If you want customers to be able to contact you via email (e.g., help@yourapp.com) you can automatically forward your emails to Intercom. This will let you handle all support requests from your team inbox.
Each app has a unique incoming email address, this is found in Settings> Email > Email forwarding. It’s as easy as copying this email forwarding address and pasting it as your new forwarding address.
You can add more than one email address to forward into Intercom. Once you've done this for the first email, just repeat for all other emails you want to set this up on. The email on the settings is just referring to a 'main email' but there's no limit.
1. Enter your existing support email address
Enter your current support email address in Settings> Email > Email forwarding. This is the address your customers use to contact you, that you want to forward to Intercom.
2. Copy your forwarding email address
Copy your unique inbound address. This is the address we'll forward your emails to in Intercom.
You can also automatically forward email to an individual team member. To do this, copy the unique email address listed on their teammate profile below which you can access the teammates profile by clicking on their name from the teammate settings.
When emails are forwarded to these addresses we will try and match the sender to a user in your app based on their email address using automatic end-user detection.
End-user detection on email forwarding must be enabled in your settings.
3. Set up forwarding in your email client
Refer to the documentation for your email client to begin forwarding email to your inbound address. Here’s documentation for some common clients depending on your email volume:
High volume email forwarding
Mail routing is recommended for high volume forwarding. This doesn’t have rate limits or require a mailbox to be created. You’ll need administrator access to set it up.
If you want to use custom sender email addresses while using mail routing, you should first:
Set up aliases for your Google admin email account, using the sender emails you wish to use with intercom (otherwise you will pay for these emails as Google users unnecessarily).
Verify your domain in Intercom.
Then verify the email addresses.
Only then set up the workspace mail routing.
Low volume email forwarding
These methods are suitable for low volume forwarding only. Rate limits could result in messages being slowed or the account being denylisted if they are exceeded.
Using the email forwarding setting with Outlook will forward the emails as if you are the original sender. You should use the redirect option instead which will preserve the original sender.
We recommend forwarding email to Intercom using mail routing where possible. This is better than standard email forwarding if you expect to receive a high volume of emails as it avoids any rate limits set by the email client, which could result in messages being slowed or your account being denylisted.
4. Verify your email
This step may vary based on your email provider. Generally, you'll get an email in your Intercom Help Desk and you'll be asked to click a link to confirm your request or copy a code. This code can then be entered into your email client settings. If you don't see this email in your inbox, you'll find it in your email settings in Settings > Email > Email forwarding.
5. Validate email forwarding
Once you've completed these steps in your email client, you can validate your email forwarding in your email settings to confirm the connection.
6. Add it as a company address
Mark the email address as a company address. This will stop it being added to conversations and causing email loops.
Intercom will attempt to automatically detect and add any configured company email addresses to this list. 👌
Note:
It's not possible to forward email by just adding your email address to an email group. You need to explicitly forward that email to Intercom.
When you forward your email into Intercom, every member of your team will be able to see any emails sent to you. As a result, if you have private emails you don't want visible in Intercom it's not advisable to forward emails from your personal address.
Some email clients refer to these settings as "redirection" not "forwarding".
Intercom has built-in spam filtering in addition to that provided by your email client. If you’re missing messages that you think have been incorrectly filtered, you can check for them in Settings > Spam.
To remove spam emails from this spam folder, you can press "not spam" on these messages, which will bring them back to the normal inbox.
Intercom has a 20MB limit on incoming email content. Any email larger than 20MB will be rejected. - This limit includes attachments.
Expected behavior
Customer sends an email to a forwarding address.
Teammate can reply to this conversation via the Help Desk.
Customer will receive the reply as an email and send a new reply.
The reply should not create a new conversation but instead it gets added as a comment to the existing conversation.
CC-ing someone should add them as participants.
CC-ed participant replies and gets added to the conversation.
Then a teammate replies from their email instead of Intercom Help Desk, and the reply gets added to the conversation.
Can I forward emails with Google Groups?
We strongly advise against using Google Groups for forwarding, as it will rewrite the "From" address to the Google Group address and put the original customer's email address as the "Reply To" address. This is due to the way that Google handles strict DMARC policies. In Intercom these conversations will be associated with a lead that has the Google Groups address, and the original customer will be included as a second participant of the conversation.
A better option for forwarding to Intercom would be to use Google’s routing options.
Important note regarding BCCs
If you forward emails to Intercom with customers added as BCC and any of those BCC'd participants reply to the email, a new conversation will be created in Intercom, with a note linking to the original thread:
Clicking the link in the note, will open the related conversation in the sidebar (if you have added Recent conversations to your sidebar apps) so you can see them side by side, and take action directly:
The same note will be added if an email from an Intercom conversation is forwarded to another customer, and they reply. This ensures no one is added to a conversation they are not intended to be a part of. The only people added as participants in an email conversation are the original sender, and any CC’d users.
When this happens, all the subsequent interactions with the new participant will be contained in this separate conversation in Intercom.
Teammate BCCs participants from the forwarding email
This flow emulates an outbound email workflow. The teammate uses the forwarding address to BCC a list of participants and in return, every participant reply should be treated as a new conversation.
Expected behavior
Teammate sends an email to the forwarding address and BCCs two participants. This creates a conversation. Let’s call it Main.
First participant replies, creates a conversation referencing the Main conversation.
Second participant replies, creates another conversation referencing the Main conversation.
If you BCC a teammate’s email address, or loop them in via a forwarded email, they will be added to the original conversation.
Troubleshooting email forwarding
To troubleshoot issues with email forwarding, make sure that you have Intercom's default email address added to your email forwarding settings for your external email inbox. Your default Intercom email address can be found under App Settings > Outbound > Addresses & domains, like you see below 👇
For reference, here's how forwarding settings look in Gmail 👇
It's also worth checking if any filters or restrictions have been created in the forwarding setup of your email provider which could be block emails from being forward to Intercom, e.g. only forward emails with a specific Subject line or with keywords.
If you're still having issues with your specific email provider, we suggest reaching out to your provider or email administrator, or checking the Intercom Community for similar reports.
Remove Email Forwarding
If you wish to disconnect your email forwarding from Intercom, you need to disable the email forwarding in your email client settings.
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