# Set up the emails a project sends

Choose who gets the new testimonial email, switch the emails your customers get on or off, and rewrite them, for a project or for one form.

When someone submits one of your forms, your project can send four emails: one to you about the new testimonial, and three to the customer who wrote it. The **Notifications** tab of your project settings is where you choose who gets the first, switch each one on or off, and rewrite them. The workspace owner and the project's Admins can open it, on every plan.

The tab covers emails only. For the bell in the dashboard and your own choice of notifications, see [Manage your notifications](/help/account/notifications). Smart Invites have their own templates: see [Customize your invite emails](/help/collect/customize-invite-emails). The alert a form sends after a low rating is set on the form itself, not here: see [Collect negative feedback privately](/help/collect/collect-negative-feedback).

1. **Open the Notifications tab**

   Open your project, click the gear icon next to its name at the bottom of the sidebar, and choose **Notifications**. If it isn't in the row of tabs, look under **More**.

   The four emails are listed under **Email Notifications**. Click one to open it.

2. **Choose who gets the new testimonial email**

   Open **Owner Notification**, the email about each form submission: who sent it, their rating and testimonial, and a button that opens it in your inbox.

   - **Enable notifications** switches it on or off. It's on in a new project.
   - **Recipients (comma-separated)** takes up to 20 addresses. Left empty, the email goes to the workspace owner's email address. Once the box holds an address, the owner no longer gets it automatically, so add the owner's address too if they still should.
   - **Notify team members**, shown on Premium and Business, also sends it to every teammate who can open this project. Nobody gets it twice.

   Replying to this email writes to the customer, when they left an email address.

3. **Choose which emails your customers get**

   The other three emails go to the customer: **Submitter Confirmation**, **Approval Notification** and **Wall of Love Featured**. See [When your customers get an email](#when-your-customers-get-an-email).

   Each has its own switch: **Enable confirmation emails**, **Enable approval notifications** and **Enable Wall of Love notifications**.

   - **The confirmation has two texts:** **When approval is required**, for a testimonial that waits for your approval, and **When auto-approved (no approval required)**, for one the form publishes straight away. A testimonial published that way gets no approval email later.
   - **Replies come to you.** A reply to the confirmation goes to **Reply-To Email**, or to the workspace owner's email address when that's empty. Replies to the other two always go to the owner's address.

4. **Rewrite an email**

   An email that's switched on shows a **Subject** and a **Body**. Both are required, and the body is plain text: leave an empty line to start a new paragraph.

   You write only the opening words. The email adds the rest itself:

   - a headline, and the customer's testimonial in a box of its own;
   - a button, when there's somewhere to go: your inbox in the email to you, and the testimonial's [share page](/help/display/share-pages) or your Wall of Love in the customer's emails;
   - the customer's answers to your [custom fields](/help/manage/custom-fields), in the email to you and in the confirmation for a testimonial that waits for approval.

   To add the customer's details, click **Merge Tags** to see the tags, then type one, such as `{first_name}`, into the subject or the body. The [full list](#merge-tags) is below.

5. **Preview it, then save**

   Click **Preview** above the subject. **Email Preview** shows the email with its **From**, **Reply-To** and **Subject** lines. It uses what you've typed, saved or not, with sample details in place of a real customer's.

   Then click **Save Changes** at the bottom of the tab. Nothing is saved until you do, and one click saves all four emails.

   The tab can't send a test email. To get the real ones, fill in one of your own forms with your email address.

6. **Give one form its own emails (optional)**

   What you set on this tab applies to every form in the project. To make one form different, open it in the form builder and go to its **Notifications** tab, which lists the same four emails. Open one and turn on **Override project defaults**.

   - The form gets its own copy of that email: its switch, its subject and body, and **Recipients (comma-separated)** or **Reply-To** where the email has one. The copy starts from the project's settings.
   - From then on, that email follows the form, and changes on the project's tab no longer reach it. The form's other emails still follow the project.
   - An empty recipients box on a form uses the project's recipients. **Notify team members** is set for the whole project only.
   - Turning the override off deletes the form's copy, and the email follows the project again.

## When your customers get an email

Three of the four emails go to the customer:

| Email                      | Sent when                                                                                                                                                                  | In a new project |
| -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------- |
| **Submitter Confirmation** | they submit your form                                                                                                                                                      | On               |
| **Approval Notification**  | you approve their testimonial from **Pending**                                                                                                                             | On               |
| **Wall of Love Featured**  | you [add their testimonial to a published Wall of Love yourself](/help/display/choose-and-order-wall-testimonials), or publish a wall you added it to while it was a draft | Off              |

**Only form submissions count.** A customer gets these emails only for a testimonial they sent through one of your forms, with an email address. Reviews you import and testimonials you add yourself send none of the four emails.

## Merge tags

A tag is replaced with that customer's details when the email is created. Tags work in the subject and in the body.

| Tag                             | Becomes                                                                                                                    |
| ------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `{name}`                        | the customer's name                                                                                                        |
| `{first_name}`                  | their first name, or "there" when they gave no name                                                                        |
| `{email}`                       | their email address                                                                                                        |
| `{company}`, `{title}`          | their company and their job title                                                                                          |
| `{rating}`                      | their rating, as a number                                                                                                  |
| `{type}`                        | the kind of testimonial, such as text or video                                                                             |
| `{testimonial}`                 | the text of their testimonial                                                                                              |
| `{submitted_at}`                | the date and time they submitted, in UTC                                                                                   |
| `{project_name}`, `{form_name}` | the names of your project and of the form they filled in                                                                   |
| `{review_link}`                 | the link to the testimonial in your inbox. It's filled in only in the email to you.                                        |
| `{share_link}`                  | the link to the testimonial's share page. It stays empty until the testimonial is approved, and while share pages are off. |
| `{wall_link}`                   | the link to the Wall of Love the testimonial was added to. It's filled in only in the Wall of Love email.                  |
| `{custom_fields}`               | every custom field the customer filled in, one to a line                                                                   |

- **One custom field** has a tag of its own, shown under each field on the **Custom Fields** tab of your project settings.
- **Nothing is shown twice.** With `{testimonial}` in your text, the email leaves out its box with the testimonial. With `{custom_fields}` or a single field's tag, it leaves out its list of answers.
- **A tag with nothing to fill it is left blank,** so write sentences that still read well without it.
- **A misspelled tag is removed** without a warning, like anything else you put between curly brackets.

Smart Invites emails have tags of their own: see [Invite email merge tags](/help/collect/invite-email-merge-tags).

## What happens next

Your changes apply to the emails created after you save. One that was already sent, or is waiting to go out, keeps its text.

- **Email Branding**, at the bottom of the tab, shows the name and logo your customers' emails carry. You change them on the **General** tab (see [Project settings](/help/account/project-settings)). To drop the "Powered by ReTestimonial" line, see [Remove ReTestimonial branding](/help/account/remove-retestimonial-branding).
- The **Email Log** tab lists the emails the project sent in the last 30 days, and what happened to each one. See [Check whether an email was sent](/help/account/check-whether-an-email-was-sent).
- If an email doesn't arrive, see [Emails not arriving](/help/troubleshooting/emails-not-arriving).