WhatsApp stays your main channel. Email adds order and booking emails, form thank-yous and a Send email step in sequences, sent in your business's name and under its own consent rules.
Before you start
- Your organisation must be approved.
- The customer needs an email address on their contact.
- Marketing email needs your postal address, which goes in the footer.
Turn it on
- Open Settings → Email and tick Email my customers.
- Enter your Reply-to address and Postal address, and press Save.
- Use the test button. It sends one email to your own sign-in address, so you can see how it looks.
Nothing goes out until this is on and a sequence, order, booking or form uses it.
Who the email is from
Customers see Your Business via i-Connect, and replies go to your reply-to address. "via i-Connect" stays because the email comes from our verified address. To drop it, send from your own domain.
What sends email
| What | When | How to turn it on |
|---|---|---|
| Order emails | When an order is placed and when it ships. | Settings → Email |
| Booking emails | When a booking is made. | Settings → Email |
| Form thank-you | When someone fills in one of your forms and gives an email address. | Settings → Email |
| Send email step | When a sequence reaches it. Choose Marketing or a service message. | In the sequence builder |
Consent and unsubscribing
- Email consent is separate from WhatsApp consent. Agreeing to one isn't agreeing to the other.
- Marketing email goes only to contacts who opted in to email. Your hosted forms can show a separate email box, never ticked for the person.
- A teammate can record email consent on a contact's profile, with a note saying how it was given. Nobody on your team can undo an unsubscribe.
- Marketing email carries an unsubscribe link and supports one-click unsubscribe in Gmail and Yahoo.
- An address that hard-bounces, unsubscribes or marks your email as spam is blocked from then on, and stays blocked after the contact is erased.
Why email can pause
Over 100 or more emails in 7 days, email pauses if 5% or more hard-bounce or 0.3% or more are marked as spam. This protects the sending address everyone shares. Owners and Admins get a notice. Clean your list, then press Resume email in Settings → Email. Each business can send up to 500 emails a day.
Why an email wasn't sent
The log on Settings → Email shows each email and its reason. The common ones:
- Email is off or paused: see above.
- No email address on the contact.
- No consent: a marketing email, and the contact hasn't opted in to email.
- Blocked address: it bounced, unsubscribed or complained.
- No postal address on a marketing email.
- Daily limit reached.
Send from your own domain
When this is available on your account, the Own domain section of Settings → Email lets you send as hello@mail.yourbusiness.com.
- Enter a domain you own and the name before the @.
- Add the three CNAME records it shows at your DNS provider.
- Press verify. i-Connect also checks every 15 minutes. Until the domain is verified, email keeps going from the shared address.
Public email services such as gmail.com can't be used, because nobody can add records for them.
Still stuck? Write to support@i-connect.world with your organisation's name and what you see on screen.