Have you ever sent an email through Virtuous CRM+ Marketing and wondered what all those delivery status labels are trying to tell you? You're not alone! Between "bounced," "deferred," "expired," and everything in between, you'll encounter various delivery status labels that indicate how your messages are performing. This guide provides explanations of each status label and how to find them. So whether you're troubleshooting delivery issues or simply want to better understand your email performance metrics, this guide will help you understand what each status means and determine any necessary next steps.
Where Can I See the Delivery Statuses?
To view the delivery status of a sent email, navigate to the Marketing tab and select Email.
From here, press the Actions button in the top right, then select Manage Sent Emails or View Activity.
Manage Sent Emails will display a list of all of your sent emails. Click into any email using the blue hyperlink for the email name.
Here, you can see overall delivered, open, click, and unsubscribe rates at the top. Scroll to the bottom to view all of the recipients of your email along with their delivery status.
If, instead, you prefer to view all recipient engagement and delivery statuses across all emails, select the View Activity from the Actions button on the Emails home screen.
In addition to these two options, you can also view delivery statuses by viewing the Versions and then Activity within any single email or using the Sent Email Query type in the Query tool.
Email Status Descriptions
There are a range of delivery status values, which may be tricky to parse. Use the information below to help decode the delivery status labels:
- Blocked: Blocks occur when your IP address has been blacklisted, blocked by an ISP or messaging organization, or if the message content is flagged by a filter on the recipient’s server. Blocks are less severe than bounces and do not result in permanent suppressions, meaning subsequent sends to blocked email addresses will be attempted. If an email address continues to be blocked after two subsequent send attempts, only then will the address be suppressed or "hard bounced."
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Bounced: A bounce means the receiving server could not or would not accept the message. Bounced emails can mean either a permanent failure to deliver the email (hard bounce) or a temporary failure to deliver the email (soft bounce), based on conditions with the recipient mail server.
- Soft Bounce: If the recipient’s inbox was full, the server was down, the message was too large for the recipient’s inbox, or even the recipient email server has been sent too many emails during a period of time, the sent email may result in a "soft bounce." This means that the email is initially reported as undeliverable but will continue to be attempted for up to 72 hours of being sent. There may be instances where the email will display both Bounced and Delivered if the email soft bounced initially but was later successfully delivered. If an email address (soft) bounces for 3 email sends without delivering, subsequent sends will result in a hard bounce from the email address.
- Hard Bounce: If an email address is invalid, the recipient has previously unsubscribed from your emails, or there were 3 previous soft bounces, this will result in a “hard bounce” and be permanently suppressed in future email sends. The Data Health Tool will pull in all emails that have bounced more than three times and mark them as an “Undeliverable Email Address”. You can then use this tool to modify or delete the email addresses. Learn more about the Data Health Center here.
- Cancelled: An email that was scheduled to be sent was cancelled by the sender.
- Deferred: The recipient mail server asked Virtuous CRM+ to stop sending emails so fast. Similar to a soft bounce, a Deferred email will attempt to send again within the 72 hour period.
- Delivered: The accepted response generated by the recipients' mail server.
- Dropped: An email will be dropped when the recipient of that email is unsubscribed, the recipient email previously (hard) bounced, or that recipient has marked your email as spam.
- Expired: Expired means that an email has soft bounced, but it is a specific type of bounce. If an email bounces, we will retry for up to 72 hours. If the email is unable to be delivered within the 72 hour window, it will expire and be marked as Bounced - Expired.
- Failed: Your email data could not be sent to our email server. If this occurs, contact Virtuous Support for additional troubleshooting and recommendations.
- Processed: Your email data has been successfully sent to our email server and is ready to be sent.
- Processing: Your email data is currently being sent to our email server to be sent. The timeframe for an email send to process depends on the size of your email. Once finished, the status will update automatically to Processed and then, Delivered.