Email

Relay uses email in two ways, so conversations keep going after a customer closes your app.

Relay delivers email for you, so notifications work straight away. To receive email from customers, forward your support address to Relay; see Set up email.

The email channel#

• A new email creates an Open conversation, marked with an envelope and an Email badge.
• The composer says Send email and shows the recipient. Your reply is emailed, and its delivery status (sent or failed with the reason) shows under the message.
• The customer’s reply lands in the same conversation and reopens it if it was pending or resolved.

How replies find the right conversation#

Every email Relay sends has a special Reply-To address with a signed token for that conversation. Replies are matched by the token, and a forged or missing token starts a new conversation instead, so nobody can post into someone else’s thread. Standard threading headers make the conversation appear as one thread in the customer’s mail app too.

Clean replies#

Quoted history (“On Tuesday, Jane wrote:”, > lines, Outlook headers) is removed, so you only see what’s new. Auto-replies (out-of-office, bulk mail) and empty emails are ignored.

Unread-reply notifications#

• Sent when your reply in a chat conversation is still unread after 5 minutes, and Relay knows the customer’s email.
• Several unread replies in one conversation are combined into one email.
• Internal notes are never emailed.
• Each reply is emailed at most once. A failed send is logged and not retried automatically.
• Turn them off in Settings → Automation → Email customers about unread replies.

In Settings#

Settings → Email shows your inbound address and the 25 most recent emails with their status. It’s the first place to look when an email didn’t arrive.