Emails

AnswerStack sends four kinds of email for your account:

Every email starts from our default. Nothing changes until you change it, and Reset always takes you back.

Staff alerts#

Go to Settings → Emails. The Staff alerts tab lists each alert, whether you have customized it, and how many communities have a version of their own.

Open one to edit it. The subject and preview line are single lines; the body takes headings, lists, buttons, dividers, images and two-column sections. Type / for the list of blocks, or select text to format it.

1. Change the words

   Details such as the community's name or the caller's first name are pills, the same as in the playbook. Type { to add one; only the details this email can use are offered. Click a pill to say what to use when it is empty — "there" for a missing first name. A pill with nothing to fill it and no fallback drops its line, so a reader never sees braces.

2. Check the preview

   The right side is the real email, drawn by the server with sample details, in your colors. Dark mail app shows roughly what a phone that forces dark mode does to it.

3. Save a draft, then publish

   Save draft keeps your work without sending it to anyone. Publish makes it the version the next alert uses. Send a test… asks who to send it to: your own address to start with, which you can change, plus up to five addresses in all. Each gets the email marked [Test]. If it cannot go — sending is paused, or an address is one we no longer email — the dialog says why instead. You can keep typing while a draft saves; nothing you add is lost.

A button can have its own colors, as long as its words stay easy to read on it (4.5:1, the same rule as your brand). One that is too faint is refused when you publish, with the reason.

Some parts cannot be taken out:

• The button with the link to the call. You can relabel and restyle it, not delete it.
• The footer: "You get this because you are on this community's backup list", with a link to your notification settings.

If your account runs in compliance mode, alerts go out as the link alone, with no caller details. The editor has a switch to preview that version.

When our default changes#

If we improve a default you have customized, the alert shows Our default changed. Open it to see our old and new default side by side, then choose Keep mine or Reset to default. Nothing changes on its own.

Meeting emails#

The Meeting emails tab of Settings → Emails holds what anyone with a tour is emailed, however it was booked: on a call, in the website chat, on a booking page or their follow-up page, or by a rep. Meeting confirmed, Meeting reminder, Meeting moved and Meeting cancelled are edited, published, reset and given a community's own version exactly like staff alerts. They carry your colors and logo, the community's name and address, and an unsubscribe link. They can say when, where, who the tour is with and the link to see, move or cancel it (their booking page link, or their follow-up page), never the answers the person gave.

They go to the address the person gave for the tour, unless they said no to email or unsubscribed. When your calendar connection invites the caller to the event, the calendar's own invitation, update and cancellation stand in for the confirmation, moved and cancelled emails, so nobody gets two.

Caller emails#

After a call, a caller who agreed to texts gets their follow-up page by text. A caller who refused a text but gave an email address and agreed to email gets it by email. The emails are part of the playbook, under Follow-up page → What the emails say: the link to their page, and the note the morning after. Everything about the tour itself (the confirmation, reminders, a new time, a cancellation) is a meeting email.

Staff details in a caller email (Staff first name, Staff title) name the community's default introduction: the person marked Introduces this community when nobody else is named on its profile. The email is sent before anyone knows who will lead the visit, so it names the person the page falls back to. The caller is only ever named by their first name, as on the page.

Images in a caller email must be uploaded here. An image linked from another website is refused when you save, because it could tell that website who opened the email.

Because they are playbook content, caller emails are saved with the playbook's draft and go live when you publish the playbook. The version history and diff show their words.

Every caller email must carry the link to the page, and its footer — your community's name and address, why they got it, and a one-click unsubscribe — is added for you and cannot be edited.

Colors and logo: your brand#

Staff alerts, caller emails and meeting emails wear your brand, the same one as your booking and follow-up pages. Each community's emails wear its brand, or your default brand. Change the logo and colours under Settings → Brands. The Emails pages only link there. Standard emails always use ours.

How a brand looks in an email:

• Logo at the top, on the left or in the middle. Choose which under Emails in the brand editor. Mail apps cannot all show WebP or AVIF images, so emails show the logo only when it is a PNG or JPEG. Otherwise they show your community's name. The brand editor warns you when that is the case.
• Main colour for headings, links and buttons. The button's label is white or near-black, whichever reads better.
• Page background around the email. The email itself stays white, with dark text.
• Typeface, with a fallback that every mail app has.

The brand's colours already pass a contrast check when you save it. If a colour still would not read in an email, that part of the email uses our colour instead. A brand change applies to the next email.

Each community's own#

A community's Emails tab has its own staff alerts, meeting emails and caller emails. Each uses the account's until you give it its own, and Use the account's hands it back. The community's emails wear the brand chosen on its Brand tab.

A community's caller emails are customizations of the playbook it runs, like any other line, so they appear in its Customizations tab too.

Standard emails#

The Standard emails tab lists what we send your people — sign-in links, password resets, invitations and account notices — so nothing we send them surprises you. Open one to read it.

Where emails come from#

Staff alerts and standard emails come from our own address. Caller emails come from your community's name at our caller-mail address, and replies go to the community's reply-to email on its profile, or its contact email. We never send callers a no-reply. Only an owner or admin can change a community's reply-to email.