Mail, letters and support

An email is often the first thing someone reads from us, even before the app. So every email follows the same rules as every surface: the right register, no exclamation mark, no emoji, one button with one verb.

Senders and domains

Two domains separate system mail from everything we send by choice. That way sign-in delivery never suffers from a newsletter.

• Sending runs through Resend, EU region. System mail goes through Supabase’s SMTP to Resend.
• SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set, DMARC with p=quarantine.
• contact@hey-albert.app is a real mailbox at Google Workspace. A person answers there.
• The sender name is always „Hey Albert“. Never a first name, never „noreply“.

Structure of an email

Every email has the same five parts. The copy lives per language in the template and can be changed in HQ under Texts, without code.

The logo in a circle sits on top; company, imprint and the unsubscribe link at the bottom.

Address

• List, newsletter, survey: German uses ihr, the plural. Behind an address on the list there is usually a household. English uses you for the family.
• System mail: German uses du. One person asks for the link to their own account: „Hier ist dein Link.“
• Never the formal Sie, never „Dear user“.

Subject lines

The subject says what is inside. It does not bait.

Confirmation and unsubscribing

• Double opt-in. Whoever signs up gets an email with a link. Only after the click is the address on the list. The link is valid for three days.
• Record. Every consent is logged with time, version and origin.
• One-click unsubscribe. Every list email carries the List-Unsubscribe header with one-click and a visible link at the bottom.
• One confirmation, then quiet. After unsubscribing comes exactly one email confirming it. Nothing after that.
• Cadence. The newsletter comes about once a month. Survey reminders stop once someone says „no“.
• Measuring. Delivery, opens and clicks come through the Resend webhook. Our own per-contact counting only after consent.

Languages

List emails exist in all eleven website languages. The language follows the page someone signed up on. System mail is German today.

Letters on the family’s behalf

Albert drafts replies to school, club, insurer, tradespeople and authorities. That is the letter-writer register (Briefeschreiber), and it is not Albert’s voice but the family’s.

• A letter to the insurer sounds like Tobias, not like software.
• Factual, polite, brief. No ingratiating, no threats.
• Albert takes salutation, form and tone from what the family wrote before. Whoever addresses the school formally keeps doing so.
• Sentences average twelve words, at most 18.
• Every draft is visibly marked as a draft. An adult reads it, edits it and sends it — every time.
• The letter itself carries no hint of Albert. The sender is the family.

Support

In support a person writes, not Albert.

• If something went wrong: apologise once, then say what we are doing.
• No canned text, no ticket number in the first sentence.
• Reply in the language of the request, in the form the request used.
• Errors and empty states say three things: what belongs here, why it is empty or went wrong, what you can do. No „error“, no „oops“.