
Pending Reply — First outreach was sent and awaiting a reply from the prospect.
No Response — Outreach has finished. A prospect who never replied is marked No Response when the sequence ends, or after the wait you set. A reply keeps them out of No Response unless Also mark prospects who replied is on.
Bounced / Invalid — Messages bounced or the prospect contact information is invalid.
AI classified statuses are assigned by AI after a prospect replies, based on what the reply says:
Interested — Prospect responded positively, asked questions, or showed clear engagement with the offer.
Not Interested — Prospect explicitly declined, said it is not relevant, or asked to stop contact.
Meeting Booked — Prospect agreed to or has booked a meeting, demo, or call.
Unclassified — Prospect replied but their intent is unclear — neither clearly positive nor negative.
Hover over any status badge in the prospects table to see its current description.
When a prospect becomes No Response
No Response is assigned by a rule, not by the AI. Open it from a campaign's Prospects section: ⋮ → Status Settings. The setting applies to every campaign on the account.
Turn on Wait before marking No Response to hold the status for a number of days, from 1 to 365. Leave it off and a prospect who never replied is marked No Response as soon as outreach finishes.
With the wait on, set Mark as No Response after that many days without a reply.
Also mark prospects who replied applies that same wait to prospects who replied and then went quiet, including prospects in Interested, Meeting Intent, or Unclassified. Not Interested and Meeting Booked stay as they are. Leave it off and a reply keeps a prospect out of No Response for good.
Turning the wait off marks prospects whose outreach already finished and who never replied. Prospects who already replied stay on their current status.
How to customize AI status classification
The descriptions above are also the prompts that guide the AI. Editing them changes how future replies get classified.
Open a campaign and go to its Prospects section.
Click the ⋮ (three-dot) menu next to the prospects list and select Status Settings.
In the Status settings dialog, Fixed statuses are listed first. No Response has the wait settings above. The other fixed statuses have no settings. The AI classified statuses follow.
For each AI status, edit the Description prompt — this tells the AI when a reply belongs in that status.
Optionally, expand the Status reason prompt under a status. It guides the AI on what kind of short reason phrases to generate when classifying a prospect into that status (e.g. "requested a demo", "pricing too high", "out of office reply").
Click Save. You'll see a "Status descriptions updated" confirmation.
Customized statuses show a Reset to default button — click it any time to restore Alta's original prompt for that status.
How to change a prospect's status manually
In the prospects table, click the status badge on any prospect that has one of the four AI classified statuses.
Pick a new status from the dropdown — Interested, Not Interested, Meeting Booked, or Unclassified.
Fixed statuses (New, Pending Outreach, Pending Reply, No Response, Bounced / Invalid) can't be changed manually — they update on their own as the workflow progresses. What you can configure is when No Response is applied, in Status Settings.
Tips and common pitfalls
Changes apply account-wide. Status prompts are shared across all campaigns, not per campaign.
The Save button stays disabled until you change something. If nothing is dirty, there's nothing to save.
Be specific in your prompts. The clearer the description, the more consistent the classification. For example, if a "send me info" reply should count as Interested for your team, say so explicitly in the Interested description.
Statuses can also change from other events. A prospect can become Not Interested after clicking unsubscribe, or Meeting Booked when a meeting is synced from a rep's calendar or a conversation is tagged as meeting booked in the inbox. The status reason on the prospect tells you why.
Only replies are AI-classified. Prospects who never reply move to No Response by the rule above, not by AI. Also mark prospects who replied is that same rule after a quiet period, not an AI classification.
Related
Co-Pilot vs Auto-Pilot: When to Use Each Campaign Mode in Alta
How to Pause/Resume a Prospect in a Sequence
How Unsubscribes Work in Alta (Adding an Unsubscribe Link and What Happens When a Prospect Opts Out)