Email & Messaging
Configure email templates, scheduling, header/footer design, and communications for your campaigns.
Overview
Every touchpoint with your volunteers — welcome emails, shift confirmations, reminders, referral invitations — goes through PurposeTech's email system. You can customise the design, content, scheduling, and branding of every email at both the tenant and campaign level.
Email templates
PurposeTech includes a set of transactional email templates that fire at key moments in the volunteer lifecycle:
| Template | When it sends | Default timing |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome | After registration | Immediate |
| Shift confirmation | When shifts are confirmed | Immediate |
| First reminder | Before the volunteer's shift | 7 days before |
| Second reminder | Closer to the shift | 1 day before |
| Abandoned cart | Volunteer started signup but didn't finish | 24 hours after abandonment |
| Invite friend | Volunteer shares a referral link | Immediate |
| Shifts changed | Admin or coordinator modifies a volunteer's shifts | Immediate |
| Complete registration | Volunteer has held shifts but hasn't verified email | Configurable |
| Coordinator assigned | A site coordinator is assigned to a job | Immediate |
Managing templates
From the admin portal, go to Messaging > Templates to see all email templates for the current campaign.
For each template you can:
- Enable or disable — toggle individual templates on or off
- Preview — see exactly what the email looks like with sample data
- Edit content — modify the HTML body, plain text body, and subject line
- Configure scheduling — control when the email sends (see scheduling below)
- Send a test — send the email to yourself with real template variables filled in
- View statistics — see how many were sent, bounced, opened
Template variables
Email templates support personalisation variables that are automatically replaced with real data when the email sends:
| Variable | Replaced with |
|---|---|
{{first_name}} | Volunteer's first name |
{{last_name}} | Volunteer's last name |
{{email}} | Volunteer's email address |
{{campaign_name}} | Name of the campaign |
{{shift_html}} | Formatted HTML table of the volunteer's shift details |
{{action_url}} | Login or action link for the volunteer |
Custom variables can be added for campaign-specific content (e.g., event location, dress code, parking instructions).
Scheduling
Each email template has a configurable schedule. There are three scheduling modes:
Immediate (duration after action)
Send the email a set time after the triggering event. For example:
- Welcome email: 0 minutes after registration (immediate)
- Abandoned cart: 1440 minutes (24 hours) after the volunteer abandons signup
Before event (duration before event)
Send the email a set time before the campaign's event date. For example:
- First reminder: 10080 minutes (7 days) before the shift
- Second reminder: 1440 minutes (1 day) before the shift
Absolute date
Send the email at a specific date and time. Useful for:
- One-off announcements (e.g., "Parking instructions for Saturday")
- Campaign-wide communications that need to go out at a precise time
For most campaigns, the default schedule works well. The main ones to consider adjusting are the reminder timings — some organisations prefer 3 days + morning-of instead of 7 days + 1 day.
Header and footer design
Every email and your volunteer-facing campaign site share a consistent header and footer. These are configured in the admin portal under Design > Header & Footer.
What you can customise
- Header HTML — the top section of every page and email. Typically includes your logo, navigation links, and campaign name.
- Footer HTML — the bottom section. Typically includes contact information, social media links, legal disclaimers, and unsubscribe links.
- Footer CSS — custom styles for the footer section.
Auto-generate from your website
If your organisation already has a website, PurposeTech can automatically generate a matching header and footer:
- Go to Design > Header & Footer
- Enter your organisation's website URL
- Click Generate — PurposeTech fetches your site and extracts the header and footer HTML
- Review and adjust the generated code
- Save
This gives your volunteer-facing pages and emails a consistent look with your main website without manually writing HTML.
Tenant vs. campaign level
Header/footer can be set at two levels:
- Tenant level — applies to all campaigns under this tenant by default
- Campaign level — overrides the tenant header/footer for a specific campaign
This is useful when different campaigns have different branding. For example, your annual street appeal might use your main brand, while a corporate partnership event uses co-branded header/footer.
Campaign-level header/footer overrides are optional. If you don't set them, the campaign inherits from the tenant. Most organisations only need to set header/footer once at the tenant level.
