Email & Messaging
Manage the emails your volunteers receive – templates, layouts, timing, test sends and delivery history.
Overview
Every automated message to your volunteers and coordinators – welcome, shift confirmation, reminders, sign-in links – is an email template you can edit, time and test. Messaging covers email only. You manage it from Messaging in the admin portal, which has two pages:
- Email Templates – the templates, plus the Layouts, Images and Documents tabs that support them.
- Email History – every email sent, with its delivery status.
Messaging is available to Volunteer Admins and Owners. Some actions, noted below, are Owner-only.
Email templates
PurposeTech includes a set of templates for the key moments in a volunteer's time with a campaign. The Templates tab groups them by what triggers them, shows whether each is enabled, and lets you open any one to preview, schedule, test and review it.
| Template | When it sends | Default timing |
|---|---|---|
| Complete registration | After someone starts signing up, to prompt them to finish | Immediately |
| Welcome | After sign-up, confirming the shifts chosen. Separate versions cover "all shifts waitlisted" and "some shifts waitlisted" | 10 minutes after sign-up |
| Shift confirmation | When a volunteer selects or changes shifts. Waitlist versions as above | 10 minutes after the change |
| Shift cancelled | When a volunteer's shift is cancelled | On cancellation |
| Abandoned cart | Registration left incomplete | 24 hours after first sign-up |
| Invite friend | A volunteer invites a friend | 10 minutes after |
| Shifts changed | An admin or area coordinator changes a volunteer's shifts | 10 minutes after the change |
| Site coordinator assigned | A site coordinator is assigned to a site | 10 minutes after |
| Area coordinator registers | An area coordinator is assigned to an area | Immediately |
| First and second reminder | Shift reminders to volunteers with upcoming shifts | Off until you enable and schedule them |
| Sign-in link and Sign-in code | A person asks to sign in | When requested |
The timings are the starting values for a new campaign. You can change them per campaign.
Managing templates
Go to Messaging > Email Templates and click a template to open its panel. Depending on the template, the panel has these tabs:
- Preview – see the email as a recipient would, using sample data or a chosen person's real details. Send yourself a test from here (see Testing emails).
- Schedule – set when the email sends (see Scheduling). Owners also see how many volunteers have the email scheduled and how many are missing it, with Check and Schedule buttons to queue it for anyone who should have received it but did not.
- Statistics – charts of emails delivered, opened, bounced and marked as spam over time.
- History – each email sent from this template, searchable by address or subject.
- Segment send (Owners) – send or schedule this template to a group (see One-off and bulk sends).
In the panel header you can enable or disable the template (you are asked to confirm). A template that still contains only the starter text cannot be enabled. Edit opens the editor, where the AI assistant can draft or revise the content and every saved change is kept in a version history you can compare against and restore from.
Owners can also:
- Create New Template – name it, choose a layout, and start from a description (AI drafts it), a copy of an existing template, or a blank template.
- Copy from campaign – bring last year's custom emails into this campaign. They arrive disabled and unscheduled, because their dates belonged to the old campaign.
To retire a template, use Archive template in the panel's more-actions menu. Archiving disables the email and hides it from the list.
Template variables
Templates are personalised with variables that are replaced when the email sends. Plain text values use double braces, for example {{first_name}}. Blocks of HTML use {{& name }}, for example {{& shifts_html }}.
| Variable | Replaced with |
|---|---|
{{first_name}} | Recipient's first name |
{{last_name}}, {{email}}, {{campaign_name}} | Recipient's last name and email address, and the campaign name (custom templates and the onboarding-flow email) |
{{action_url}} | The sign-in or call-to-action link |
{{& shifts_html }} | A table of the volunteer's shifts |
{{& waitlist_shift_html }} | A table of the volunteer's waitlisted shifts |
{{& ac_html }} | For emails to area coordinators: their areas and sites |
{{& sites_html }} | For emails to site coordinators: their sites and the days they work each one |
{{& sites_ac_html }} | As sites_html, plus each site's area coordinator name and phone |
{{friend_first_name}}, {{friend_last_name}} | The friend named in an invite-friend email |
Which variables are filled in depends on the template. Custom templates can use all of them. The editor's assistant knows the list and inserts the right tags.
