Salsa Engage enables you to set up default parameters for your outgoing Salsa Engage emails.
Before you can send emails, you'll need to consider the following options:
- From Name—The name that will display as the sender.
- From Email Address—The email address from which it will appear that the email has come. To make sure your emails get to where you want them to go, click here. Following are some best practices:
- Never use free webmail addresses—To give your email the best possible chance of reaching supporters' inboxes, use an email address from your orgs own domain. Don't use a free webmail address as your "From" address (for example, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.). Email servers view free webmail "From" addresses as more suspicious than those from custom domains, and this increases the chance that emails from those addresses will be rejected.
- Avoid the no-reply address—When you send email from a no-reply address, you come across as uncaring. Supporters can also be frustrated if they need to reach you. Using a no-reply address may even harm long-term delivery rates. The way supporters treat your email—including replying—can determine where you end up in the inbox. If people respond to your email campaigns, via reply email, this is seen as a good signal and helps improve your reputation with some ISPs.
- Use a valid email address—Some email providers, like Gmail, collect data about recipient behavior after an email lands in the inbox. If a subscriber responds to your email, it's more likely to be marked as important.
- Match your "From" address to your "From" name—When your "From" name is similar to your "From" email address, supporters will tend to trust your org more. For example, if a subscriber receives an email from Salsa Labs, they would expect it to be linked with an email address similar to support@salsalabs.com.
- Personalize for the purpose—If you send marketing and transactional emails, give subscribers an idea of what you're sending to them by fitting the "From" email address to the purpose (for example, newsletters@, support@ or billing@). This can help you to ensure that responses to your newsletter emails or support emails (for example) get to the right inbox. To do this, you'll first want to ensure that your org has the email addresses that you want to use.
- Reply-To Email Address—This is an email address, that will appear in the email, to which your supporters can respond. While the "From" email address can help with deliverability, it is also an address that invites supporters to contact you. If you have a large subscriber list, you may want responses to go to a different address. Use this option to direct supporter responses to where you need them to go.
- Include a tax-deductible value in payment summaries for autoresponders by default—If you want supporters to receive their tax deduction data in a message sent via a Salsa Engage Autoresponder, ensure that this option is set to Yes.
- Form Prefill—If a supporter who fills out a new form is known to Salsa Engage from a browser cookie, then any known data prefills the new form. Note that a supporter who clicks on a link in an email may have merge field values in the email that are older than the data in the Engage database. For example, a supporter may receive an email addressed to "Jon." If that supporter's name has changed to "Jonathan" in Engage since he received the email, the form prefills with "Jonathan," even if they arrived at the form via an email link. Static parameter values defined in an email URL or from a link on an external page always override what is in the database for form presentation. If a supporter enters a new email address into a form, then a new supporter record is created in Engage. For a supporter to be forgotten, the supporter will need to clear any cookies containing "salsalabs.org" from each browser where they are remembered.