Send an email
You can send an email to anyone whose profile includes an email address. From the Dashboard of the person's profile, click Email. This option will only appear if an email address is associated with the person's profile. Once you click the email button, you will see a text-based email editor.
You'll be able to copy other people on your correspondence (by entering an email address in the cc line), blind copy people (your original recipient will not see that you sent a copy of the email to anyone on the bcc line), and attach a file to the email. You can also indicate what type of contact you were completing in the dropdown menu directly above the Send email button. By default, each email you send to a member of your nation subtracts social capital from the recipient. You can change this to subtracting no social capital or more than one increment of social capital from the second dropdown menu above the Send email button. (In this nation, the social capital is constituent capital and is abbreviated as "cs.")
Once you click the Send email button, copies of the email sent will be stored in the sender's profile and the recipient's profile. Remember that you can only send email from an address that is associated with a broadcaster of your nation.
📌 Note: If you email a person with whom you have previously corresponded, and there were others CC'd on the email, the system will assume you want to reply-all to your prior exchange. If you would like to respond without sending a response to all the people who were CC'd on the initial email, be sure to clear the CC box. If you would like to start a new email to the recipient, be sure to clear the CC box AND the Subject box before sending.
View and respond to incoming email
There are four places to view incoming email:
Activity stream of your nation
Broadcaster's activity stream
Activity stream of the person who sent the email
Viewing email in path view
Viewing email from the activity stream of your nation at Dashboard > Activity:
Viewing email from a broadcaster's activity stream at Communication > [Broadcaster name]:
Viewing email from the sender's profile:
Viewing email in path view:
A person can be added to, or move along a path, by emailing one of your broadcasters. This allows you to view incoming emails directly from the path view. An advantage to this view is that incoming mail will auto-populate the path description with the subject of the sent email.
This is primarily useful if you have a path where a workflow is centered around your supporters contacting a specific broadcaster. For example, if you have an email used only for volunteer recruitment, it would be advantageous to link that email to a broadcaster and configure the settings to automate a volunteer path.
This setting is turned on from Communication > [Broadcaster Name] > Settings > Email. Learn more about adjusting broadcaster email settings.
The unique thing about NationBuilder Mailboxes is that all correspondence from everyone within your organization is stored within the user record of your supporter or prospect. In addition to correspondence, you'll also have a record of the user's interaction with your organization on Twitter, Facebook, and your public website. Point people in your organization can also log contacts with the person, creating a holistic history of the person's interaction with your nation.
An alternative to NationBuilder Mailboxes is to forward email from your external email provider to your broadcaster or bcc your broadcaster on all mail from your external email system. This will automatically log the email in your nation.