Campaign-specific email templates
By default, all campaigns under a tenant share the same email templates. If you need different email content for different campaigns (e.g., different welcome message, different instructions), you can enable campaign-specific templates:
- Go to the campaign's email settings
- Enable Use campaign-specific templates
- Each template is cloned for this campaign and can be edited independently
When disabled, the campaign uses the tenant's shared templates. This keeps things simple for most organisations while allowing flexibility when needed.
Sending one-off emails
Beyond the automated templates, admins can send ad-hoc emails:
Resend login link
If a volunteer can't find their login email, you can resend it from their profile in the admin portal.
Send registration email
For bulk-imported volunteers who haven't verified their email yet, you can trigger the registration email manually. This sends them a login link to complete their signup.
Bulk scheduling
If you notice that some volunteers are missing a scheduled email (e.g., they registered after the reminder was supposed to send), you can use Schedule missing from the template's side panel. This queues the email for all volunteers who should have received it but didn't.
Testing emails
Before opening registration, always test your emails:
- Go to Messaging > Templates
- Click on a template to open its side panel
- Go to the Test Email tab
- Enter your own email address
- Click Send Test
The test email uses real template variables (your name, a sample shift, the campaign's branding) so you can verify formatting, links, and personalisation before any volunteer sees it.
Email delivery
PurposeTech uses Postmark for email delivery, which provides:
- High deliverability — dedicated IP pools for transactional email
- Bounce handling — bounced emails are tracked and flagged in the admin portal
- Open tracking — see which volunteers opened their emails (visible in template statistics). Open tracking uses a standard tracking pixel. Volunteers are informed about email tracking in the Privacy Policy. Open tracking data is retained for 90 days
All email delivery is managed by PurposeTech — no configuration needed on your end.
Common questions
What emails does PurposeTech send automatically?
| When | |
|---|---|
| Welcome | After registration |
| Shift confirmation | When shifts are confirmed |
| Reminder (1st) | Configurable — e.g., 7 days before shift |
| Reminder (2nd) | Configurable — e.g., 1 day before shift |
| Abandoned cart | When someone starts but doesn't finish signup |
| Shift changed | When an admin modifies a volunteer's shifts |
| Referral invite | When a volunteer shares their referral link |
| Complete registration | When a volunteer has held shifts but hasn't verified |
| Coordinator assigned | When a coordinator is assigned to a site |
All can be enabled/disabled and their timing adjusted per campaign.
Can I send a custom email to all volunteers?
Yes. From the admin portal, you can send broadcast emails to all volunteers in a campaign or a filtered subset (e.g., volunteers in a specific region or with a specific status).
A volunteer says they didn't get their email. What do I check?
- Check their spam/junk folder — first thing to try
- Check the Gmail Promotions tab — Google often routes transactional emails there
- Verify the email address is correct in the admin portal
- Check email delivery logs for bounces or delivery failures
- Resend the email from the volunteer's profile
- Suggest using the one-time passcode (OTP) for login — it often gets through when login links don't
Can I customise the email header and footer?
Yes. Email templates use your tenant's branding — logo, colours, and footer content. You can also auto-generate a matching header/footer from your existing website. See the template configuration section above for setup details.
Do emails come from my domain or PurposeTech's?
You configure your sender address (e.g., noreply@yourcharity.org.nz) at the tenant or campaign level. The emails are delivered through PurposeTech's managed infrastructure (Postmark) but appear to come from your address.
Can I schedule an email to go out at a specific date and time?
Yes. Email templates support three scheduling modes: immediate (after a trigger event), relative (X days before the shift), and absolute (specific date and time). Absolute scheduling is useful for one-off announcements like parking instructions or last-minute updates.
What if a volunteer registered after the reminder email was supposed to send?
Use Schedule missing in the email template's side panel. This queues the email for all volunteers who should have received it but didn't — including late registrations. It's a catch-up mechanism that ensures no one misses important communications.
Can I preview an email before it goes live?
Yes. Every email template has a Test Send feature. Enter your own email address and click send — you'll receive the email with real template variables (your name, sample shift data, campaign branding) so you can verify formatting, links, and content.
Next steps
- Campaigns & Events — campaign-level configuration including email scheduling
- Custom Domains & Branding — set up custom sender domains
- Volunteer Management — the volunteer lifecycle that triggers these emails