You might receive an email with a reply address: emailer@portsmouthctc.org.uk. It also includes a 'blue box' telling you who originated the email.
That's because:
- We use Amazon Web Services to send our emails. It's lower cost and more reliable than other methods, but AWS requires us to specify in advance which 'from' addresses it should accept. AWS accepts any address ending in @portsmouthctc.org.uk so we always send emails from PCTC addresses.
- That approach allows us to implement an email protocol called DMARC that maximises the chance that our emails get delivered to the recipient's inbox.
If the originator uses a personal address we send messages from 'emailer@portsmouthctc.org.uk' and include a blue box in the email to explain who originated the email.
If you are logged in to the site and you use it to send an email, it automatically suggests you use your personal PCTC email address to avoid the 'blue box' and make it easier for people to reply to you.
When composing a reply to the emailer, you can:
- Select the highlighted address in the 'blue box' and paste it into the reply address.
- Right click the highlighted address, select 'Copy link' (or similar) and paste that into the reply address.
- Simply reply to the emailer. Provided you leave the 'blue box' in your email, the emailer will attempt to forward your email on for you.
If you want to start a completely new conversation with the sender, you can normally click/tap the sender's name in the 'blue box'.
By the way, we're aware there's a standard mechanism that allows us to specify replies should go to an address other than the 'from' address. However, some email software obeys that mechanism while others ignore it (presumably because spammers can use it to mislead you). Given we can't predict whether that mechanism will work for you, or not, we decided not to use it.