Prepare for Email Address Internationalization (EAI)

Make Sure That UTF-8 Support Exists Throughout the Email’s Path

Salesforce’s EAI support lets you send emails from Salesforce using EAI email addresses. It’s only one part of the email’s journey, though. Activated email relays must also support UTF-8 encoding, and the recipient must be able to accept emails from UTF-8 encoded email addresses.

To receive emails from UTF-8 encoded email addresses, your Email Service Provider (ESP) must support UTF-8 encoding. A relatively small percentage of ESPs provides UTF-8 support for email addresses. If you wish to receive emails from EAI email addresses, make sure that your ESP provides the required support before enabling EAI.

Likewise, if you set up your Salesforce email to go through an email relay or send through Gmail or Office 365, those relay providers must also support UTF-8 if you want to send emails through them to EAI email addresses.

If your email service provider or relay provider doesn't support UTF-8, you can only send emails to and receive emails from non-EAI email addresses.

Update Your Integrations to Support Unicode Characters

As part of the support for EAI, email addresses are stored and displayed using Unicode characters. Make sure that your integrations can pass and receive UTF-8 encoded characters. When EAI support is available, API queries can return UTF-8 data, regardless of your API version.

Adopt the Latest API Version

EAI requires API version 49.0 or later.

Make Sure That All Fields Storing Email Addresses Have the Email Type

If you're storing email addresses in a custom field with a type other than email, change the field type to Email. The Email type applies required validation rules and ensures proper storage space for the corresponding data.