Communication Lists - Email Status

Communication Lists - Email Status


There are five statuses for an email address that is on any of your communication lists.
  1. Subscribed - the email address is actively subscribed to the list and will receive emails.
  2. Unsubscribed - the user elected through one of several means to unsubscribe themselves from the list (one-click link in newsletter/email, unsubscribe from subscriptions screen, clicked the "list unsubscribe" button in the email client, etc.) These users will not be automatically added back to a list by list conditions.
  3. Bounced - attempted sends to this email address resulted in a "hard" bounce, possibly there was a technical error preventing delivery (server off line, mailbox full, etc.). This email will not receive future send attempts.
  4. Invalid - something about this email address has been found to be invalid (improperly formatted, domain doesn't exist, etc.).
  5. Cancelled - the email address was removed from the list because either the conditions of the list changed or the contact record was changed in such a way as to not match the conditions. Or, an admin edited the address status. This email may be re-added to the list if those conditions change in the future. (This only affects each individual communication list and does NOT affect the user's Contact Status for your site.)
Admins can change the status back to "subscribed" by clicking on the blue number in the "Bounced" list and selecting the "edit" button next to the address.




To a view the list of emails associated with each status, click one of the blue numbers for the list. Clicking the "Total" number will show you all of the addresses associated with the list no matter what their status is.

For each email address you can see:
  1. Name - The name associated with the address if it was provided. For each email address on a list, the system will attempt to find a contact record that has that email address in it (parent1, parent2, student(s)). If it can't find a matching record, it puts "no contact record" on the row.
  2. Status in List - Is the address currently subscribed or unsubscribed to the list? Clicking the "i" next to the status will give the reason for the status change.
  3. Source - An "auto" source means the email address was added to the list due to "auto-add" conditions that were set for the list. An "uploaded" source is and email address that was manually added to list by an Admin.
  4. Created - When the address was added to the list.
  5. Last Sent - The date/time the most recent communication was sent to this address per this list.
  6. Last Activity - The date/time the user most recently showed activity regarding an email communication sent to this list.


Bounced/Invalid Emails

When an email has a "bounced" or "invalid" status, information is available as to why this occurred on the last message that was sent.
  1. Go to Communications > Communication Lists.
  2. Click on the blue number in the Bounced or Invalid column.

  1. Hover over the "i" in the address Status list.



There are two types of bounces:
  1. Hard bounces are considered permanent in nature. These are things that would continue to prevent delivery in the future such as "invalid address" or "closed account." Membership Toolkit will not continue to send emails to these addresses. 
  2. Soft bounces are temporary or transient in nature. Typically these are things like "over quota" or "server down." These issues are expected to be resolved in the near future, so the email is retried for the next 72 hours before it is abandoned. If the email is able to be delivered in the allotted time, the address will remain subscribed to the list.

    If the issue does NOT get resolved in the allotted time, it becomes a hard bounce and Membership Toolkit will not continue to send emails to these addresses.
Admins can use the "resubscribe to list" button to move the address back to the subscribed list, or they can use the "edit" button to move it to invalid or cancelled to prevent sending in the future.
 
If you want to see the actual message from the server that caused the bounced status:
  1. Open the user's Contact Record.
  2. Go to the Email tab.
  3. Find the emails with a bounced status in the Errors section at the top.
  4. Click on the email title.
  5. The Events Log is at the very bottom and will show the message from the server.



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