Email: sending, previews, scheduling, and the inbox

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Summary

Every email Lovelio sends to a candidate, client contact, hiring manager, or referee goes out through one tracked sending system. Each send attaches to a conversation thread on the right record, carries a reply address that routes the recipient's reply straight back into Lovelio, and is retried automatically if the first attempt fails. Before anything goes out, every compose screen shows an exact preview of the email the recipient will receive. Replies from anyone appear in the shared Inbox and on the record they belong to.

How sending works

When you send an email from any compose screen, Lovelio finds or creates a conversation thread for that person (kept per person, per job, per consultant). Later emails to the same person on the same job continue the same thread, and the recipient's mail client threads them together too.
The from line shows your name and your agency name (for example "Sam Consultant · Property Roles"). An agency that has connected Outlook or Gmail (with email capture on) sends everything from those mailboxes, automated emails included, and never needs a sending domain: Settings under Sending then says "Your emails go out from your connected mailboxes" and hides the domain card. An agency with no connected mailbox can set up its own verified sending domain instead: the "Sending domain" card takes the domain, shows the DNS records to add at the domain provider, and has a "Check verification" button. On a verified domain each consultant whose login email is on that domain sends from their own work address (for example darren@youragency.com) with no setup needed, and automated emails send under the agency's from name from hello@ on the domain. Until it verifies, email sends from Lovelio's shared domain. The same page holds sender identity - the company from name and the reply-to address used on automated emails.
Connect your mailbox is the first thing a new agency is asked to do, on the screen straight after the welcome reveal: one button for the mail system the agency runs on (Connect Outlook or Connect Gmail, decided from how you signed up and your email domain; an agency Lovelio cannot place is asked "Does your agency run on Microsoft or Google?" once) and a "Skip for now" link. Skipping is remembered for the agency, so the step is offered once and never asked again. Until someone at the agency connects a mailbox, the home page shows one line: "Your emails go out from hello@lovelio.ai until you connect your mailbox", with a Connect your mailbox link to Settings, Integrations. The line goes away the moment a mailbox is connected. Only people who can open Settings, Integrations see it. A Google agency sees Google's "app not verified" warning while Google reviews Lovelio; that is expected and safe to continue (Advanced, then Go to Lovelio).
Replies go to a unique reply address, so when the recipient hits reply, the message routes back to the exact record and thread inside Lovelio. You do not need to forward anything.
Delivery status is tracked per message: sent, delivered, bounced, or complained (marked as spam). A bounce or spam complaint automatically suppresses that address so it is not emailed again.
Consultants with Outlook or Gmail connected and email capture on send from their own mailbox instead: the email sits in their Sent Items, replies arrive in their inbox and on the record, and the timeline says "from your Outlook" or "from your Gmail". Outlook gives no delivery receipt, so those stay at Sent unless a non-delivery report comes back, which marks them Bounced. Automated emails (acknowledgements, reminders, rejections, follow-ups) leave from the job owner's mailbox when they have one connected, otherwise from the mailbox of whoever owns the conversation in Lovelio (usually the admin), otherwise through Lovelio. If a mailbox cannot carry an automated email (it needs reconnecting, the attachments are too large) that one goes through Lovelio and the record says so; a reminder never fails to go out for that reason. An email you write yourself is different: if your Outlook or Gmail cannot send it (it needs reconnecting, the attachments are too large) the send stops with the reason, so you can reconnect in Settings or trim the attachments and send again from your own address. It is never sent from a Lovelio address in your place. Lovelio's own mail to you (invites, sign-in codes, password resets, team notifications) always comes from Lovelio. See the Outlook card for the details.
Candidate emails carry an unsubscribe link, including one-click unsubscribe. Candidate and referee emails both run a suppression check before sending: unsubscribed, bounced, or complained addresses are skipped, and the send result tells you the reason. Hiring manager emails have no unsubscribe footer.
If a send fails, it is queued and retried automatically: the first retry comes about a minute later, then at increasing intervals, up to five retries before the message is marked failed.
Attached documents that live in Lovelio (for example terms of business on a spec or float email) survive retries and are never silently dropped: if the document cannot be loaded, the send fails rather than going out without it.
Automated emails skip duplicates: the same template to the same recipient is not sent twice, so a retried trigger cannot double-email someone.
Demo (walk-in) accounts never dispatch real email. The message is recorded in the product but nothing reaches a real inbox.
Meeting confirmations and system mail (invites, password resets) send outside the thread system: they have no conversation thread, no suppression list, and no unsubscribe footer.

