Many companies receive Customer emails through email providers such as Microsoft and Gmail. Think of Customers using email addresses like "[email protected]" or "[email protected]" to contact a company. These emails can be configured by meeting specific requirements so your company's email interactions can be handled directly in Gladly.
Before you start managing emails in Gladly, it's helpful to have a basic understanding of how email works.
Basic Concepts
There are basic concepts to be aware of before you start receiving customer emails in Gladly:
Email Domain
An email domain is an address that comes after the @ symbol of any email address. In general, domains represent a business or organization on the internet. Here are some email domain examples:
@facebook.com
@google.com
@gladly.com
Domains can be purchased and hosted through domain registrars such as GoDaddy and Google Domains to name a few, and customized to reflect the name of your business.
Email Address
An email address such as [email protected] is an electronic mailbox (email) where email messages are received and/or sent. A particular sending domain (e.g., @retale.com) might have multiple email addresses associated with it for varying use cases:
[email protected] for general questions
[email protected] for billing inquiries
[email protected] for reservation support
Before adding them to Gladly, you must confirm that you can send and receive emails from your email addresses.
Friendly Name
"Friendly name" is a name that appears in an email's From or To fields instead of the full email address. For example, a friendly name can show "Retale Support" instead of "[email protected]." In Gladly, this setting is called Sender Name.
SPF and DKIM Records
SPK and DKIM records, in combination, are used to ensure emails are not marked as spam when sent from Gladly.
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) – A type of TXT record that lists servers allowed to send email messages from a particular domain.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) – A type of TXT record used to link email messages with a domain. It also helps stop emails from being marked as spam and prevents emails you send from going to your recipients' spam/junk box.
A closer look at SPF Records
In short, having SPF records configured allows for better email security by preventing spam and spoofing attempts. See this blog about SPF Records to learn how it works.
Email Forwarding
Email Forwarding allows you to forward emails from your current email provider to Gladly. For example, if you currently receive emails from Customers through [email protected] via Gmail, you can configure Gmail to forward all emails to Gladly automatically.
There are two common ways to forward emails:
By clicking the "Forward" option from an email. Emails forwarded this way contain "Fwd:" in the email's subject line. This is typically referred to as a "client-based" forwarding method.
By setting up automatic forwarding, typically described as a"server-based" method. This is the method used in Gladly.