When sending out emails via Certain, you may receive reports from registrants that they are not receiving emails from the event. If this happens, review the following items and take the following steps to ensure emails are received.
Troubleshooting Steps
- Go to the Registration within the Event and look to see that there is a history record of the email being sent.
- Click on the History Record to see additional info and ensure the TO address is correct.
- Copy down the Date/Time, the FROM address, the TO address, and the Subject.
- If there is a Record, it indicates that the email triggered correctly and was sent out from the Event.
- If there is no History Record of the Email going out, there is an issue with how the email is being sent.
- Check the area you are sending the email from to ensure it is properly set up to send the email out (Form Confirmation, Form Logic, Custom Reg Status, Scheduled Email, etc.).
History Record Shows Email Was Sent - Registrant Still Did Not Receive
If a History Record shows but the registrant still did not receive the email, the email may be getting marked as Spam or Quarientined by the registrant’s Email Server.
There are multiple factors that receiving email servers consider when filtering out Spam or Malicious emails. The main areas checked are the FROM address and the Email Content.
FROM Address
- FROM Address example: Jeff@CertainTest.com
- The receiving email server reaches out to the FROM Address Domain (CertainTest.com) and asks if the email actually came from that domain.
- The SPF/DKIM/DMARC security checks determine whether the email actually came from the domain.
- If SPF/DKIM/DMARC security checks fail, the email is weighed heavily toward being counted as spam.
- The amount of weight depends on what the domain’s (CertainTest.com) email security settings are for those checks.
- DMARC security settings include: none, quarantine, reject.
- DKIM security settings include: strict, relaxed.
Email Content
Spam filters look for things like the following:
- Keywords or Phrases (Free Gift, Act Now, etc.)
- Large number of Links
- Broken HTML
- Complex HTML
- JavaScript
- Many Others
> Note: If an email is Bounced back or Blocked by a receiving email server, the event contact (REPLYTO address) will receive an email notifying that the email was "Undeliverable". > If the email is sent to the Spam folder or Quarientined by the receiving server, no email is received by the Event Contact.
SPF/DKIM/DMARC Failure
If emails are not passing the security checks or are getting bounced back because they failed DMARC checks, review the FROM address that is being used.
There are two options:
- Ensure all emails sent have a FROM address with a certain.com domain (event-information@certain.com).
- The REPLYTO address remains the event contact.
- The FROM Name becomes the Contact Name.
- Reach out to Certain Support with information on the Domain that the FROM emails use.
Configuring your Account to use the Default Certain FROM address
1. Navigate to Account Settings > Implementation > Security Settings. 2. Under Other Settings, select Use event-information@certain.com next to Set Email FROM value to: 3. Click Save.
Using Your Own FROM Address
If using your own FROM address, ensure that the email passes security checked (SPF/DKIM/DMARC).
To do this, reach out to Certain Support to get information needed to set this up properly. Certain Support provides 3 DNS entries that are needed to make/add to the FROM addresses Domain.
Apply the DNS entries to the DNS host so the email server is alerted that emails sent from that address are legitimate. Passing SPF/DKIM/DMARC security checks allows emails to be delivered.