SendBeam inbox: receive and answer email

What it does

The SendBeam inbox is where email sent to you arrives: replies to your campaigns, and mail to addresses such as [email protected] on a domain you own. A reply arrives linked to the contact who wrote it and the campaign they were answering, so you can see who is replying and to what, and answer from the same place you send from.

Each workspace receives on its own domains, so every site or client you run keeps its own mail.

Forward-only or an inbox

A workspace handles received mail in one of two ways:

• Forward only (the default). Each message goes to your webhook and waits in the API for 72 hours, then it is deleted. Nothing is kept in SendBeam, and the Inbox shows a Forward-only notice. Use this when another system, such as your helpdesk or your own code, handles the mail.
• Keep as an inbox. Messages are kept for the period you choose and can be read and answered in SendBeam on the web and in the app. They still go to your webhook as well.

How long mail can be kept, and how much of it, depends on your plan. Inbound settings shows what your workspace has used.

Turning the inbox on

A workspace admin does this once:

1. Receive on a domain. Go to Settings → Receiving, add a domain and copy its DNS records to wherever your domain's DNS is managed. See Receiving email on your domain.
2. Keep the mail. Open the Inbox, select the settings cog (Inbound settings) and, under Where received email goes, choose Keep as an inbox. It saves as soon as you choose it. See Inbox settings.

From then on, received mail is kept, and replies to your campaigns come back to the inbox.

Reading and replying

• Tabs. Mail is sorted into Replies (answers to your email), Known (contacts and team members), New senders and Spam. All shows everything. A message in Spam can be marked Not spam, which always allows that sender.
• Folders. Archive a conversation to clear it from the inbox, or move it to the trash. Search finds conversations by sender or subject.
• Reading safely. Mail opens as plain text. The formatted version is offered for senders whose domain passed its checks, with remote images off until you load them, so a sender cannot tell you opened their message.
• Replying. Your reply is plain text and stays in the same conversation. It can quote their message below yours. You can undo for a few seconds after you press Send.
• On a contact. A contact's page has a Conversations tab with every conversation with them.
• Keyboard. On the web, press ? in the Inbox to see the shortcuts.

Who sees what

Access follows the person's role in the workspace (see Team):

• Admins see and manage every address, and change the inbox's settings.
• Members can read and reply on the workspace's addresses. An address an admin restricts is visible only to the people given access to it: Can view, Can reply or Can manage.
• Reviewers see received mail only on an address they are given Can view on.

Replies written by an agent

An API key or a connected assistant can read the inbox and draft replies. A person approves each draft in the conversation before it is sent, because anyone who emails you can try to instruct an agent through their message. An admin can let a tested integration send without approval, under Settings → API keys; it may then do so only in replies and conversations with known senders.

In the SendBeam app

The SendBeam app for iPhone and Android has an Inbox tab with the same conversations, and a To Approve list for replies drafted by an agent. The tab works once the workspace keeps its mail as an inbox. Until then it says the inbox isn't on for the workspace, and Learn More opens this page.