In this article, you'll find answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about emails sent from ServiceCore to your customers.
Frequently Asked Questions about Email Deliverability
How does ServiceCore know when an email is delivered to my customers?
When ServiceCore sends an email, the recipient's mail server provides a response when the message is accepted for delivery, when it bounces, or when it can't be delivered for any reason. Currently 97.8% of all emails sent from ServiceCore are successfully delivered.
How can I see when my emails are delivered to my customers?
To view the status of all emails sent from your account, please visit the Email Activity report by following these steps:
- Navigate to Reports
- Click on the Email Activity report
- Use the date range and filter by options to narrow the results in the list
What does "Hard Bounced" mean?
When you see an email with a status of "Hard Bounced" in the Email Activity report, that indicates a permanent reason an email can't be delivered. When this happens, that email address will be excluded from future email sends and our system will not attempt to send to that email address again. Here are common reasons an email may hard bounce:
- Recipient email address doesn't exist
- Recipient email server has completely blocked delivery
Please note, the information above is borrowed from this article: Soft vs. Hard Bounces.
What does "Soft Bounced" mean?
When you see an email with a status of "Soft Bounced" in the Email Activity report, that indicates a temporary delivery issue. These are handled differently than hard bounced emails.
If an email address continues to soft bounce, eventually that address will be considered a hard bounce. There are many reasons an email address may soft bounce including these common reasons this can happen:
- Mailbox is full (over quota)
- Mailbox is not configured correctly
- Mailbox is inactive
- Recipient email server is down or offline
- Recipient email server has been sent too many emails during a period of time
- Email message is too large
- Domain name does not exist
- Email message blocked due to content
- Email message does not meet the recipient server’s policies
- Email message does not meet the recipient server’s DMARC requirements for authentication
- Email message does not meet the recipient server’s anti-spam requirements
- Email message does not meet the recipient server’s anti-virus requirements
- Email message does not meet the recipient server’s sender requirements
- Email cannot be relayed between email servers
- Email cannot be relayed for unknown reasons
Please note, the information above is borrowed from this article: Soft vs. Hard Bounces.
What does "Spam Complaint" mean?
A spam complaint occurs when your customer (the email recipient) reports the email they receive as spam in their email program. If the recipient’s email provider sends this information back to ServiceCore, then their email will appear with a status of "Spam Complaint" in the Email Activity report. Future attempts to send to this same email address will be rejected.
Spam complaints are not the same thing as emails winding up in spam or junk folders. If the email you send goes to an email provider that doesn't sent this information back to ServiceCore, the complaint will not be recorded in your email activity report. However, your future emails may be sent to a recipient’s spam folder unless the recipient takes action to remove the email from the spam folder.
The best way to prevent your emails from receiving a spam complaint is to make sure that you are only sending to recipients who want to receive your emails.
Please note, the information above is borrowed from this article: Reputation and Rejections.
What happens after the email is delivered?
If an email is accepted for delivery by a recipient mail server, ServiceCore does not have any additional insight into what happens to the message from that point. For example, the message may go through a series of spam filters or other processes that aren't disclosed to us, the senders.
Sending an email is really no different than dropping a letter in the mail. Once the letter lands at your customer's house, let's call it the "House of Gmail", then it's Gmail and your customer's mailbox that now control what happens to the letter.
What email address do my emails come from?
All emails sent out of ServiceCore are sent from the email address "no-reply@servicecore.com".
Why aren't customers receiving my emails?
There are several reasons customers may not see your emails in their inbox. Here are a few things to ask them to try if your emails aren't showing up:
- Search for the correct from address
Use the email service provider search box and search for no-reply@servicecore.com and see if that returns any results. Depending on how your customer has their inbox view setup or configured on their computer or mobile device, your customer might see the emails from ServiceCore, and since the from address is not myname@mycompany.com, you customer may ignore them. - Check for any filters or blocked addresses
For Gmail users, go to Gmail Filters and Blocked Addresses settings and check that there are no filters setup to divert your emails from the inbox. - Ask about aliases
If your customer has their email address setup as an alias to another email address, this can cause emails to fail to appear in the inbox. For example, if your customer has an email address of laura@kittens.com and laura@puppies.com as aliases to laura@babyanimals.com. Sometimes complex alias setups can affect deliverablity or what inbox an email lands in. - Turn off Conversation View
Sometimes when conversation view is on in Gmail, it can lump a lot of emails together than look like new ones aren't appearing. Here is how to turn/on off grouping emails into conversations in Gmail. - Check for Categories and Tabs
Lastly, when Gmail users use categories and tabs, it can make an inbox harder to manage. Here is information about how to add or remove categories and tabs in Gmail. - Send to Another Email Address
Some email addresses have very strict rules about what emails they allow through. This is especially common when you send to email addresses for the government (for example .gov, .mil) or for large colleges or universities (for example .edu). If your customer has an alternate email address that can be used, you may want to try this and see if that helps.
In order to troubleshoot why emails are not appearing in the inbox, you will need to contact your customer and make sure there is no filtering, routing, aliases, etc. setup in their inbox that could prevent the email from showing in their inbox.