Welcome to the first webinar (password Efclient46) of the new year which is all about making sure that the emails you set up in Eventsforce are sent as expected.
Click here to watch (password Efclient46)
After you’ve created your event, spent time working out your marketing messages, and have put together beautiful and compelling emails, you realize that nobody’s registering, reviewing or judging for your event, what’s gone wrong? The answer is simple; nobody has read your email because either it hasn’t been sent or it hasn’t been delivered!
Over the next 20 minutes or so we will make sure that:
When you press the ‘Send’ button you do so with confidence
You understand how to configure your emails to avoid them being marked as spam or junk
You know the difference between the ‘Email From’ address and the ‘Sender’ address
You understand what an SPF record is and when it’s critical to use it
This webinar isn’t about how to design your email content, but how to make sure it is sent and increasing the probability of your email being delivered successfully. What we are going to discuss relates to all emails in Eventsforce.
Email sending
All emails that you configure will require an “email from” address, as we can see in Invitations, Automatic and Ad Hoc templates. This will be the email address that the recipient will see. This seems obvious but it’s important that its function is fully understood.
If you have access to System Settings and the Account Details page, there is another email address which is also an “email from” address.
And again, if you have access to Settings in System Settings, there is a “Sender email address” which is also an “email from” address.
Notes
In new events, all of the “email from” fields in your automatic and invitation email templates will be pre-populated with the email address on the "Account Details" page
You can override the account details email address for specific events by typing in the “email from” address that you want to be displayed in each individual “email from” template
If you want your recipient to see a name rather than an email address, in the “Email From” address field you need to type in the name in quotation marks, leave a space and then enter the email address between less-than and greater-than symbols:
“Name” <email@domain.com>All 'Test' emails, however, will always display the “email from” address that’s on the "Account Details" page, no matter what is in the “email from” template field itself
Summary
The email address on the "Account Details" page affects all events, by default. It is in all “Email From” fields upon event creation and is used for all 'Test' emails.
You can customize any “email from” field in a specific event to use an email address of your choice and format it to look like it has been sent by an individual.
“Sender" email address
By default, in new accounts, the "sender" email address field is populated with “noreply@eventsforce.net”. It doesn’t ever have to be changed. However, you should be aware of why it is there.
This email address is about email delivery.
The email address on the "Account Details" page and your other “email from” addresses will have your chosen domain, that’s everything after the @ symbol.
Email servers will look at the “sender” email address, which will always be “eventsforce.net” for Eventsforce emails, and will detect if it matches the sending server, for example:
If the domains do not match the receiving server is likely to reject the email as it will not be trusted. To get around this, Eventsforce tells the receiving server that it is sending emails on your behalf. The recipient will see something like:
user1@mycompanydomain.com via eventsforce.net
OR
Noreply@eventsforce.net on behalf of user1@mycompanydomain.com
Whether your attendee sees “via eventsforce.net” or “on behalf of” will depend on the end user and their email configuration.
If you delete noreply@eventsforce.net because you do not want “eventsforce” to appear in recipient emails, your emails may not be delivered. If you’re OK with it displaying, do nothing and your emails will be delivered.
Configure a SPF record
If you really do not want “eventsforce” to appear you should add an SPF (sender policy framework) record to the "DNS record" for your web address, this tells other servers that Eventsforce is allowed to send emails on your behalf. This is our recommended configuration for email delivery.
To do this, you will need to contact the person or organization that manages your domain (the bit that comes after the "@" in your email address) and ask them to add “include:spf.eventsforce.net” to the SPF record for that domain. You should also remove any "sender" address configured for your account (see “Sender email address to be used on all emails” in the “System Settings” screen).
Don’t forget we have a help article which also outlines these steps!
Summary
We recommend that you set up a SPF record for eventsforce.net and remove noreply@eventsforce.netfrom the sender address.
If it isn’t possible to set up an SPF record leave noreply@eventsforce.net as the sender address, but be aware that recipients will see “eventsforce” in their emails.
FAQs
Why does the email address in the “email from” field for ad-hoc emails keep disappearing?
This may be because of a setting you have enabled in your account. Some clients like to type in the “email from” address each time because they often change the sender address, whereas other clients use the same sender consistently. You can change the setting to suit your needs by going to "System Settings > Settings > System Settings". Look for the check box labelled “Suppress the automatic “email from” address in ad-hoc emails:”. If enabled, the ad hoc sender address will be removed each time you visit the page.
What happens to bounce-backs/undelivered mail?
If you want to receive undelivered mail you need to configure the SPF record for your domain. You can then add the email address with that domain into the “sender” address field in system settings and bounce backs will go to that email box, or leave it blank and they will go to the “email from” address entered in a specific email template. Eventsforce does not store any undelivered emails.
Emails have been successfully sent and received but the links aren’t working?
As always, we stress that you should test your emails as a real recipient. The problem here is usually that the event is not live.
Why aren’t confirmation emails sent to attendees if an admin registers on their behalf and the payment method is credit card?
We do this so that attendees do not think their place has been confirmed without payment being received. When the attendee logs in to complete their payment, a confirmation email will be sent.
Why don’t recipients see the images in my emails?
Unfortunately, this is not something controlled by Eventsforce, but an email setting that is unique to each recipient. In the majority of situations, images have to be downloaded by the recipient.