Email automations and the master switch

Nothing sends automatically until you say so. Every automated email (acknowledgements, interview reminders, follow-ups, nudges, rejection emails on stage moves, talent pool check-ins, team notifications) is OFF by default for every account.
Settings under Email Automations lists every automated email in a grid: who gets it, why it exists, and when it sends. Click a row to see the exact sample email, where it is sent from (the job owner's connected mailbox, otherwise the agency address), and a plain-language explanation, then turn it on or off. The row records who turned it on and when.
The switch holds wherever Lovelio acts on its own. An automated email that goes out from a booking flow rather than a stage move (the interview confirmation to your interviewers and the client contact when the candidate picks a time from their link, the "candidate confirmed" follow-up to the client) checks the same switch. An interview you book yourself - in the wizard, in chat or through the API - sends its invites with the booking whatever the switch says: that is your send, previewed on the review screen. A skipped send is noted on the application timeline with the reason.
The from-now-on rule: an automation you turn on only ever acts on records created after that moment. It will never reach back into older applications, interviews, or imported data. Turning something on today cannot email anyone about anything that already existed today.
There is also a master email switch per account, controlled by Lovelio. A real account has it on from signup, so you can send your own email and connect Outlook or Gmail straight away; automations still start off until you switch them on. Demo accounts never send. If Lovelio switches an account off, no email of any kind leaves it (sign-in and password emails excepted) and the Email Automations page says so.
A safety cap watches automated volume: if automations try to send more than 50 emails in an hour, sending pauses automatically and Lovelio is alerted.
The wording of each automated email is edited separately in Settings under Email Templates (AI-written in your style, or locked to your exact approved copy).

Client follow-up wording

When a client has not replied to a float or a submission, Lovelio drafts the follow-up and puts it in front of you. It never sends itself: the draft opens in the compose panel with the recipient, subject and body already filled in, and it goes only when you press Send.
The wording of those drafts is yours to set. Settings under Emails has a "Client follow-ups" section with four editable templates: the float follow-up, the float follow-up used when the client has already written back (their own last message is quoted into it, so the follow-up acknowledges what they already said), the submission follow-up when one candidate is still waiting, and the submission follow-up when several are.
Each template lists the merge fields it can use, for example the client's first name, the candidate's first name, how long ago you sent it, the agency name and the link back to the profile or submission. Editing one changes every future draft; "Reset to default" puts Lovelio's wording back. "Send test to me" emails you a sample.
Writing a link as here puts the link behind the word, so the client clicks a word rather than a raw address. This works in any compose box, not just these templates.
Every compose box takes formatting, and the recipient receives it: a blank line starts a new paragraph, a line starting "-" becomes a bullet, a line starting "1." becomes a numbered list, and word comes out bold. The client email panels (float follow-ups, submission answers, interview follow-ups) carry a small toolbar for bold, bullets and numbers, Cmd+B bolds the selection, and Enter continues the list you are in - Enter on an empty bullet ends it. The preview and the send run the same parse, so what you format is what lands in the inbox.
Which of the four is used is decided from the record, not by you: a float where the client has replied uses the replied version, and a submission with more than one candidate still waiting uses the several-candidates version.

