When you rely on email for client and agent communication, it’s crucial to ensure that your messages consistently reach their inboxes. Unfortunately, emails can sometimes land in spam or go undelivered.
Here’s a guide to help you maximize the chances of your emails being successfully delivered and troubleshoot any issues that might arise.
❇️ Pro-tip: You can see if emails were opened by the client or agent on the Inspection Details page. Click here to see how!
Use a Professional Email Address
Using a free email service may lead to your messages being flagged as spam. We recommend using a professional email address with your own domain (e.g., info@yourcompany.com) to increase credibility and reduce the chances of emails being filtered.
If you are using a Yahoo or AOL email address, they do not allow other services to send on your behalf. Emails sent through Spectora when using a Yahoo or AOL email will end up in the junk/spam folders for your recipients.
To avoid having your emails sent to junk/spam, it is highly advised that you change to a different email address provider like Google.
Additionally, sending emails to Yahoo or AOL users may not deliver properly.
To see how to change your email address, click here.
Check Client and Agent Spam Folders
Even with the best precautions, sometimes emails can still end up in spam folders. Ask your clients and agents to check their spam or junk folders if they’re not receiving emails.
They should also mark your emails as “Not Spam” or add your email address to their contacts to avoid future issues.
If emails are being delivered to spam folders, we recommend using a placeholder like {{ADDRESS}} in your subject line. Unique subject lines look less like spam. Check out this article if you're not sure how to change the subject line of your automated emails.
Add your email address to the BCC field for all outgoing emails. When any Spectora email is sent, you will receive the same email verifying it has been sent.
Have your clients add you to their email contact list.
Have your clients add mail@spectora.com to their contact list.
Troubleshooting Emails Not Being Delivered or Dropping
If emails are not reaching your clients or agents, there are a few potential causes and solutions:
Email Bounce-Backs: If an email bounces back, this could be due to an incorrect email address, a full inbox, or a temporary server issue on the recipient’s end.
Verify Email Address Accuracy: Double-check the email addresses entered for typos or errors.
Sender Reputation: If you’ve experienced a high bounce rate or complaints about your emails, it could hurt your sender reputation, leading to more messages being filtered out.
For more information on emails bouncing or dropping, click here.
Monitor Email Activity in Spectora
Spectora provides tools for monitoring your email activity. In your inspection details, you can see whether an email was successfully delivered, opened, or if it bounced. This insight can help you pinpoint issues quickly and take corrective action.
To see if your emails were sent to clients or agents, click here to check out our article.
Resend Emails if Needed
If an email didn’t get through, you can manually resend it from within Spectora. Make sure to verify the email address and correct any issues before resending to improve the chances of successful delivery.
Add Your Email Domain to Your DNS Settings (For Custom Domains)
If you’re using a custom email address, ensure that your domain is properly configured for email delivery. Adding SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to your DNS settings can improve email deliverability. These records authenticate your emails, making them less likely to be marked as spam.
Contact Support If Issues Persist
If you’ve followed these steps and are still having trouble with email deliverability, reach out to our support team. We can help diagnose the issue, whether it’s a configuration problem, a server issue, or something else.
🔴 Free trials do not have the ability to send emails. First you need to be a paying user, your account will go through a verification process and then emails and sms will be enabled for you.
Why Emails Don't Get Delivered
Our email delivery platform sends millions of emails a month and has a 99.7% delivery success rate. If you're seeing this, we're sorry that you're in that 0.3% experiencing issues!
Historically email was simple system but as more bad actors starting using it for spam more systems had to be put in place to prevent spam. Email delivery today, especially as a 3rd party sending emails on your behalf, is a very complex issue.
We do everything we can on our end to ensure deliverability by allowing verification of our identity, including all the modern standards of domain authentication (DKIM, SPF), link branding, and more. It's impossible to achieve 100% delivery rate as a third-party sending on behalf of clients, so we take great pride in our high delivery rates.
For those that do not get delivered, here are a few reasons why:
Your Email Address
If you're using a Yahoo.com, AOL.com, or other antiquating email address, be aware that they do not allow other 3rd-party systems to send on your behalf (like Spectora!) You'll need to use another email address like Google Workspace and then update it in Settings->User Options.
Spam
If you are hearing from a client or an agent that emails aren't making it through, first ensure they aren't going to spam. While this still counts as a "delivered" email, it's not ideal. Here are some things you can do to prevent winding up in the spam box.
Bounces
Most bounced emails are a result of an incorrect email address. Usually once verified and corrected everything is fine!
Other reasons for bounced emails are generally due to the recipient's email provider settings or configuration.
People using cheaper or non-major email providers can be subject to rate limits, quotas, or full mailboxes, resulting in emails not being delivered.
We often see smaller agencies or old agencies using self-hosted email services. They might have contracted an IT guy or local company to set this up and they haven't kept up on the latest trends in email verification. Some reject any email sent by a 3rd party on your behalf outright. (Note they will still receive emails you send directly since that is different!)
Dropped
When emails are bounced, we add that email address to a suppression list to ensure we don't try sending to them again. This would reduce our reputation score and increase risk of future delivery issues. When you see "dropped" as an email status, this is due to that email being on a suppression list. Contact our chat support to get it removed once you've verified the recipient has resolved the issue!
What You Can Do
Because it's almost impossible to achieve 100% deliverability and you have no control over the recipient's email provider, the best question to ask is "How do you ensure you are reaching your clients in multiple ways?"
We encourage everyone to make use of our automated text messages that you can send to every client and agent.
When you get notified of a bounced or dropped email, just copy-paste the content and email them directly from your email platform (like Google Workspace, formerly G Suite.) This will ensure they receive it. Next, you can alert them that their email system isn't set up to receive your emails.
If your recipient informs you that they have corrected the issue, let us know to remove that email address from a bounce/suppression list and we'll make sure we try to send to them again in the future!
If you're on a free trial, add a subscription to become a paying user so you can send emails.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is an email stuck in "Started"?
Ensure that the recipient does have an email input on the inspection.
If the email(s) are being sent from Company, ensure there is an email input for the company in the Company Profile.
Double check the emails for the recipient, if there is unnecessary punctuation somewhere in any email address, including CC and BCC emails, it can cause this issue.
Why am I getting error "This company cannot send emails"?
If you're on a free trial you will see this error, free trials cannot send emails or texts.
If you've recently subscribed, a verification process happens first and then emails and sms will be enabled for you. If needed, you can reach out to support for assistance with this.
If you have any questions or feedback, write into our chat bubble or email support@spectora.com!
