Reference

Email & Artist Notifications

How Vektra emails artists: Resend setup, custom sender domains, templates, and one-time reply links

Vektra can email artists status updates on their demos, with branded templates and secure one-time reply links. Everything is configured from the Dashboard → Developer tab.

How mailing works

Artist emails are sent through Resend. Each workspace stores its own Resend API key, sender domain, reply address, and optional custom HTML template.

When a submission's status changes (Approved / Rejected / In Queue):

Vektra first tries to DM the artist on Discord if they're in your server.
If they aren't in the server, Vektra sends a branded email with the new status, the submission ID, track title, and any message from your A&R team.
Every status email includes a one-time reply link — the artist clicks it, writes back, and Vektra forwards the reply to your staff Discord thread.

Setting it up

Open Dashboard → Developer.
Add a Resend API key in the "Sender Email & Resend API" section.
Add a custom sender domain (e.g. demos.yourlabel.com) and verify it with Resend — emails are sent from "Your Label" <demos@yourlabel.com>.
Set a reply-to address if you want replies to go somewhere specific.

Without a Resend key, emails cannot be sent — the Developer tab (and GET /v1/settings/email) reports resend_key_set: false.

Custom sender domain

Use your own domain so emails come from your label, not a Vektra address:

Add a CNAME record at your DNS provider pointing to Vektra.
Enter the domain in Dashboard → Developer → Custom Domain.
Verify the DNS records with Resend from the same screen.

Once verified, emails are sent from demos@yourdomain.com. A default yourlabel.vektra.games address is always available if you don't set a custom domain.

Custom email templates

You can supply your own HTML template — write it in the Developer → Email Template editor, or let an AI assistant do it through the MCP connector (update_email_template). When a template is set, every artist email is rendered from it; when it's empty, Vektra's built-in template is used.

Allowed placeholders:

Placeholder	Replaced with
`{label_name}`	Your label's name
`{subject}`	The email subject
`{artist_name}`	The artist's name
`{headline}`	A short headline line
`{accent_color}`	The status color (green / red / amber)
`{status}`	The new submission status
`{submission_id}`	The submission ticket ID
`{track_title}`	The track title
`{message}`	The A&R team's message text
`{reply_url}`	The one-time reply link URL
`{reply_button}`	The reply button label
`{year}`	The current year

Rules to follow:

{reply_button} is only the button text — wrap it yourself: <a href="{reply_url}">{reply_button}</a>.
Keep the template fully self-contained with inline CSS on every element — email clients strip <style> blocks.
Don't invent placeholders beyond the ones listed.

Reply links

Every status email includes a reply link valid for 72 hours, single use.
Clicking it opens a reply page where the artist writes back.
The reply is stored and your staff Discord thread is notified so your team can follow up.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause
Emails not sending, `resend_key_set: false`	No Resend API key configured in Developer tab (or env not loaded on the deployed server — redeploy after changing env).
"Could not reach the artist"	The submission has no email stored (e.g. submitted via Discord without a contact email).
Emails show Vektra's default sender	Custom sender domain not added or DNS not verified yet.
Template changes not visible	Make sure you save in the Developer tab (or via the API) and redeploy isn't needed — the template is stored per-workspace in the database.
Artist never got the email	They may be in your Discord server (then Vektra DMs instead of emailing), or their email was missing at submission time.