Syncro sends emails on your behalf and receives emails from your end users into the system. 

If you're a Technical Leader you'll want to set up your Syncro account to ensure communications are reliably received and reflect the branding of your organization.

Notes: 

• Throughout the documentation, you'll sometimes see text in italic font. This means the term is defined in our Syncro Glossary.
• For a high-level overview of where things are in Syncro, see About the Syncro Header & Primary Navigation Bar. 
• You can also download this guide as a PDF. 

Step 1: Decide How You'll Send & Receive Emails

When you're first setting up your Syncro account, you'll be using our default, Syncro-provided email/Mailbox. This is great for trials and initial demos, but you'll want to move to another delivery option as part of product configuration.

While we'll go over both the custom-branded mailbox and SMTP options here, we strongly recommend that your bring your own SMTP. SMTP gives you ultimate control over deliverability and branding. With either option, you can set up multiple outbound emails to send billing and marketing emails from their own dedicated email addresses while preserving one for support. 

 Read over Syncro Email Options for Maximizing Deliverability and make sure you understand the differences between the options described there. Then navigate to More > Admin and find the Emails/SMS category where we'll be working.

Step 2: Configure a Custom-Branded Mailbox

Since it's a legitimate option—and to test SMTP you'll need to have at least one Outbound Mailbox configured—let's start here. 

To create and then activate a mailbox, you'll need an email address related to the domain you own outside of Syncro (e.g., help@yourdomain.com). Many Syncro users use Microsoft's email services.  

Watch this short video to learn how:

 Create a mailbox and activate it using the instructions in Configure a Custom-branded Email/Mailbox. (You can wait on the additional steps; we'll do these in later sections of this setup guide.)

Step 3: Configure Verified Email Domains

If you don't plan on using SMTP (i.e., you plan to stick with your custom-branded mailbox as your desired option for sending and receiving Syncro emails), you'll need to configure verified email domains.

Verified Email Domains provide an easy way to add DMARC/DKIM records to your DNS to ensure those checks pass. This process adds CNAME records on your server side to acknowledge that Syncro has permission to send emails on your behalf. This means your emails end up in spam less often.

Note: If you plan to set up SMTP, it's OK to set this up as a way to learn about it; verified email domains work even when SMTP is active. You can also switch over completely later if you want to.

Watch this video to learn how to create a new verified email domain:

 Now, follow the steps in Configure Verified Email Domains to add one of your own.

Step 4: Set Up SMTP

The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is a technical standard for transmitting email, making widespread email delivery possible.

Setting up SMTP gives you the most control over your email process because Syncro uses your own mail server/domain to send emails to your end users. Among other benefits, SMTP improves your delivery rates because it helps prevent emails from Syncro from going into spam folders.

Watch this short video to learn more:

 Add SMTP settings to your Syncro account based on the instructions in Set Up SMTP.

Step 5: Configure Outbound Email Categories

Syncro's Multiple Outbound Email Categories feature allows you to send billing and marketing emails from their own dedicated email addresses, while preserving an email address for support. For example, you can use an outbound “support@” email for tickets and a “billing@” email address for your billing communications. This helps ensure communications unrelated to support are routed to the proper channels.

Note: The Billing and Support categories can only be assigned to one Mailbox at a time. The Marketing category can be assigned to more than one Mailbox.

Whether you ultimately settle on a custom-branded mailbox or SMTP, it's a good idea to configure your outbound email categories. Once you select these, any email triggered from those areas of Syncro will be sent using that Mailbox as the default. However, you can still decide to use multiple outbound email domains per Organization; simply edit the Outbound Box fields in that Organization's Communication Settings section.

The following video shows how to configure outbound email categories on the Mailboxes page, which hopefully looks familiar from Step 2:

 Review the types of emails assigned to each outbound email category to make sure you understand them. Then, configure outbound email categories for the custom-branded mailbox you set up in Step 2.

Step 6: Customize Email Templates

Next Steps

If you've completed these steps, odds are that you have a good understanding of how emails work in Syncro. To continue deepening your knowledge, you might want to check out:

• Work with Template Tags: to help your email messages sound like they're individually written to each of your clients.
• Email Template Reference: to make sure you've customized all the email templates you want to.
• Use SMS/MMS with Syncro: to leverage another available form of communication within Syncro.