With email threading your email will thread all replies that relate to each other into a single conversation. This allows teammates to view the context about an email thread, together, in one place, rather than needing to split their attention across multiple conversations. Email threading also prevents email threads going through workflows multiple times or getting assigned to different teammates who may not have the right context.
Previously, in email conversations we set the ReplyTo address for each email to a unique address for each conversation that looks like this: n+u_xxxx@examply.intercom-mail.com
You can now send and receive emails from the actual email addresses of conversation participants, and reply directly to each participant in the conversation. This allows you to clearly see who you're talking to and add control over who will receive your message by allowing you to remove people you don’t want to send to, or add more people in CC.
| Old behavior | New behavior |
When recipients change | When a user replies to an email conversation and removes one or more of the other users who received the original email, their reply will split out into a new conversation.
E.g. Alice emails support@example.com (Intercom) and CCs Bob and Carol. Bob replies to Alice and support@example.com, but removes Carol from CC. His email creates a second conversation in Intercom. | Email replies to a conversation that have been sent to only a subset of participants will be added to that conversation instead of starting a new one.
E.g. Alice emails support@example.com (Intercom) and CCs Bob and Carol. Bob replies to Alice and support@example.com, but removes Carol from CC. Bob’s email is threaded into Alice’s conversation in Intercom. Though Carol is a participant of the conversation she doesn’t receive Bob’s email. |
Email headers and replying | Emails sent on a group conversation have an ‘n+u’ email address in the ReplyTo header. When the user replies, they reply to that address and their reply is added to the conversation via the Help Desk for the teammate to see. Then their message is emailed out individually to all of the participants of the conversation. | N+u addresses are no longer used in the ReplyTo header. Instead, when a teammate replies in a group conversation their message will be sent in a single email to all participants in the conversation, with those participants email addresses in the To and Cc headers. When users reply to those emails they will be replying directly to each of the participants, plus the Intercom email address used to send the message to them (e.g. bob.oneill@examply.intercom-mail.com). That means we no longer send on users’ replies to every participant. Only the recipients who the user specified in their email will receive it. |
Bcc’d or ‘unknown’ conversation participants | When a participant in a conversation replies to an email and Bcc’s someone who is not a participant of the conversation, when the Bcc’d person replies we will split out their reply into a new conversation.
There are other similar scenarios, e.g. when a teammate uses multiple email addresses in their client, they may start a conversation from one address then switch to using another. When they do this we would also split out their reply into a new conversation. | We will thread replies from Bcc’d people (or other ‘unknown’ senders) into the same conversation. Their reply will contain a warning banner to tell the teammate that the person wasn’t previously seen in the conversation, and they were not CC’d by another participant.
The sender will be added as a participant into the conversation. The teammate can choose to remove them from the conversation if they don’t want that person to see their replies. |
Group conversations with one participant on Messenger | Messenger conversations can also become group conversations. Only one of the participants can access the conversation in the Messenger; all other participants only receive replies by email.
When the Messenger teammate sends a reply through the Messenger, all participants will receive it.
For customers replying, they will reply to the n+u address which means their reply will be added to the Messenger for the Messenger user to see, and forwarded on to the other email participants. | It’s still the case that Messenger conversations can also become group conversations, and that only one of the participants can access the conversation in the Messenger; all other participants only receive replies by email.
It’s also still the case that when the Messenger user replies, all participants will get the message, but the email will look like this: sam.murray.onchat@examply.intercom-mail.com to represent the Messenger teammate better. The email will also contain a call-out at the top to inform participants that replying to the email will send it to the user who is on the Messenger. |
Conversation history | Customers have a setting in their Email settings to determine whether or not the full history of a conversation should be appended to the bottom of each email sent in a conversation. | Sending conversation history in emails can be enabled or disabled. |
User replies from the API | The API can be used to add email replies to conversation on behalf of users. This triggers the reply to be sent to all participants in the conversation. | Behavior remains unchanged. |
Why is the email reply not threading into an existing conversation?
This is likely caused by the customer's email client.
Some email clients will strip out headers from emails which Intercom uses to thread replies into a singular conversation. Whenever headers are stripped from the conversation, a new conversation is created because our system does not recognize and match the conversation with the original message.
Another possible cause for a new conversation being created is that the recipients of the new email do not match the existing conversation.
When a recipient is removed from an email thread Intercom will create a new conversation. You can check the recipients of the email by clicking “View raw email” , which appears when you hover over the ✉️ icon like you see below 👇
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