Transactional Email & Campaigns Overview

ClientCove sends two fundamentally different kinds of email: transactional emails that fire automatically in response to events ("you have a new ticket", "your invoice was paid") and email campaigns that you compose and send intentionally to a chosen audience. Both use the same underlying Email Designer for branding, templates, and rendering.

Two Email Worlds

The Email Designer is the unified template tool. Templates created there can be applied to either world.

Quick Glossary

The Email Designer

The visual editor at /email-designer/ (admin-only) is the foundation for all email styling in ClientCove.

You create templates by:

1. Picking a starting point (blank, or duplicate an existing template)
2. Dragging blocks onto the canvas (header, text, buttons, images, etc.)
3. Configuring each block (text, color, link, alignment)
4. Setting global template settings (colors, fonts, max-width, padding)
5. Assigning the template to one or more notification types
6. Saving

Once saved, the template renders for every email of those notification types — across the whole portal.

See The Email Designer for the complete walkthrough.

Transactional Emails

ClientCove fires transactional emails in response to ~22 different events:

Each notification type can have its own template (specifically designed for that event), or fall back to the default transactional template configured in Settings → Email Designer.

See Transactional Emails for the full notification type list, template assignment, and override mechanics.

Email Campaigns

Email campaigns are one-to-many sends you compose and schedule. The dashboard at /email-campaigns/ (admin / editor / approved representative) shows:

• All campaigns with status, audience size, and stats
• Filters by status (Draft / Scheduled / Sending / Sent / Paused / Cancelled)
• Search across campaign names and subjects
• A Create Campaign button to start a new campaign
• A link to Email Templates (the Email Designer)

Campaigns flow through:

1. Create — pick template, write subject, choose audience segment, set From Name + From Email
2. Schedule — send now, or schedule for a future date/time
3. Send — ClientCove processes the send in batches via cron (configurable batch size)
4. Track — opens, clicks, failures recorded per-recipient

See Email Campaigns for create/schedule/track workflow.

How They Work Together

The unified architecture:

        ┌──────────────────────────┐
        │     Email Designer       │
        │  (visual template tool)  │
        └────────┬──────────┬──────┘
                 │          │
                 ▼          ▼
        ┌──────────────┐  ┌────────────────┐
        │ Transactional│  │   Campaigns    │
        │ (auto-sent)  │  │ (manual sends) │
        └──────┬───────┘  └────────┬───────┘
               │                   │
               └─────────┬─────────┘
                         ▼
                ┌─────────────────┐
                │  WP Mail / SMTP │
                │   (delivery)    │
                └─────────────────┘

Both transactional and campaign emails:

• Use templates from the Email Designer
• Render through email-template-renderer.php (HTML output)
• Send via WordPress's wp_mail() (typically routed through SMTP/SendGrid)
• Apply the global email branding (logo, colors)

The split into two systems keeps concerns clean:

• Transactional — never have an "unsubscribe" because they're functional, deliverability-critical
• Campaigns — always have unsubscribe links, sender info, list management

Email Delivery Infrastructure

The Email Designer renders the HTML; WordPress sends it. For reliable delivery you almost always want an SMTP service in front of WordPress's default mail function.

Recommended setup

• WP Mail SMTP plugin (or similar)
• SendGrid as the delivery provider (the same one that handles inbound parse for ticket / task creation)
• SPF, DKIM, DMARC records configured for your sending domain
• A consistent From address (e.g. notifications@yourportal.com)

Without proper SMTP setup, emails go through PHP's mail() function, which has extremely poor deliverability. They'll often land in spam or be rejected silently.

Cloud storage for images

If your templates include images (logos, hero images), store them in cloud storage with public URLs. The Email Designer's global logo field expects a public URL — typically a Google Cloud Storage / S3 / DigitalOcean Spaces URL. Linking to images on your portal works but tends to be slower for recipients and less cacheable.

Permissions Snapshot

Subscribers and standard client users don't see the Email Designer or the Campaigns dashboard — these are management tools.