What a failed email is in infoodle
When you send email from infoodle, the message goes to your delivery provider and on to the recipient's mail server. A failed email is one where that delivery did not succeed: the address does not exist, the recipient's mail server rejected the message, the recipient marked an earlier message as spam, or the recipient has unsubscribed.
infoodle records every failure on the Sending Errors list inside Contact, Email. You can review each failure, see a plain-English explanation of what went wrong, clear the error once you have looked at it, or deactivate the address so future sends skip it.
Before you start
Role Permissions
- Contact people by email
For a full list of role permissions and what they mean, see People role permissions.
Open the Sending Errors list
- Click or hover on Contact on the main menu bar on the left, then click Email.
- In the Email side panel, click Sending Errors.
You will now see the Sending Errors panel.
The list opens on Errors to process: failures that have not been reviewed yet. Use the Show errors dropdown to switch between three views.
- Errors to process: new failures waiting for you to look at.
- Errors cleared: failures you have reviewed and dismissed.
- Errors deactivated: failures where the address has been unsubscribed from all mailings.
What is in the list
Each row in the Sending Errors table covers one failed send. The columns are:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| # Fails | A counter for how many times this address has failed before. A red badge means the address is currently on the suppression list, a green badge means it is not. |
| Emailed to | The recipient's email address. Click the address to open the person's profile. |
| (wrench) | Opens the Check address dialog for this email address. |
| Error | A plain-English description of why the send failed, translated from the provider's response. |
| Sent | The date and time infoodle attempted the send. |
| Subject | The subject line of the email that failed. |
Why an email fails
infoodle translates the provider's raw response into one of a small set of plain-English reasons. The table below reproduces the reason strings exactly as they appear in the Error column, so you can match what you see on screen. Several strings include a trailing action prompt (for example, you should deactivate this email address): that prompt is part of the reason text shown in the list.
| Reason shown (verbatim) | What it means |
|---|---|
| A previous email sent to this address failed. It has therefore been blocked and did not receive this email. | The address is on your provider's suppression list because of an earlier failure. Until you unblock it, future sends skip the address. |
| This email address is invalid. The part after the @ (the domain) does not exist - you should deactivate this email address | The domain part of the address cannot be reached. Usually a typo or a domain that has been shut down. |
| This email address is invalid. The email address does not exist - you should deactivate this email address | The domain exists but the mailbox does not. Usually a typo or a person who has changed jobs. |
| The recipients email account is full! Ask them to delete some emails or deactivate this email address | The mailbox has hit its storage quota and cannot accept new messages. |
| The recipients thinks this email was spam | The recipient, or their mail server, classified the message as spam. The address is now blocked until you investigate. |
| The recipients email server is not set up correctly - please contact them to review | The receiving server is rejecting the connection. This is a problem with how the recipient's mail server is set up, not something you can fix from infoodle. |
| The recipients email account is disabled - you should deactivate this email address. | The recipient's mail account has been closed. |
| A general errors has occurred on the recipients server, if it keeps happening - deactivate this address | A temporary error infoodle could not classify. If it keeps happening, treat the address as undeliverable. |
| The recipient clicked unsubscribe | The recipient used the unsubscribe link in an earlier email. They will not receive further mailings until they opt back in. |
| No email addresses to send to | The email had no valid recipients at send time, usually because every address on the send was already suppressed. |
| Fatal error building content - contact support | infoodle could not put the email content together, for example if a personalised field in the template was left without a value. This is rare. Contact infoodle support, since it points to a setup problem rather than a bad recipient address. |
If the Error column shows text that does not match any of the rows above, infoodle could not classify the provider's raw response and is showing it through unchanged. The address itself may still be fine, but treat the failure as undeliverable until you understand the message.
Some reasons are about the recipient (full mailbox, spam complaint, unsubscribe), and some are about the address itself (invalid domain, account does not exist). The action you take depends on which type you are looking at.
What to do with a failed email
- Open the Sending Errors list and find the row.
- Read the Error column to see why the send failed.
- Click the wrench icon next to the address to open the Check address dialog. This shows the full address history across three tabs.
- Decide what to do, then act on the row using the bulk action selector at the top.
The two bulk actions are:
- Clear error: mark this failure as reviewed. The row moves to the Errors cleared view. Use this when you have looked at the failure and want it off the action list, but you do not want to stop sending to the address.
- Deactivate and unsubscribe from all emails: add the address to your site's all-stop list so no future infoodle email goes to it. Use this when the address is clearly bad (invalid mailbox, hard bounce, account closed) and there is no point trying again.
To act on a row: tick the checkbox at the left of the row, choose an action from the Select bulk action dropdown, and confirm.
Deactivate stops the address for every person who has it on their profile. If two or more people share an email address (for example, a household mailbox or a duplicate-person record), deactivating from a single Sending Errors row stops the address for all of them. Before deactivating a shared address, open the Check address dialog and look at the Mail Types tab to see who is affected.
What gets recorded when you deactivate: each deactivation adds a record to every affected person's change history, plus a record to the global unsubscribe log. Each record captures the user who did it, their IP address, and the date and time. That record is what you can point to if anyone asks who deactivated an address or when.
