How to see if an email was delivered or rejected, what a bounce means, and how to better prevent rejected emails
To see if an email sent via Churchteams was successfully delivered, you can check Email History by going to Communicate > Email > History. Here you can enter an email address or Subject line of an email along with a date range to see the delivery results.
If the result is highlighted GREEN, the email was delivered successfully at the time and date stamped there. You will also be able to see if the recipient opened the email or clicked any links within the email by looking at the columns on the right side of the page.
If the result is RED, the email bounced. (When an email cannot be delivered to a server, it's called a bounce.) This can happen for several reasons:
- The email was refused because the recipient's email server determined that the sender or the content seemed like possible spam, or had a filter that blocked the email before it ever got to the recipient.
- The email address was determined as invalid, thus the email returned.
- The recipient unsubscribed from emails or marked this or a prior email as spam.
- There was a temporary connection error at the recipient server end of the chain and this particular email just didn't go through.
Here are some steps to take to correct and possibly help prevent bounced or rejected emails:
- Always check with the recipient first to see if they did truly unsubscribe from an email - they may just want to stop receiving future emails. If they were not aware of the bunce, verify the exact spelling of their email address.
- If the recipient DOES want to receive emails, please ask them to add groupfinder@churchteams.com and your church's email address to as a known contact to their address book. Here are instructions for how to do this, depending on the email client.
- Ask the recipient to check other folders built into their email client, such as Spam, Junk, or Promotions. If one of our emails are found there, ask them to move it to their Inbox and/or remove any spam flags.
- Email the Churchteams Support desk: Support@churchteams.com, asking us to remove any suppressions from the email address -- please include the email address in question and verify that you have confirmed this with the recipient.
- Try sending the recipient a singular email to just them. (Communicate > Email, in the Filters column click Members > Select Specific People, enter the person's name, click Run Report.) This should serve as a test 24 hours after you have taken the above steps.
