Outbound Email Settings in Soapbox and Best Practices to Ensure Deliverability

Soapbox Engage is built to ensure optimal email deliverability across all apps and features while simultaneously granting administrators the freedom to highlight their brand and customize the reply-to email address for optimal routing of replies.

Understanding the settings within Soapbox Engage as well as best practices for email deliverability will allow you to make full use of your ability to customize your emails while making sure emails are received by their intended recipients.

Understanding Outbound Email Settings in Soapbox Engage

Soapbox Engage allows for a mix of site-wide email settings as well as individual app page settings.

Site-Wide Settings

On the Account Settings view in the administrator, you can customize the following site-wide defaults:

• Default From Name: The name of the sender that appears in the recipient's email client.
• Default From Email: The email address of the sender that appears in the recipient's email client.
• Default Reply-To Name: The reply-to name that appears in the recipient's email client.
• Default Reply-To Email: The email address to which a return email is sent.
• Envelope From Email: The envelope-sender address used by email servers to identify where the email originated. The envelope-from email address that is not visible in the recipient's email client. This Envelope From Email is used for all outbound email and cannot be customized on an app page-by-page basis. By default, this is set to noreply@picnet.net.

App Page-Specific Settings

The following site-wide default settings can be customized on a page by page basis across all emails from all apps except for those noted below:

• From Email Name
• From Email Address
• Reply-To Name
• Reply-To Email

Emails that Always Use the Default Settings

The following emails always use the default settings on the Account Settings view:

• Donations app peer-to-peer add-on
• Fundraising page creation email notifications sent to fundraisers
• New fundraising team member email notifications sent to team captains
• New Fundraising Page payment email notifications sent to fundraisers
• Events app scheduled emails
• All Events app scheduled emails use the Default From Email and Default From Name in Account Settings. They can, however, have their Reply-To Name and Reply-To Email customized.
• Portals add-on
• New user verification emails
• Forgot username emails to users
• Forgot password emails to users

Best Practices to Ensure Optimal Email Deliverability

When sending email, there are a number of verification steps between sender and receiver that may be applied to ensure that the From Email and Envelope From Email match the server that is sending the email. For optimal deliverability, the domain of the From Email and the domain of the Envelope From Email should match.

All email sent by Soapbox Engage is delivered by servers associated with our picnet.net corporate domain.

To ensure email deliverability, you can follow the easiest best practice and use the picnet.net domain name or the more technical best practice to use your own domain.

Easiest Best Practice for Email Deliverability: Use noreply@picnet.net for the Default From Email and Envelope From Email

Use noreply@picnet.net as the Default From Email and Envelope From Email in Account settings.

This will ensure that the IP of the domain (picnet.net) matches the IP addresses of our servers which should allow outbound email from Soapbox Engage to reach recipients.

Alter the Default From Name, Default Reply-To Name, and Default Reply-To Email on the Account Settings as you wish, using your own domain for the Reply-To Email. Customize the From Name, Reply-To Name, and Reply-To Email on a page-by-page basis across all apps.

More Technical Best Practice for Email Deliverability: Use your own domain for From Email and Envelope Email Addresses after creating SPF and DKIM records

Authorize the Soapbox Engage servers to send email using your domain by following the steps below. Use email addresses from your own domain as the Default From Email and Envelope From Email in Account settings. Customize the From Email Address on a page-by-page basis across all apps using an email from your own domain.

SPF implementation

A Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record is a TXT record added to your domain that authorizes a server to send email on your domain's behalf.  Consult with your domain host for details on adding each of the following to your existing TXT record.

• include:_spf.soapboxengage.com

For example, if an organization currently has SPF data included for Salesforce (and only Salesforce in this example), adding Soapbox Engage's information would mean the updated TXT record should look something like this:

"v=spf1 mx a include:_spf.salesforce.com include:_spf.soapboxengage.com ~all"

DKIM implementation

DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail, is another set of records that, like SPF, authorizes a server to send email using a domain. Consider this the certified mail version of email deliverability.  Below are the two CNAME records that need to be created in a DNS zone.

• sbx1._domainkey.example.org   pointing to   sbx1._domainkey.soapboxengage.com
  (replacing example.org with the organization's appropriate domain)
• sbx2._domainkey.example.org   pointing to   sbx2._domainkey.soapboxengage.com
  (replacing example.org with the organization's appropriate domain)