Email functionality in Service Autopilot is one-way; emails can only be sent from Service Autopilot (unless an Email Integration subscription has been purchased). Incoming emails or replies will not appear in your Service Autopilot account. Instead, they return to the email address where the original message was sent from. You would need to log into your email account to see any replies.
An Email Request is any email you have sent or tried to send from Service Autopilot. A request is essentially asking the system to deliver an email. An Email Status tells you whether or not a request was successful. This information along with additional Email Tips are available in the Email Activity User Guide.
The boxes across the top of the Email Activity screen display cumulative numbers for all the trackable emails you have sent in the system.
Clicking into each box takes you to a new tab for that specific category where you can see more detailed information.
|
Email Status |
Definition |
|
Delivered |
The email was accepted by the receiving server. This does not mean it necessarily reached the recipient’s inbox or that the email was opened. |
| Opened
|
The email has been delivered and opened by the recipient. Not all emails that have been opened will display as opened. This is due to the way certain email providers read images. |
| Unopened | The email has been accepted by the receiving server, made it to an inbox, and has not yet been opened by the recipient. |
| Bounced | The email has been returned to the server that sent it. A Hard or Soft Bounce can be either a permanent or temporary failure to deliver the email. The email address may have been undeliverable or the recipient may have a full inbox. |
| Spam | The email is unwanted. It is easy for an email to fall under this category. The receiving server may have rejected the email as spam or the recipient may have marked it as spam. |
| Dropped | The recipient's email address is on some kind of suppression list, such as bounced or unsubscribed. This email will not be delivered. |
| Deferred | The email cannot be delivered temporarily. This might be due to a server issue on the recipient's end that places the email in a holding pattern. Some deferred emails will eventually be delivered but others may end up bouncing. |
| Links Clicked | The recipient opened the email and clicked one of the links inside the email that was generated by a Merge Tag (personalization field), such as the link to a Form or to the Client Portal. |
REQUESTS
When you send emails through Service Autopilot, you are essentially requesting that the system deliver the email. The number in this box represents the total number of emails you have tried to send through the system. When your application or server attempts to send an email to one of your customers via Service Autopilot, we record that as a request to your Dashboard.
DELIVERED
An email displays as Delivered when the sent email is accepted by the receiving server.
Important: An email accepted by a receiving server does not mean the email reached the recipient’s inbox. This can happen when users or email applications use rules to filter emails away from specific inboxes. As a result, the email may sit unread in another folder that is not the main inbox. When an email is indicated as delivered, you can be certain only that it was not rejected in some way by the Internet Service Provider (ISP).
OPENED
An email displays as Opened when the email has been opened. However, not all emails that have been physically opened will display with the status of Opened. This is due to how certain email providers load images from an email. To track Opened emails, Service Autopilot inserts a small transparent image to all outgoing emails. Most times, when the recipient opens the email, the image will automatically load – which notifies Service Autopilot that the email has been opened. However, not all email providers automatically load the image, so Service Autopilot gets no notification (even when it has been physically opened).
BOUNCED
An email displays as Bounced when it is returned to the server.
Hard Bounce - A hard bounce returns an email to the sender because of an invalid email address. When this happens, future requests to send emails to the invalid email address will be rejected.
Soft Bounce - A soft bounce will get as far as a recipient’s email server but returns before getting to the intended recipient; this is a temporary status. This can happen when a recipient’s inbox is full or when there are widespread Internet or email outages.
Tip: Validate each recipient’s email address. Most bounces occur because the addresses or domains are incorrect. Examples would include misspellings or typos like davdi@yahoo.com (instead of “david”), or john@gmil.com (instead of “gmail.com”). Notice that “gmil.com” got through the rejection filter in SA because it follows the proper format –ending with “.com” -- even though the domain is wrong.
SPAM
There are multiple reasons why an email can be labeled as spam. The recipient may have received the email and manually marked it as spam. The recipient's email server may have designated the email as spam based on words used in the subject line of the email, their server settings, or the content in the body of the email.
Note: Three consecutive soft bounces can result in the email being marked as spam.
It is always best to get approval to email a client or lead by sending an opt-in request. For tips on avoiding your email going into the Spam folder, see “Improve Email Deliverability."
REJECTED
An email displays as Dropped when it is removed from your outgoing list before it is sent. Reasons vary. Most commonly, an email is dropped because the recipient has opted out. Another reason is invalid addresses. When sending an email to an invalid email address, it will be marked as Bounced first. Attempts to email the address after this will display as Dropped.