Email Delivery - Troubleshooting

Email deliverability refers to the ability of your emails to reach the recipient's inbox. Following correct procedures and maintaining compliance ensures email deliverability to inbox for longterm and on an ongoing basis.

Following are some protocols and best practices you should know and follow.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF): SPF is an email authentication method which ensures the sending mail server is authorized to originate mail from the email sender's domain. An SPF record identifies the mail servers and domains that are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM): DKIM adds an encrypted digital signature to verify that the domain owner is authenticated to send the email.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC): DMARC tells receiving servers what to do with your messages that don’t pass SPF or DKIM. Set up DMARC by publishing a DMARC record for your domain. To pass DMARC authentication, messages must be authenticated by SPF or DKIM, or both.

Bounce Rates: Bounces happen when emails cannot be delivered to an email address. There are two types of bounces:

• Hard Bounces: A hard bounce happens when an email can't be delivered because the recipient's email address is invalid, non-existent, or blocked. It might also occur when the email provider blocks the sender's email address. Hard bounces can be problematic because they indicate a fundamental issue with the email list quality, which can hurt your organization sender reputation.
• Soft Bounces: Soft bounces are temporary bounces when an email can't be delivered because the recipient's mailbox is full, the email server is down, or the message is too large. Soft bounces are less harmful than hard bounces as they don't significantly impact the sender's reputation.

Email List Engagement and Hygiene: Email list hygiene refers to how clean and up-to-date an email list is. To maintain email list hygiene you should regularly do the following:

• Do not use purchased email lists: Using purchased email addresses and lists is a violation of QuestionPro terms of use. You should also choose to grow your email list organically rather than buying or renting it, as there is no guarantee the names on a purchased list consented to be added to the list, or even belong to real people.
• Remove unknown users: Unknown users are invalid or unrecognized email addresses. They include email addresses that have been abandoned and shut down by the email client, as well as incorrect email addresses that contain typos. Sending to these types of email addresses will lead to higher bounce rates.
• Use double opt-in email addresses: Maintain email list hygiene with email subscribers with positive email engagement. Respondents who will open your email and click on links within the emails and answer your surveys. Remove email addresses with negative engagement like subscribers who will delete your emails or mark them as SPAM or junk.

Avoid email subject line malpractices: Your subscribers aren’t the only ones reading your subject lines. Their email clients are, too, and most have strict filters in place to weed out spam. Those filters catch the exact same things recipients tend to find annoying, including:

• Avoid misleading subject lines
• Subject line in all caps or strange fonts
• Subject link full of exclamation points
• Subject lines using spam trigger words such as “free,” “buy,” “earn,” “prize,” and “winner”

Avoid email body malpractices: A good email is an email that can be read in its entirety. If it can’t, you risk frustrating the recipient and triggering them to unsubscribe or report you as SPAM. To improve response rates to your emails, follow these tips:

• Be genuine about the email. Explain your research study and time required from the respondents. This will ensure higher open rate and engagement. Always remember to thank your respondent for their time :)
• Be careful when using fancy elements like forms, videos, or dynamic scripts such as JavaScript that are not displayed by all mailbox providers.
• Avoid including any attachments or files
• Optimize images you embed so they don’t slow down the email’s load time.
• Maintain a balanced text-to-HTML ratio to avoid looking spammy to the filters.
• Keep links to a minimum and ensure they are complete links since URL shorteners can set off spam filters.

QuestionPro provides you with a default from email address to send your emails. To view or use a custom from email address,

Go to: Login » Surveys (select a survey) » Distribute

You can view/select/add-new from email address under Email » Compose » From

If you are using a custom from email address, to ensure sucessful email delivery to inbox, it is necessary to adhere and comply with the following requirements.

• Domain for the from email address used is DKIM verified. A valid signature provides recipients confidence that the email was handled by QuestionPro in a way authorized by your organization.
• SPF records are added and pass validation.
• DMARC authentication is implemented.

For finding issues and reasons for failed email delivery,

Go to: Login » Surveys (select a survey) » Distribute

Under Email, click on Sent to see email distribution history.

Click on the count under Undelivered column.

Here, you will see the reason for failed delivery. You can also click on the email address to find more details.

For QuestionPro support to help you with improving email delivery, following is the required information:

• Do you have documented opt-in permission to send emails to recepients?
• Are SPF records added and validated?
• Is the proper DMARC policy set?
• Are DKIM keys added?