Marketing Inbox — Email Threading & Replies

Overview

The Marketing Inbox shows all email replies from contractors you've reached out to via Apollo outreach campaigns. Review new responses, assign conversations to team members, update lead status based on interest level, and reply directly from the inbox - keeping all outreach communication centralized. Email replies automatically thread back to the original outreach message, and you can attach files when responding to provide additional context or materials.

NEW: Customizable Email Branding - The marketing inbox now respects environment variable overrides for sender name, from email, font family, signature text, and mailing address when sending replies. Configure MARKETING_FROM_NAME, MARKETING_FROM_EMAIL, MARKETING_EMAIL_FONT, MARKETING_SIGNATURE_TEXT, and MARKETING_MAILING_ADDRESS in your environment to customize the branding of outbound marketing emails without code changes.

NEW: Admin Session Required & Preservation - The Marketing Inbox requires an active admin session to access. If your session expires you will be redirected to the admin login page at /admin/login. The inbox now tries to preserve and validate admin sessions more gracefully so brief transient token verification failures during navigation do not force unnecessary sign-outs. If a session is expired you will still be asked to re-authenticate.

NEW: Trash & Keyboard Delete Recovery - You can now quickly delete threads with keyboard shortcuts and recover accidentally-deleted threads from the Trash view within the retention window. Deleted threads move to Trash (status "deleted") and can be restored from the Trash view for a limited recovery period.

NEW: Error Protection & Loading States - The inbox now gracefully handles database errors during initial load. If the marketing database tables aren't ready yet (during first-time setup or after schema changes), the page loads successfully with an empty thread list and shows a yellow warning banner: "Marketing inbox is initializing." This prevents 500 errors and allows you to continue using BlueClerk while the marketing system spins up.

NEW: DMARC & Automated Mailbox Report Filtering - To reduce noise, the Marketing Inbox automatically filters common automated mailbox reports (DMARC/Aggregate/forensic reports and similar automated notices) so they don't appear in the thread list. This includes messages from known DMARC report senders (for example: noreply-dmarc-support@google.com, dmarcreport@microsoft.com, noreply@dmarc.yahoo.com) and emails matching common DMARC report subject patterns. These messages are generally automated feedback from mailbox providers and not actionable leads, so filtering them keeps the inbox focused on real replies. If you believe an automated message was filtered in error, contact your admin or support for assistance.

Trash & Keyboard Delete Recovery

• Quick delete: Select a thread and press the Delete key (or use the Delete action) to move it to Trash.
• Trash view: Switch to the "Trash" archive to see threads marked deleted.
• Recover: Threads in Trash can be restored to their previous status within the configured recovery window (recoverUntil cutoff).
• Permanent deletion: After the recovery window passes, threads are permanently removed and cannot be restored.
• Safety: Deleting via keyboard shows an inline toast/undo when possible so you can quickly undo accidental deletions.

Accessing the Inbox

1. Log in with an admin account
2. Ensure your session is active — you'll be redirected to login if expired
3. Navigate to Admin > Marketing > Inbox
4. View all conversation threads from Apollo outreach

Access Notes

• Admin session behavior: the inbox validates the admin session on load. Short-lived verification errors are handled gracefully so you won't be forced to sign out for transient failures, but a truly expired or invalid token will still require re-login.
• Preview & initial load: the inbox supports safe preview/verification without failing the whole admin UI if marketing tables are not yet present.

Thread Classification & Status

• New inbound replies are created with status "needs_review".
• Status updates (interested, not_interested, unsubscribed, etc.) can be applied manually or inferred by automated parsing.
• Deleted threads receive the "deleted" status and are moved to Trash for recovery until the retention cutoff.

DMARC / Automated Notices

We automatically filter common DMARC and automated mailbox reports to reduce noise and focus your inbox on real, actionable replies. If an automated message was filtered incorrectly, reach out to support to have it unblocked.

Questions

Q: Where can I recover an accidentally deleted thread? A: Open the Trash view in the Marketing Inbox. Threads are restorable from Trash until the configured recovery cutoff (recoverUntil). If the retention window has passed the thread will be permanently removed.

Q: What happens if my admin session expires while I'm viewing the inbox? A: The inbox tries to preserve the session and handle transient verification failures gracefully. If the token is truly expired you'll be redirected to /admin/login to re-authenticate. After signing back in you'll be able to reopen the inbox.

Q: Can I permanently delete threads immediately? A: Admins can permanently delete threads from the Trash view when required, otherwise threads are retained in Trash until the recovery cutoff elapses.

Q: Why aren't some emails showing up in the inbox? A: The inbox filters automated mailbox reports (DMARC) and similar notices. If a real reply looks missing, check your Trash and filtered messages, or contact support to investigate delivery/parsing issues.