Layouts, images and documents
- Layouts – a layout is the header and footer wrapped around the body of an email. Each template picks a layout when it is created, or none if you want to write the whole email yourself. Owners can create layouts. A layout opens in an editor with a live preview, an AI assistant, an option to edit the MJML source, and a version history. Saving a layout updates the templates that use it.
- Images – upload images (JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF or SVG, up to 10MB) to use in emails.
- Documents – upload PDFs such as a volunteer handbook, then link to them from a template.
Your website's header and footer (under Design) apply to the campaign website. Emails take their header and footer from the layout.
Scheduling
A template's schedule depends on its type.
Automated emails: a delay after the trigger
Most templates send a set time after the thing that triggers them. On the Schedule tab, choose Edit Schedule and set the delay in days, hours and minutes. For example:
- Welcome: 10 minutes after sign-up
- Abandoned cart: 24 hours after the volunteer first signed up
Reminders and custom emails: scheduled sends
Shift reminders and any custom template are sent as scheduled group sends from the Segment send tab (Owners). You pick the recipients and a date and time. See below.
Reminder timing is your call. Some organisations send one a week out and another the day before; others send a single reminder. The reminder templates stay off until you enable and schedule them.
One-off and bulk sends
On the Segment send tab, an Owner chooses Segment or Email list:
- Segment – pick a role (Volunteer, Area Coordinator, Volunteer Admin, Site Coordinator or Site Contact). For volunteers you can set a minimum number of shifts. Reminders always go to volunteers holding at least one confirmed shift when the send runs, including anyone who books after you set it up. Use Preview Users to see who will receive it before you schedule it.
- Email list – paste a list of addresses, preview, and schedule.
Set the date and time to send, and the send appears in the tab's list of queued and in-progress emails.
Campaign-specific templates
By default every campaign in a tenant shares the same templates. Owners can switch on Use Campaign Email Templates (at the top of the Email Templates page) so the campaign gets its own copies, which can be edited without affecting other campaigns. Switch it off to go back to the tenant's shared templates.
Testing emails
Before opening registration, test your emails:
- Go to Messaging > Email Templates and open a template.
- Choose Send test email in the panel.
- Pick the kind of person to imitate (any role, volunteer, area coordinator and so on), whether they have shifts, and the address or addresses to send to.
- Send it.
The test uses real template variables, so you can check formatting, links and personalisation before any volunteer sees the email.
Email delivery
Emails are sent through Postmark. Delivery, open, click, bounce and spam events come back to PurposeTech and appear in each template's Statistics and History tabs and on the Email History page. Opens depend on the recipient's mail app reporting them, so treat open counts as a guide.
Email History lets you search by address, subject or tag and filter by period (24 hours to all time), event (delivered, opened, bounced, spam, scheduled, sending) and tag.
Sender address
Out of the box, emails are sent through PurposeTech's Postmark account from PurposeTech's default sender address. To send from your own address, an Owner connects your own Postmark account:
- Go to Settings > Tenant API Keys (or Campaign API Keys to set it for one campaign).
- In the Postmark card, enter your Postmark Server API token and Account API token.
- In the Email sender card, enter the new sender email and an optional sender name, then choose Verify & set sender. If the domain is already verified in Postmark, the address applies straight away. If not, Postmark sends a confirmation email to that address and it becomes the sender once the owner of the address clicks the link.
The card shows the current sender and whether it comes from the campaign, the tenant or the platform default.
Common questions
A volunteer says they didn't get their email. What do I check?
- Ask them to check spam or junk, and the Gmail Promotions tab.
- Check the address on their record on the Volunteers page.
- Search Email History for their address to see whether it was delivered, bounced or never sent.
- If it bounced, correct the address and ask them to request a new sign-in link.
For sign-in problems, see Login & Authentication.
Can I send a custom email to a group of volunteers?
Yes. Create a template (or copy an existing one), then use Segment send to pick a role or paste a list of addresses. This is an Owner action.
Can I send an email at a specific date and time?
Yes. Segment sends take a date and time. Automated emails use a delay after their trigger instead.
Can I preview an email before it goes live?
Yes. The Preview tab shows the email with sample data or a chosen person's details, and Send test email sends a real copy to your inbox.
Do emails come from my domain or PurposeTech's?
From PurposeTech's default sender until an Owner connects your own Postmark account and verifies your sender address, as above.
Next steps
- Campaigns & Events – campaign-level configuration
- Custom Domains & Branding – website branding and domains
- Volunteer Management – the volunteer lifecycle that triggers these emails