Sending & compliance
Your own SMTP/IMAP mailboxes for sponsor outreach, the suppression list, the footer opt-out, AI refusal detection, and the legal stance behind cold-contact rules.
Sponsor emails go out from your mailbox, not Bookitive's — so they land as genuine mail from you, and replies come back to your inbox. This page covers the mailbox setup (Sponsors → Sending) and the consent machinery that keeps outreach lawful.
Sending mailboxes
Add a mailbox under Sponsors → Sending:
- SMTP — host, port, username, password, and TLS mode (implicit TLS on 465, or STARTTLS on 587) to send from. Test SMTP confirms it works before you rely on it.
- IMAP (optional) — the same credentials to read replies. Enable Read replies over IMAP and Bookitive polls for responses, matches them to the recipient, and classifies them — "Bookitive only reads, it never deletes or moves anything." Test IMAP verifies the connection.
- A From email, sender name, and a label to recognize the mailbox.
Passwords are encrypted at rest and never shown again. You can run several mailboxes (a general one, a per-brand one) and choose which a campaign sends from.
Consent & opt-outs
Two channels catch people who don't want to hear from you, configured under Consent & opt-outs:
- Unsubscribe link in the footer — every email carries a one-click opt-out link (and the commercial-message marking the law requires). A click adds the address to suppression immediately.
- Automatic refusal detection (AI) — when a reply contains an explicit "don't contact me again", the address is unsubscribed automatically.
If you turn both channels off, you are responsible for watching replies for refusals and adding addresses yourself. Suppressed addresses are always honored regardless — the toggles only choose how an address gets suppressed, never whether suppression is respected.
The suppression list
Unsubscribed & blocked addresses are never emailed. Each carries its reason:
- unsubscribed — clicked the footer link,
- refusal in reply (AI) — asked to stop, in a reply,
- blocked manually — you added them.
You can Block an address by hand, or Re-allow one — but only if they explicitly asked to hear from you again; re-allowing someone who unsubscribed is exactly the mistake the confirmation guards against.
Pausing and the legal stance
An organization-wide send pause stops all outbound sponsor email at once — the brake for "hold everything". And the cold vs established distinction from the sponsor book is the heart of the compliance model: established relationships may be bulk-mailed; cold contacts must be sent individually, one deliberate click each. Bookitive builds this into the campaign sender so the rule is enforced, not merely remembered.
Related
Campaigns
AI-drafted sponsor outreach — create a campaign, import or attach recipients, review per-recipient drafts, tune the prompt, and send gradually from your mailbox.
Team
Two scopes of access — organization roles that cascade to every event, and event roles granted one event at a time — plus the built-in system roles.