We send an automated email whenever someone signs up for our app.
The subject is always the same for every user.
Let's say the subject is 'Welcome'.
The problem is that whenever someone replies, it always end up in a single giant thread in gmail.
So the emails from various users are interleaved with each other, which makes it very difficult to manage.
What we want is a single thread per user (i.e per recipient email address) so that we can keep the conversation with each person separate.
I'm aware that gmail has its own way of grouping messages into thread based on the subject line by default.
However, we noticed that some support tools (such as Zendesk) have somehow find a way to keep each email separate even though the same subject line is used. They seem to have a work around.
What I mean is that we have received multiple emails from the Zendesk email sender with the same subject and somehow they end up in multiple threads in our gmail.
They don't seem to use a uniquely generated email either. The from and reply-to address is simply support#domain.com
How do they do it?
We experimented with the 'Message-ID' and 'In-Reply-To' SMTP headers but were unsuccessful.
Sending emails with different Message-ID still end up in the same thread.
See example of a Zendesk email received to my gmail address below:
Since I can't post in the comment, will add to the answer here. Sample headers in an email I received from Zendesk. Note that they use the support email address + the ID of the support ticket as the 'Reply-To' address.
Related
I've implemented List-Unsubscribe (RFC 2369) for marketing emails we send. I am providing both an unsubscribe email address and an unsubscribe URL. An example of a generated header looks like this:
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:unsubscribe#myserver.com?subject=unsubscribe>, <https://myserver.com/unsubscribe?email=recipient#email.com>
In the past few email campaigns we've done, it has worked great. There's only one problem. Sometimes we receive unsubscribe requests from email addresses we didn't actually send mail to. I think this happens when the user has multiple email addresses and the email we send is forwarded to some other destination. So we send to user-a#email.com, but the recipient opens it at user-b#email.com. When they click the "Unsubscribe" link provided by their email client, it generates an email to us telling us to unsubscribe user-b#email.com.
Sometimes we can find the intended address if the address we sent to was very similar, or if the user has a unique name, but sometimes it's impossible to determine which email address we should unsubscribe. That's frustrating because we know the user will be upset if they receive another email from us in the future.
I tried to fix this by adding a unique identifier to the subject line, so that a subject looks like unsubscribe_20934832034820348, but when we do that, email clients stop showing the Unsubscribe button. It's as if they will only show the Unsubscribe button if the subject line is exactly "unsubscribe".
I didn't see anything in the RFC about the subject line needing to take a particular form, and we are also taking care not to put the user's email address directly in the subject line. (It is a hashed combination of their email address and a portion of the original message, making it unique across all emails we send.)
Is there some sort of convention around this? If so, how can I reliably determine the original address we sent to when we receive unsubscribe emails?
It looks like there is no problem using this sort of subject line. However, it seems that each email client decides in its own proprietary way when and how to display the Unsubscribe button/link, and it does seem that that when you change from a simple "unsubscribe" to "unsubscribe" plus some unique identifier, some clients might subject you to some sort of test period before showing the link to users. In my testing, Gmail did not show me the link when sending small batches of test emails, but after I sent a large batch of emails, the link did start appearing, and I did indeed receive the generated unsubscribe mails properly.
I hope this helps someone out there.
I'm using AWS SES to send emails to customers. I want to send an initial email to confirm an action they've made on my website, and then send subsequent emails to that same email address to notify of any subsequent activity on that initial action.
Different email clients appear to implement this behaviour differently, and I've read about the thread-index header here, but that doesn't cover all clients.
Is there a standard way to mark that an email belongs to the thread of a previously sent email?
Thanks
When adding the References Header to Emails, you can add message-ids of previously sent emails in order to create email threads.
Of course it's again a topic of the client to fulfill this feature, but it should be supported by major email clients.
Heres an old blogpost about that. (considering that email is also old, it should be fine ;) )
https://wesmorgan.blogspot.com/2012/07/understanding-email-headers-part-ii.html
Like many web apps, we use Postmark to send all notifications for server side events. Many of our events are grouped and related by something simple and logical (think multiple replies to the same issue, like in GitHub).
Right now, every email sent for these related events is it's own email thread. My question is: how do I send these emails so that related ones get pushed into the same thread?
