Many companies receive emails from customers through email providers such as Microsoft and Gmail. Think of customers using email addresses like “[email protected]” or “[email protected]” to contact a company. And by meeting specific requirements, these emails can be configured such that 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
- Email Address
- SPF and DKIM Records
- Email Forwarding
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 uses cases:
- [email protected] for general questions
- [email protected] for billing inquiries
- [email protected] for reservations support
You must confirm that you can send and receive emails from your email addresses before adding them to Gladly.
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 received in 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 automatically forward all emails to Gladly.
There are two common ways to forward emails:
- By clicking the “Forward” option from an email. Emails forwarded this way contains “Fwd:” in the subject line of the forwarded email. This is typically referred to as a “client-based” forwarding method.
- By setting up automatic forwarding, which is typically described as a”server-based” forwarding method. This is the method used in Gladly.