When you submit a deal to multiple funders, MCA Pilot sends a separate email to each funder. How those emails appear in your Gmail inbox—grouped together in one conversation or split into separate threads—depends on Gmail's conversation grouping rules and how your subject lines and recipients are configured.
How Gmail groups emails into conversations
Gmail groups emails into conversations (threads) based primarily on:
Subject lines — Gmail considers emails part of the same conversation if their subjects match closely, even with minor differences like "Re:" or "Fwd:" prefixes
Recipients — Emails sent to the same recipients (To, CC, BCC) are more likely to group together
Sender — Emails from the same sender tend to group together
Since 2019, Gmail no longer reliably groups emails based on subject line alone. Google changed the algorithm so that emails must share internal reference headers to reliably thread together. Because MCA Pilot cannot set custom email headers, there is no guaranteed way to force Gmail to group or separate your submission emails. The approaches below can influence Gmail's behavior, but results may vary.
Why submission emails might appear grouped together
When you submit a deal to multiple funders, each funder receives a separate email. If those emails appear grouped in one Gmail thread, it's typically because:
They have identical or very similar subject lines
They share common recipients (for example, if you're CC'd on all of them)
They're sent from the same sender account
By default, MCA Pilot uses the subject line prefix New Deal: followed by the deal name, which is configured in Settings → Templates. If you submit the same deal to five funders, all five emails might have the subject:
New Deal: Atlas Corporation
Gmail may see these as part of the same conversation and group them together.
How to keep each funder's emails in separate threads
The most reliable approach is to give each funder's submission emails a unique subject line. You can configure a per-funder Subject Line Prefix that makes each funder's emails distinct.
To set a per-funder subject line prefix:
Go to Funders and click into a funder record
Select the Submission Method tab
In the Subject Line Prefix field, enter a unique prefix for that funder
The per-funder prefix appears before the general submissions prefix (the one in Settings → Templates). For example, if you set the funder-specific prefix to [Fusion] and your general prefix is New Deal:, the final subject becomes:
[Fusion]New Deal: Atlas Corporation
No extra space is added between the funder prefix and the general prefix. If you want a space, include it in your funder-specific prefix (e.g., [Fusion] with a trailing space).
How to potentially group submission emails into one thread
If you want multiple submission emails to appear in the same Gmail thread, try ensuring they share common recipients. You can do this by setting up automatic CCs on all submissions.
To automatically CC the same email on every submission:
Go to Settings and click into each user's profile
Scroll down to the Defaults section
In the Automatic copy external emails field, enter the email address that should be CC'd on all submissions by that user
Repeat this for every user in your workspace
This ensures that whoever is the originator on a deal, the same email address will always be CC'd in the background. The user submitting won't see or be able to edit this CC—it happens automatically. Having consistent recipients across all submission emails can influence Gmail to group them together.
This approach is not guaranteed to work for all email providers or Gmail configurations. Since Gmail's 2019 changes, subject line and recipient overlap alone may not be enough to force threading. Test with a few submissions to see if it works for your setup.
Common questions
Does Concurrent Emails Batch Size affect threading?
Does Concurrent Emails Batch Size affect threading?
No. The Concurrent Emails Batch Size setting in Settings → Defaults → Submissions controls how many emails MCA Pilot sends in parallel. This is a rate-limiting feature designed for email providers like Microsoft that restrict concurrent connections. It does not control whether emails group together in Gmail threads.
What if a funder reply appears in a separate thread?
What if a funder reply appears in a separate thread?
If a funder replies but their response lands in a separate Gmail thread (for example, if they forwarded your submission or started a new email), MCA Pilot's AI Processing can still match that reply to the correct submission. The system first tries to match via the reply chain, then falls back to extracting the business name from the email content.
If matching fails, it's usually because the thread was broken—the email was forwarded, started as a new thread, or came from a different domain. See Troubleshooting AI Processing for funder responses for help.
Why can't MCA Pilot guarantee emails thread the way I want?
Why can't MCA Pilot guarantee emails thread the way I want?
Gmail's threading algorithm relies on internal email headers (like Message-ID, In-Reply-To, and References) to definitively group messages into conversations. MCA Pilot cannot set these custom headers, so there's no way to guarantee how Gmail will group your emails. The subject line and recipient settings described above can influence Gmail's behavior, but ultimately the threading decision is made by Gmail's algorithm, which changed significantly in 2019 to require explicit header references for reliable grouping.
Related settings
General subject line prefix: Changed in Settings → Templates; applies to all submission emails
Per-funder subject line prefix: Set on each funder's Submission Method tab; appears before the general prefix
Automatic copy external emails: Set in each user's profile under Defaults; automatically CCs specified emails on all submissions
Concurrent Emails Batch Size: Found in Settings → Defaults → Submissions; controls parallel sending rate, not threading
Need more help?
If your submission emails aren't behaving as expected or funder replies aren't being processed correctly, check that your email connection and sender settings are configured properly and that IMAP is set up for response processing.