Personal and work addresses (the approach rule)

A person can be on file with more than one address, and each address is owned by the relationship it arrived from. The address on their candidate record is personal - it belongs to them and stays valid when they change jobs. An address that belongs to their contact role at a client (the same person can be both a candidate and a client contact) is a work address - it belongs to the role, and it goes stale on its own when their record says they have moved on.
An approach email - outreach about opportunities, like a talent pool check-in or a one-to-one email from the candidate record outside any live process - only ever goes to a personal address. Emailing someone about a new role at the work address their client employer gave you damages your relationship with the person and the client at once, so Lovelio pauses that send and shows the reason, for example: their only address belongs to their contact role at Fonterra.
You can send anyway. The paused send shows a "Send anyway" option; the override is recorded with your name against the send. Automated emails can never override - an automation will skip that person and note why on their record, and it never falls back to the work address.
Off limits is a second, separate wall: a person who holds a live contact role at a client is blocked from approach mail entirely, even at their personal address - having the right address is not the same as having the right to contact them. The warning names the client; "Send anyway" works the same way (named, logged), automation never can. The block lifts on its own when their record says they have left the client. Their record shows an amber "Off limits" chip while it applies.
When you email a linked person from a client record, the email is a client conversation: it goes to the work address their contact role owns, and the compose window says so ("Sending as Client contact"). You can flip it to an approach before sending - the address flips with it.
Emails inside a live process (interview logistics, references, rejections, confirmations of something the person just did) are not approaches and use the address on the record as normal.

Preview before sending

Every place you can compose an email shows a rendered preview of the exact email the recipient will receive, with personalisation tokens already substituted and the same styling wrapper the real send uses. The preview and the send run the same rendering code, so what you see is what goes out. This covers bulk candidate emails, one-to-one composes, client contact emails, reject-and-notify, reference requests, interview requests, and AI-drafted emails. Bulk emails support the tokens {first_name} and {job_title}, and the preview lets you page through each recipient's personalised version.

Client email greetings

Client-facing emails (spec and float emails, and submission emails) open with a greeting that defaults to "Hi" plus the contact's first name. The compose screen shows this greeting as an editable field, so you can change it to whatever you would actually write ("Hello Brett", "G'day Brett"). These emails are left-justified in the recipient's inbox, deliberately, so they read like a note a person typed rather than a template.

Scheduling emails

Scheduling is for candidate emails. From the candidate compose screen you can schedule an email instead of sending now. Sending now is the default; scheduling opens a date and time picker that must be set in the future. Immediate sends from that screen get a 5-second undo window before they go out.
The email sends automatically at the chosen time, in your name, through the same tracked path as an immediate send. Delivery is attempted up to three times; if all attempts fail the email is marked failed rather than retried forever.
A scheduled email can be cancelled any time before it sends: by asking the AI assistant to cancel it (when the assistant schedules one, its confirmation card also shows an "Undo schedule" option), or via the API. Only emails still in the scheduled state can be cancelled; once sent, it is sent.
The API can also list scheduled emails, cancel one, or fire one immediately with send-now.

The Inbox

The Inbox page is one place to find any email reply. It lists every inbound message across the whole agency, newest first: candidate replies, client and hiring manager replies, and referee replies. You can search by name, address, subject, or message text, and filter to candidates, clients, or referees (hiring manager replies appear under the client filter). Each row links straight to that record's email tab, where the full thread lives. The list shows the most recent 300 inbound messages. Inbound message content is sanitised before display.

Voice and links

AI-drafted emails written in the agency's name run through the agency's brand voice and a scrub that removes AI writing tics, so drafts read like your agency, not a robot. Job ad copy is different: it is written in the client's voice and never names the client.
No email Lovelio sends ever contains a raw infrastructure or authentication link. Every link in an email is a lovelio.ai address. Password resets and invites work through Lovelio's own pages.

Common questions

Why did my email not send? Check whether the recipient is suppressed (bounced, complained, or unsubscribed). The send result states the reason. Failed sends retry automatically.
Where do replies go? To the record's email tab and the shared Inbox. You never lose a reply to a personal mailbox.
Can I see if an email was opened? No. Lovelio tracks delivery status (delivered, bounced, marked as spam) but not opens or link clicks, whether the email went through Lovelio or from your own Outlook.
Can I edit the "Hi first-name" greeting? Yes, on spec, float, and submission emails the greeting is an editable field in the compose screen.
Can I stop a scheduled email? Yes, any time before its send time, by asking the AI assistant or via the API.
Will a candidate emailed on two jobs get tangled threads? No. Threads are kept per person per job, so each conversation stays separate.