Most teams use Shared Mailboxes (e.g., ir@firm.com or info@agency.com) for centralized communication, but standard mail merge tools struggle with "Send As" permissions. FlowDrafts Private provides native support for Shared Mailboxes, allowing teams to execute hyper-personalized campaigns from a common address while maintaining an institutional audit trail and centralized reply management.
In departments like Investor Relations, Customer Success, and Corporate Development, the "Shared Mailbox" is the hub of professional communication. It allows for continuity - if one team member is OOO, another can pick up the thread. However, when it comes to outbound outreach, these mailboxes often become a bottleneck. Most automation tools are tied to an individual user's primary account, making it difficult to send "on behalf of" the firm.
FlowDrafts Private was designed to solve this by tapping directly into the Outlook Object Model (OOM). Our VSTO engine automatically detects every mailbox you have permissions for in your local Outlook profile. This enables a Centralized Outreach Strategy where the entire team can execute dispatches from a single, sanctioned address while still utilizing individualized data and attachments.
The Power of "Send As" Automation
When you select a Shared Mailbox in FlowDrafts, the automation loop executes within that specific account's context. The emails are drafted in the Shared Drafts folder and sent via that account's MAPI session. This means all replies land in the shared inbox, where they can be tracked and managed by the whole team. This is a critical requirement for firms maintaining a "Single Source of Truth" for client or investor engagement.
Native "Send As" Support
Execute campaigns from any shared mailbox or alias you have permissions for natively within Outlook.
Centralized Replies
Ensure all recipient responses land in a common inbox, allowing your team to collaborate on follow-ups seamlessly.
Institutional Audit
Maintain a complete history of outreach in the shared "Sent Items" folder, visible to all team members and compliance.
Individualized Tags
Personalize every email from the shared account with unique names, firms, and individualized attachments from Excel.
Maintaining the Personal Touch from a Group Alias
The risk of sending from a shared mailbox is that the email can feel "de-personalized." FlowDrafts mitigates this with its Dynamic Content Engine. You can use custom tags to insert the name of the specific Associate managing the relationship, or utilize Smart Greeting Logic to ensure the opening reflects the firm-level relationship. The result is an email that has the authority of the firm's main address but the relevance of a 1-to-1 personal note.
Technical Reliability: Handling High-Volume Shared Folders
Shared Mailboxes can often become "heavy" with thousands of items. Web-based add-ins often struggle to sync with these large data sets. Because FlowDrafts is a Native Win32 application, it interacts with the local Outlook cache directly. Our Self-Throttling engine monitors the shared Outbox in real-time, pausing sending if the queue exceeds 15 items to ensure the Exchange server doesn't "choke" on the dispatch.
Unifying Team Communication
In an increasingly collaborative workplace, the ability to execute outreach as a team is a key operational requirement. Firms that continue to rely on individual-based automation are creating data silos and communication gaps. FlowDrafts provides the Team-Ready Infrastructure that modern Microsoft 365 environments demand for professional productivity.