Email Messages FAQ

In most cases, the emails are ending up in their Junk or Spam folder. This is annoying, but is generally something that can resolve over a short space of time. See here for more information on why this is happening and how it can work out.

At the moment, you can't directly attach files to emails.

However, you can attach links to a file to emails, which is more of an indirect attachment. To add an indirect attachment to an email you must first store that attachment in the Document Vault in Majestri. Once it is in the Document Vault, you can then create your email and using the link feature on the toolbar, you can insert a link to the resource that your recipients can then click to download and view the file.

In some ways, this is actually more efficient in terms of deliverability, as true email file attachments are treated with suspicion by email clients given the proliferation of phishing emails and malware that are on the Internet today.

If you're composing the content of an email from an external source (eg. a Word document or Outlook email), then this is a problem which may well occur. It's invisible to you, but when you copy-and-paste content from an external source, there is a huge amount of hidden styling information that comes across with it (if you open up the HTML View you'll be able to see it and be shocked). That styling information gets dispatched with the email, so it then becomes dependent on each email client to be able to interpret and render those styles correctly. This is beyond Majestri control, so you're really on your own if electing to copy-and-paste content from elsewhere.

Copying-and-pasting saves time, so if you're going to do it, it's best to "sanitise" the content by copying into Notepad first, which basically removes the external styling, before copying it into Majestri. You can then use our built-in formatting tools to alter the look of the content.

This one is on our list of future enhancements.

Historically, monitoring "click" and "open" rates has been the province of marketing emails tools, such as Campaign Monitor or MailChimp. However, we have learned that our partners, SendGrid, are also able to feed back that information to us.

You need to be aware that these statistics are not 100% accurate - they can't be for technical reasons. Just because you're told an email was opened doesn't really mean it was explicitly opened and viewed by your member. Email clients are extremely protective of their Inbox owners, and some of them will actually perform a deep inspection of email, even going so far as to visiting all embedded links to see what is on the other end. This type of action triggers both the "open" and "click" events before the owner has even see the email in their Inbox.

Another option we've been asked about is "read receipting". If an email is sent with a "read receipt" attached, the recipient is asked upon opening the email whether they want to send a "read receipt" back to the member. They are entitled to say No to that (privacy advocates always will) and there is nothing you can do about it. We don't see "read receipting" as a potential solution.

The Administration tab in the Control Room has a button labelled Messages Sent. You can use this function to inspect all email and SMS communication sent from the system in the last 12-month period.

We do have this behaviour reported from time to time. Some people's email clients (especially ones they use at work) apply overly-aggressive filters on incoming emails.

By default, the access token links that get sent out can only be used once. This is for security purposes. An aggressive filter will see the link on the incoming email and "follow" it to check out what's on the other side. Unfortunately, that consumes the tokens single use, which means that when your poor member clicks on the link, the token has already expired. Being diligent members, they issue themselves another token, their email client sees the ensuing email come in with a link embedded.....rinse, repeat.

The screen that your members see is shown below.

The top green button will send the same type of link to your member - a single use one. If they are reporting the "loop" issue, and you suspect their email client is the problem, then ask them to click the second green button - Send Alternate Link. This alternative link type can be used multiple times in a half hour period. It should allow the aggressive email client to use the link, but then your member can also use it once they open the email.