Handling Emails from Your Team Website

Every team website has a Team Contact Form on it so that anyone who visits the site can email the team leader if they want to get involved with the team, find out more about the team, or even just talk to an evangelist.  The Team Contact Form is our way of protecting the privacy of our team leaders.  When SPSE started we posted our team leaders emails right on their team website.  We wanted to reduce the risk of team leaders receiving spam, so we replaced the email addresses with the Team Contact Form.  If a team leader does receive spam they can just ignore it and forward the email to the SPSE national office at bob@stpaulse.com 

Thank you for sending a prompt reply when you receive an email from the Team Contact Form.

The email generated by the Team Contact Form looks like this:

From: St. Paul Street Evangelization <info@stpaulse.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 2:41 PM
Subject: Team Contact Form Submission
To: <test@example.com>

Hi Mark J Hornbacher,

Someone by the name of John Smith is contacting you from your SPSE team page. They may be interested in evangelizing near you or have a simple question about SPSE.  Please respond to this inquiry using the information below.  You can always direct them to the SPSE National Office at info@stpaulse.com if needed.

Thank you so much!

Blessings,

SPSE Support Team

SPSE Team Leaders – On mission to take our Catholic faith to the street. (Mt 28:20)   

Note: To protect your privacy we pulled your personal email from the SPSE Location page and all team pages.  We replaced it with a standard form.  This change should eliminate mass email attacks to all our team leaders.  Unfortunately, some unsolicited emails may still come through.  If you ever receive a questionable email, please let us know.

First, check your email on your computer or smartphone. In this example, I’m using gmail. You might use Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook, or another email provider.

In your email, look for the subject line “Team Contact Form Submission.” That’s what the subject line will say any time someone used your team website to contact you.

Inside that email, the first thing you’ll see is our logo. This is because our website sent the email to you. Next, you’ll see your team name. In this example, it says National Office because the team leader of our national office in Warren, Michigian received this email. We put this information in the email because some team leaders have more than one team, and we wanted to let them know which team someone contacted.

The next line shows the name and email of the team leader. Ordinarily, this should be your name and email, unless your team recently got a new team leader and our system hasn’t fully updated yet. If that happens, just forward the email to the new team leader and let us know.

On the next line you’ll see the name, phone number, and email of the person who contacted you. In this case, it’s John Smith, who is not a real person, we just made him up to give an example. Sometimes, the phone number field might be blank, because we do not require people to put in their phone number. Some users skip that field if they only want you to reply by email.

The next line shows the user’s message. You should review this message because it may contain important information about the person who tried to contact you. Anyone who tries to contact you to get involved with your team must fill out this field and briefly describe their faith life. In this case, we learn that John Smith is Catholic and believes that he has been called to evangelize. That’s enough to go on right there; this is someone we should reach out to and help them get involved.

There is also an optional “Other comments” field. It is usually blank, but a user might fill this field out if they want to tell you some exceptional circumstance that’s important for you to know. For example, someone might use the “Other Comments” field to let you know that they don’t have a car, and that could help you find a team member near them who could give them a ride to your outings.

You can reply to the person who contacted you either by clicking their email or just by hitting the Reply button. If they left their phone number, you can call them. Please reply to these emails promptly because as a team leader it is your responsibility to help the people in your area join you in the work of evangelization.

We hope this tech tip is useful to you when you receive emails from your team website. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@streetevangelization.com.

NOTE: It is possible you may get spam through your contact form. If you do just ignore it. If you aren’t sure, but suspect the email is fraudulent, you can forward your email to the national office.