I'm not sure if this is something at the Postmark level (like include a previous message ID) or if this is something I do with SMTP (like I should format my subject better and inline previous responses), so that's why I'm seeking guidance. Also, every Google search about: "Postmark email threads" returns concerns over the thread safety of the Ruby Gem.
For more information, the app is written in PHP and right now we are znarkus/postmark-php for sending emails and jjaffeux/postmark-inbound-php for parsing inbound ones. However, I am more than willing to add any extra packages if they help me in my quest.
Thanks in advance!
You can add a few SMTP headers with the original Message-ID that most clients use to link together replies. If the original email had a Message-ID header of <123#mail.example.com> the new email you send out should keep the subject line the same and add headers of:
In-Reply-To: <123#mail.example.com>
References: <123#mail.example.com>
And that should inform clients that the two emails should be threaded.
Edit:
The value for these headers should be the SMTP Message-ID header, which is slightly confusing because it is a separate concept from the Postmark MessageID value, which is just a UUID for the email.
The SMTP Message-ID header is always in the form an email address, because that's how it's supposed to be formed, but doesn't have to be related to the from address.
A forum-like app I'm working on will send an email notification to the thread starter when a new replied is received. It would be nice if the owner can just reply the email to add a new reply to the thread.
How can I implement the feature, i.e. "reply to this email to comment" like Facebook?
Option A: scan the subject line/body? I don't like it 'cause what if the user modified the subject line by mistake?
Option B: use a unique reply-to e-mail address that links to the thread ID. Is this a common function for mail server? like set up a *#addComment.domain.com ? Or does the app server needs to setup a new email account before sending the email with reply-to?
Any other options?
Thanks!
Using strings in the subject and body can be easily erased by a user of the system.
Use plus addressing (reply+UNIQUEIDENTIFIER#yourapplication.com) as the REPLY-TO address in the mail message. With CFIMAP you can retrieve the messages and parse the TO.
Wildcard domain (replyto#UNIQUEIDENTIFIER.yourapplication.com) is also an option, but if your email server supports plus addressing I would go that route.
You could stuff the thread ID or the parent message ID (the message that is being replied to) in the Msgessage-ID: header of the email, or a custom email header, and put the processing after accepting the message.
However, using custom Reply-To: addresses is quite common.
an option is to embed an identifier in both the subject and the body of the original email. something small, like bit.ly's 6-8 character code. that way, they're less likely to mess it up, and you have the safety of the email body, which most people leave in anyway.
Using a custom email header is not advised as there is no guarantee that any server along the route would not strip it off (or simply fail to pass it on). A friend who worked at a huge email data center for AT&T said the techs there warned him off that idea.
This may also be true of the Message-ID: -- don't know.
Am trying to determine the best way to persist information from an originating email, through to a reply back.
Essentially, it is to pass a GUID from the original email (c#), whereby when the receiver replies back, that GUID is also sent back for reference.
I have tried setting the MessageID, whereby using Outlook, the In-Reply-To value is set with the original ID, however using some webclient email systems, that value is not created on reply. Is there another way to sent this info through email headers?
Some variation on VERP is probably the most reliable...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_envelope_return_path
Specifically, instead of having all your replies coming to the same address, encode the information you want to persist into the From address for the email.
For example, in the case of a helpdesk ticket, you could use something like:
From: Helpdesk <support-ticket-123#example.com>
To: End User <user#example.org>
Subject: Ticket #123 - problem with computer.
That way, regardless of what the user edits in the subject or text, you know what ticket is being referred to by the receiving email address.
I don't think you'll be able to do anything that is perfectly reliable by headers alone -- the number of clients that would have to cooperate is immense.
Most systems that do this work by including something in the body of the email that is sent that allows it to identify the message, and including text instructing the recipient to include that block of text in the response. You could also try including it in the subject (and including text in the body to leave the subject unchanged). That's how some mailing list managers I've seen do it.
I stumbled upon this question, and it's been very informative. This, however, leaves me with one question: Will using VERP, or a variation of editing the 'reply-to' or 'from address', cause the messages to be locked up in spam filters?
I have read that spam senders often change the bounce address to prevent their servers from getting clogged with bad email address bounces. Is it a spam risk to assume this approach?
The most reliable way is to put the ID in the subject, which should be preserved throughout replies.
(It doesn't hurt to tell your users that they should keep the subject intact.)
RT, a popular ticketing system, does this. They use a simple subject format like "[Ticket #123]" and key off of 123.