Email Automation System

The distinction is enforced in the sending layer, not only in the settings screen. Every send is tagged as transactional or marketing, and only marketing sends are filtered against the unsubscribe list — which is why someone who has opted out of announcements still receives their tickets and any refund confirmation. Both kinds are checked against a blocked-address list first. When a send has a single recipient it also carries a signed one-click unsubscribe link and the standard headers mail clients use to show their own unsubscribe button.

Each stage is matched inside a one-hour window either side of its offset, because the job wakes on a fixed schedule rather than firing at an exact instant. Cancelled events and unpublished drafts are skipped entirely, and an organizer can switch off the whole sequence or any individual stage for a given event. Every send is stamped on the attendee's record as it goes out, which is also what the run log reports back. The reminders carry a related-events block chosen by the same recommendation engine the confirmation page uses.

Much of this is set per event rather than per account, so a retreat and a weekly class run by the same organizer can read quite differently. The sender name is applied to the outgoing message while the sending address stays a BrightStar one — that alignment is what keeps the domain's authentication intact. Replies are routed separately: attendee-facing event mail sets reply-to to the organizer's support address if they have set one, otherwise their account address, so someone hitting reply reaches the person running the event rather than a platform inbox.

This sequence runs on every tier, so it isn't something you unlock by upgrading. The +7 day photos or video step only sends if you've actually uploaded media for the event; without it, that stage is simply skipped rather than sent empty. The final +14 day email is the one point aimed at bringing attendees back, rather than closing out the event just finished.

One detail does most of the work here: transactional mail always sends from a BrightStar address rather than the organizer's own, so the signing domain matches the sending domain and the message authenticates cleanly. The organizer's identity travels in the sender name and the reply-to instead. Sends are also throttled rather than blasted — reminders go out in batches of fifty with a pause between each, specifically so a large event does not arrive at one mailbox provider as a burst.

On personalisation, the tokens are resolved against a fixed, known set — the event name and date, the attendee's name, the venue and the ticket type. Anything the system does not recognise is passed through exactly as typed rather than being blanked out, so a mistyped token shows up as itself instead of leaving a hole in the sentence. Where an organizer supplies their own copy it is dropped into the rendered template, which keeps the surrounding layout, footer and unsubscribe link intact whatever you write.