Where Cake's emails land

1. In Cake, open Settings , then Notifications and press Send a test alert.

2. Find the email called "Test alert from Cake". If it lands anywhere but your inbox, move it there. The steps for each email app are below.

3. Add no-reply@cake.ink to your contacts. Every alert Cake sends you comes from that address.

4. On the same screen, press Turn on browser notifications. Then a new request also shows up on this device, wherever the email lands.

Using Gmail? A filter keeps Cake's alerts in Primary. Read Cake emails in Promotions.

Open the folder or tab it landed in, then:

• Gmail: In Spam, select the email and click Not spam. In the app it's More, then Report not spam. In Promotions, drag the email onto Primary on a computer, or open it in the app and tap More, Move to, then Primary.
• Mail on iPhone: In Junk, open the email, tap Move to Folder, then Inbox. If your Mail sorts by category, open the email, choose Categorize Sender, pick Primary and tap Continue.
• iCloud Mail on the web: In Junk, select the email, open Mark or More, and choose Move to Inbox.
• Outlook: In Junk Email, select the email and choose Report, then Not junk. In the app, tap the three dots, then Move to Inbox. In Other, right-click the email and choose Move, then Always move to Focused inbox.
• Yahoo Mail: In Spam, select the email and click Not spam.

Note: Gmail and iCloud Mail are less likely to put mail from your contacts in spam, so adding the sender can help there. It doesn't pick the tab.

• Tell them before they fill out the form. Put this next to your booking link or in your saved replies: "My booking emails come from [your name] via Cake. Tick the box on the form if you want reminders by text too. Can't find an email? Check Promotions and Spam, then move it to your inbox. That helps their email app sort the next one."
• Check the request when a client goes quiet. Delivered means their mail service took the email, so ask them to look. Bounced means it never got there. Cake emails you when that happens, and the request says so. Fix the address and the missed emails that still apply go out again.
• Send their link another way. Open the request, press Copy client link, and send it by text or DM. Each press ends the link you copied before, so send the newest one.
• Skip the warm-up tricks. You don't need to warm up your address on today's setup. Skip tools that fake opens and replies, and don't email people who never asked to hear from you.

To fix a wrong address, read Fix a client's details.

To give a client their link, read Give a client their link.

Reminders, and how clients say yes to texts: Reminders for your clients.

Send this if they can't find an email: "Can't find my email? It comes from [your name] via Cake. Look in Promotions and Spam. If it's there, move it to your inbox. Here's your link for now: [paste your client link]"

• Look in Spam by hand. Gmail's search skips Spam and Trash. To search everything, they can type in:anywhere Cake in the search box.
• Move it. They move the email or mark it not spam, using the steps above. That teaches their own email app. It does nothing for anyone else's, and it doesn't promise the next one lands there.
• Add you to their contacts. Google says mail from contacts is less likely to land in spam. It doesn't pick the tab.
• Reply to it. Their reply lands in your request's conversation. Gmail counts replies when it decides what's important, which doesn't pick the tab either.

• Your clients' emails say who they're from. Your clients' emails come from your name and "via Cake", at your own address on reply.cake.ink.
• Every Cake email can be checked. Cake's sending domains carry SPF and DKIM, and cake.ink carries DMARC, so your email app can check that a Cake email came from Cake.
• Alerts and news come from different places. Alerts come from no-reply@cake.ink, sign-in codes from login@cake.ink, and news about Cake from updates.cake.ink, a separate domain.
• Cake adds no tracking. Cake adds no tracking pixel to booking alerts or to your clients' emails, and none of their links counts clicks.
• Alerts stay plain. Each alert has a plain-text version, one logo and one button, and its subject says what it is: a new request starts with "New tattoo request".

Cake is looking into the alerts artists reported in Promotions.

• Your own address, on Cake's domain. You get one address, your handle at reply.cake.ink, and it stays put even if you change your handle. Your clients see your name, and you never touch a DNS setting. What you give up: you can't send from your own domain yet.
• Your address shares a reputation. Gmail publishes sender reputation by domain and by sending server. We haven't found anything from Gmail that says a single address builds its own, so we treat reply.cake.ink as one sending domain that every Cake artist shares. What that costs: one artist's bad sends could pull on all of us, so Cake's client emails stay booking mail, sent to people who came to you.
• No tracking on client emails. Cake adds no tracker to client emails, and your client's private link is Cake's own address. What you give up: we can't tell you whether a client opened an email.
• Delivered means accepted. Delivered means your client's mail service took the email. It can't tell you which folder it went to, or whether your client saw it.
• We kept the logo and the button. We built a plainer client email and kept this one. We haven't tested the plainer one in clients' inboxes, so we can't say what it would change.
• Shared sending servers. Cake's email goes out on servers other senders use too. A private server needs far more mail than we send, and a quiet one tends to do worse.
• Texts wait for a yes. A client only gets texts if they tick Text me booking reminders and updates on your form. The box starts unticked, so some clients stay email only.

Your email app sorts each email by itself, and it learns each inbox separately. Gmail, Mail on iPhone and Outlook each go by what the email is and what you do with mail like it. Two artists can get the same Cake alert in two different places.

Promotions isn't spam. A tab like Promotions or Updates is where your app files a kind of email. Spam or junk is where it puts mail it thinks you don't want. The checks Cake passes help keep it out of spam. The tab is still your app's call.

No sender, Cake included, can promise an email lands in your inbox. Moving one email, marking it not spam, or adding the sender to your contacts changes how your own app sorts Cake. It doesn't change anyone else's.

If your email runs through a shop, company or school account, ask whoever manages it to allow mail from cake.ink.

No one can promise which folder or tab an email lands in. We can see that a client's mail service accepted an email. We can't see the tab, the folder, or whether anyone read it. Resend, the service we send through, can't see that either. Replies, and notices from a mail service, can still reach us. If a client can't find an email and the request says Delivered, nothing on Cake's side moves it. Send them their link another way.

Gmail doesn't tell us when someone marks an email as spam. Other mail services sometimes do, and when they do, Cake stops emailing that address and tells you. So a client on Gmail can mark you as spam and Cake won't know.

Plenty of clients barely check email, and no setting fixes that. Tell clients before they fill out the form.

• The request says Bounced, you've corrected the address, and the next email bounces too. We can see the reason the mail service gave and tell you what to change.
• The request says Cake couldn't send an email. That one is on us, so tell us which request and we'll look.
• You fixed an address and the request still says an earlier email bounced.
• A sign-in code doesn't show up. Press Send a fresh code, which makes older codes stop working, and check Spam. If it still doesn't arrive, tell us roughly when you asked.

Write to support@cake.ink or tell us in Discord. Tell us which request it is and what the request says about the email, and keep the client's email address out of Discord. If the request says Delivered and your client still can't find the email, there's nothing for us to change. The steps above are the fix.