Two suppression stores: infoodle's all-stop vs the provider's suppression list
When an address stops receiving your email, it can be because of one or both of two separate stores. Both are checked before a send, and either one is enough to stop delivery.
- infoodle's all-stop list: the list inside your site, written when an admin selects Deactivate and unsubscribe from all emails from the Sending Errors panel (or from another Deactivate action elsewhere in the product). It is a deliberate, logged decision by a member of your team. To remove an address from this list, edit the person's mail-type subscriptions or use the Check address dialog.
- The provider's suppression list: the list inside your email provider's account, populated automatically when an address hard-bounces, when the recipient presses the spam button, or when the recipient uses the automatic one-click unsubscribe option built into their mail app. infoodle does not write to this list directly. You can see and clear it from the Suppression List tab of the Check address dialog.
A send is dropped if the address is on either list. If you deactivate inside infoodle, the address is stopped even when the provider would still accept it. If the provider auto-suppresses on a hard bounce, the address is stopped even though no one inside your site has deactivated it. To prove an address can no longer receive your email, you only need to show that one of the two stores has it.
The Check address dialog
Clicking the wrench icon next to an address opens the Check address dialog. This is the same dialog the Sending Errors wrench opens, and it is also reachable from the spanner icon beside an email address on a person's profile.
It has three tabs:
Global Settings
The recipient's site-wide subscription status. From here you can change the global status (subscribe, unsubscribe from all mailings, pause for one week, two weeks, or one month).
Mail Types
Per-mail-type subscription status. infoodle tracks subscription separately for each mail type (such as Emailed Newsletters, Event Updates, Financial Appeals, General Communications), so a recipient can stop one stream without stopping the rest. Each row shows whether they are subscribed, when it last changed, the method (default, manual, etc.), and an Unsubscribe button if they are currently subscribed.
Suppression List
The address's standing on the email provider's suppression list. Global shows the master account view; Own account shows the per-site view. A message of Address not blocked means the provider will accept future sends to this address; a different message means the provider is currently refusing to deliver.
If the address is blocked and you have checked with the recipient that they are happy to receive your email again, you can unblock it from this tab.
The address-level block (provider suppression list)
Some failure reasons cause your email provider to block the address on its suppression list. Once an address is on the provider's suppression list, every future send from your site to that address is dropped at the provider, with the reason A previous email sent to this address failed. The address stays blocked until you unblock it from the Suppression List tab of the Check address dialog.
Common reasons an address ends up on the provider's suppression list:
- Hard bounce: the mailbox does not exist or the domain cannot be reached.
- Spam complaint: the recipient pressed the spam button in their mail client.
- One-click unsubscribe: the recipient used the automatic unsubscribe option built into their mail app.
Only unblock an address after you have confirmed with the recipient that they want to keep receiving your email. Unblocking after a spam complaint without checking can damage your sending reputation and increase the chance of future emails being marked as spam for other recipients too. The unblock action is recorded against your user, so the trail of who unblocked the address is preserved.
Common questions
Does one failure stop all future sends to that contact?
It depends on the reason. A spam complaint, a hard bounce, or an unsubscribe puts the address on the provider's suppression list and future sends are dropped. A one-off temporary failure (full mailbox, temporary server error) does not automatically block the address: infoodle records the error so you can review it, but the next send is still attempted.
What about temporary failures, like a full mailbox?
Temporary failures appear on the Sending Errors list with a reason such as The recipients email account is full or A general errors has occurred on the recipients server. The address is not automatically blocked. You can Clear error after reviewing, and the next send will be attempted as normal. If the same address keeps failing for the same reason, consider deactivating it.
How is this different from unsubscribing?
An unsubscribe is the recipient's choice: they clicked the unsubscribe link, and infoodle records that as The recipient clicked unsubscribe. They will not receive further mailings from the relevant mail type (or all mailings, if they used the global unsubscribe) until they opt back in. A failed delivery is a technical event recorded by the provider, not a choice by the recipient. Both show on the Sending Errors list, but the right next step is different: respect the unsubscribe, investigate the bounce.
Why does my Sent and Scheduled list show the email as sent when it actually failed?
The Sent and Scheduled list shows what infoodle handed off to the provider. The Sending Errors list shows what the provider reported back. An email can appear on both: sent to the provider, then bounced back. The Sending Errors list is the source of truth for delivery outcome.
Where do I see the failure history for a single person?
Open the person's profile and click the spanner icon next to their email address. The same Check address dialog opens, with the address's full subscription and suppression history.
Who can I show as proof that an address was deactivated and when?
The person's change history records the deactivation, with the user who performed the action, their IP address, and the date and time. The global unsubscribe log captures the same details for the all-stop entry. Both together give you a full record for any address on your site's all-stop list.
Next steps
- Review your Sending Errors list weekly. Clear the items you have looked at; deactivate addresses that are clearly bad.
- Encourage your team to confirm address changes with recipients before unblocking after a spam complaint.