Requests

A request is one email, written by you, sent to a list of people with a button that opens one of your forms. People who do not answer can get up to three follow-ups. Requests are under Testimonials in the site's sidebar, on the Requests tab.

Nothing is sent until you press the last button, and you see who will be asked and who will be skipped before you press it. Writing and sending needs the content.write permission.

Sent through your own email provider#

Request emails are part of the Business plan, and they are sent through your own email provider: Amazon SES, Postmark, SendGrid, Mailgun or Resend. They arrive from your own address, and replies come to you. Privatus Analytics never sends a request email from an address of its own.

Connect a provider under Settings, then Email sending. That page lists the key each provider needs.

Sharing a form's link, embedding it, the popup and the QR code work on every plan and need no email provider. See Share a form.

The list#

The menu of a row has Open, Stop or Resume, Duplicate as a draft, and Delete for a draft. New request (or the N key) starts one.

Write a request#

New request opens one page with three steps, and the email shown beside them as the first person on your list will get it.

1. Who#

Save and check the list saves the draft, and the page then says how many people will be asked and how many will be skipped. See the list opens the request's page with each person and the reason.

The list is checked again when you send, because a draft can be days old.

Ask again on a person's page starts a draft with that one person in it. Such a draft does not leave out people who already gave a testimonial, because asking them again is the point.

2. What they get#

Follow-ups go only to people who have not answered, unsubscribed or bounced.

The reply-to rule. Replies never come to Privatus Analytics. They go to the member you choose, who must be able to open this site and have a confirmed email address. The default is you. Any other address is refused. If a reply address is set under Email sending, every reply goes there instead.

Merge fields put each person's details into the subject and the text:

Add a fallback after a bar for when the value is not known, as in {{first_name|there}}. A field that does not exist is refused when you save, so nobody gets a broken greeting.

The preview beside the form shows From and Replies go to, and can be switched between the first email and each follow-up, and between desktop and phone width. Send me a test saves the page and sends the email shown to your own address, and to nobody else, through your email provider like the real ones.

3. When#

First emails go out within a minute of sending.

If your workspace has used up the month's new testimonials, the page says so. Answers are still accepted and held until the 1st or an upgrade. Sending is not blocked.

What the email looks like#

• From: the sender name and your own From address, as set under Email sending. Replies go to the member you chose.
• Your logo, your words in plain text, and one button in your brand color.
• A small footer: who sent it, your postal address, and a link to unsubscribe.
• Nothing of ours: no logo, name, link or offer.

The personal link#

The button of each email leads to the person's own link to the form, /f/<slug>/r/<token>. The same link is in the first email and every follow-up.

• It is the form with the person's name filled in.
• An answer sent through it is tied to the person and the testimonial is marked verified.
• The giver's email address is the one the request was sent to, whatever is typed in the form's email field. The verified mark stands for that address, so an answer through one person's link never lands under another person.
• Loading it counts the click.
• The link holds a random token, never the email address. Only a SHA-256 of the token is stored, and the page is never cached.

After sending#

Open a request to see its state, its funnel, its emails and its people.

A person gets no further email once they answer, unsubscribe or bounce.

• Edit (or the E key) changes the name, the form, the subject, the text, the delays and the number of follow-ups at any time. Changes apply to every email not yet sent.
• Stop cancels every email not yet sent, at once. Resume continues where it stopped. A follow-up that came due meanwhile is timed again from the moment you resume, so nothing goes out in a bunch.
• Tick people in the list to stop, resume or remove just them, up to 100 at a time. Only people who were sent nothing can be removed.
• Add people adds to a request, by a pasted list or a CSV file. In a running request they get their first email within a minute. Adding to a finished request opens it again.
• A request that was sent cannot be deleted. It is the record of mail that was sent. A draft can.

Limits#

Each site can send 10,000 request emails a month through its email provider. Every email counts, first emails and follow-ups. A test you send to yourself does not. The number is set by us for each site: to raise it, write to [email protected]. See the monthly limit.

Unsubscribing and the opt-out list#

Every email has an unsubscribe link, and mail apps show their own unsubscribe button for it. The link opens a page with one button. Pressing it:

• marks the person Unsubscribed in the request the email came from,
• puts the address on the opt-out list, which stops testimonial requests to it from every workspace, not only yours. Emails already waiting for the address anywhere are dropped when their turn comes.

No workspace can see the list or override it. Only a keyed hash (HMAC-SHA256) of the address is kept on it, never the address itself.

The same page offers Receive requests again, which sends the person a confirmation email with a link that works for 7 days. Confirming takes the address off the list. That is the only way back, and only the person with the mailbox can use it.

Bounces#

Privatus Analytics asks your email provider for recent bounces and spam complaints, about every 15 minutes, and matches each to the request email it is about. Anything that is not about a request email sent from here is ignored. See Email sending for what each provider reports.

An address that hard bounced or was reported as spam cannot be taken off the list with Receive requests again.

What the open counter records#

Each request email carries one small image, served from our own domain at an address that holds the id of that one email (/requests/o/<id>.gif). When a mail app loads it, this is everything that is stored:

So an open is recorded per email and per person. Nothing else is recorded:

• No IP address and no User-Agent is read, stored or written to a log.
• No cookie is set or read.
• Nothing is recorded about the device, the mail app or the place.
• The image address holds an id of the email, never the person's address. An address with an unknown id gets the same image.

Opens are approximate. Mail apps can block images, and then an email that was read is not counted. Some mail apps and their image proxies load images before anyone looks, and then an email that was not read is counted.

A click is counted the same way: the person's own link was loaded, once, with the time. There is no redirect that tracks links, and no other link in the email is counted.

A test you send to yourself has no image and no personal link. The plain text version of an email has no image.

API and MCP#

Every operation is in the API reference and the MCP reference with its inputs and response fields.

Sending needs confirm_relationship: true. Addresses of chosen people are sent in the body, never in a URL.

Errors are a 422 with a code: unknown_merge_field, confirmation_required, no_form, no_recipients, wrong_state, too_many, unknown_ids, upload_expired, and for sending and test sends no_email_connection (no email provider is connected) and email_connection_paused. On a plan without request emails, creating, sending, resuming and duplicating respond with 402 and plan_limit. Past an hourly limit the server responds with a 429 and rate_limited. The monthly limit is never an error: the people stay queued.

An AI assistant cannot delete anything. The MCP tools testimonial_requests_delete (delete a draft) and testimonial_request_recipients_delete (remove chosen people) run nothing: each responds with human_only and the address of the request's page, and the assistant hands you that link. The API runs both.

Connecting the email provider itself is done in the web app only. It has no API operation and no MCP tool.

Sending emails people outside your workspace. So when an AI assistant sends a request, resumes a request or people in it, or adds people through MCP, the tool runs and you get an email saying what it did. The API runs the same operations without that email.

Webhooks: testimonial_request.sent when the first email of a request goes out, and testimonial_request.completed when everyone has answered or had their last email.

Good to know#

• What counts toward the site's month is every request email that is sent: first emails and follow-ups, also those to buyers from a purchase connection. Test sends do not count.
• A testimonial that comes in through a request counts toward the month's new testimonials like one from a form.
• An address is in a request once. Adding it again is counted as a duplicate.
• A follow-up delay is counted from the email before it. Changing a delay re-times the follow-ups that are waiting.
• A request made by a purchase connection never finishes while the connection exists, because buyers keep arriving.