Currently on our system, when a user contacts us, we reply via our admin panel. The user is then sent an email containing our message and the other messages in the conversation.
Then the user has to click on ‘Reply to this message’ which opens up our website, with a contact enquiry form, and submits the message to the conversation (using a QueryString to tell which conversation it belongs to).
However, a lot of users like to simply reply to the email sent to them.
How can I track their reply and automatically add this to the same conversation?
We’re currently using ASP.NET 3.5, IIS6 & SQL Server 2005, however will be upgrading to ASP.NET 4.0, IIS7 & SQL Server 2008
Thanks,
Curt
It’s not a full code solution (but hey, that’s not what this place is for anyway), but this is a general idea:
Specify a reply-to header in the messages you send (or simply use the from address). Then set up a script that periodically reads the emails send to that address and inserts them into your database (to be viewed). In order to get the correct threads, you can use the in-reply-to header in the message sent to you. I don’t know by heart how to find the message-id of a mail you sent, but a little research on your part should reveal that. (if worst comes to worst, you can always BCC yourself the message and read it from there, but there should be easier ways).
Note that some people (most notably GMail) refuse to use in-reply-to headers because of how people use email (though I don’t think it would be much of a problem in the case you are describing) and use topics to create threads instead. This may be an easier solution, though it may be less reliable in your case.