Email addresses

Settings > Email addresses shows how customer email reaches Airmailer and how replies reach customers. Only owners can change it; members see it.

Customer email

The section lists:

• Customers write to: your support address, such as support@yourdomain.com.
• Forwarded to: your forwarding address, such as fernhill@reply.airmailer.app, with Copy forwarding address. Your support mailbox forwards a copy of each new email there.
• Inbox: Customer email received once the first email has arrived, otherwise No customer email yet. A business that receives email directly sees Customer email arrives directly or Waiting for the MX record.

Next to the heading, Forwarding checked or Forwarding not checked says whether forwarding works; for a business that receives email directly, Receiving directly or MX record not found. Until forwarding is checked, or the domain is verified for sending, nothing is sent to customers: drafts wait for approval, and Send says why.

When Gmail sends a forwarding confirmation to the forwarding address, the code and Confirm forwarding in Gmail are shown here too, as in Setup. See Quick start.

Check forwarding

Shown while replies can't be sent yet, or after a check was sent. Send check email emails a code to your support address; when your forwarding brings it back, the section shows Arrived with the time. Check again tests forwarding once more. Members see that an owner can check forwarding.

• One check email a minute.
• Up to 10 check emails a day per business, and 3 a day to the same address.

Changing the support address

Enter the new address under Support address and choose Save.

• The address must be on your business's domain or one of its subdomains, and can't be at a personal email service such as gmail.com. A business that receives email directly keeps an address on its help.yourdomain.com domain.
• When the business forwards email, and the new address isn't on its verified sending domain, replies to customers stop until forwarding from the new address is checked. The note under the field says so before you save.
• If a sending domain is set up under Replies and the new address is on another domain, Airmailer asks first, with Change support address: the new domain needs its own DNS records, and the old domain is removed as the sending domain. Until the new domain is verified, replies are sent from your forwarding address.

Replies

• From: the sender customers see, such as Fernhill Coffee Support <fernhill@reply.airmailer.app>. The name is the business name followed by "Support", set under Settings > Business.
• Customers' answers go to: the Reply-To address. Once email to your support address is known to reach Airmailer, it is your support address; otherwise it is the address replies come from.

Replies are sent in the customer's thread. See How customers see replies.

Sending replies from your support address

Replies are sent from your forwarding address until your support address's domain is verified for sending. This is optional and marked Optional until it is started. Under Replies, the section is called Send replies from followed by your support address.

1. Choose Get DNS records.
2. Add the records where your domain's DNS is managed, such as your domain registrar or hosting provider. Email these records to whoever manages yourdomain.com opens an email with the records in your own mail app.
3. Airmailer checks for the records every 10 minutes for 72 hours, and emails the business's owners when the domain is verified. Check now checks straight away.

Each record shows Found or Not found, with a copy button for its name and its value, and the section shows the progress, such as "2 of 3 DNS records found". When all of them are found, the domain is Verified and replies are sent from your support address.

If not all records are found within 72 hours, the automatic checks stop. Once the records are added, choose Check now: Airmailer checks straight away, then automatically for another 72 hours. Check now works up to 10 times a minute.

The DNS records

Sending from your support address needs three DNS records on its domain. The exact values for your domain are shown in Settings; the DKIM value is different for every domain.

• The names are relative to your domain: airmailer means airmailer.yourdomain.com. Some DNS providers want the full name, others add the domain themselves.
• The records sit on airmailer.yourdomain.com and resend._domainkey.yourdomain.com, so they don't change where email to yourdomain.com goes, and they don't replace an existing SPF record on yourdomain.com.
• New records can take from a few minutes to a few hours to be found, depending on the DNS provider.

Once the domain is verified, Settings shows Verified, and Show DNS records lists the records again for owners. Leave the records in place: replies are sent from your support address only while they are there.

A business that receives email directly on help.yourdomain.com adds the same three records for help.yourdomain.com, and a fourth: an MX record on help.yourdomain.com, which brings customer email to Airmailer. Its value and priority are shown with the other records.

When it isn't available

Sending from your support address isn't always available. When it isn't, the section says Not available at the moment, and replies are sent from your forwarding address.

If the domain is removed from Airmailer's sending service, the section says it is no longer set up for sending, with Get new DNS records. Add the new records the same way.

Newsletter replies

The Reply-To address to use in your newsletters, so Pip drafts replies to customers who answer them. See Newsletter replies.