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VLog #73 – Why are my Emails Not Being Delivered?

David Logan 5,415 Comments

Video – VLog #73

Why are my emails not being received?

How do I check my email reputation?

What affect email repuation?

Script – VLog #73

Willie Nicol: Hello everyone and welcome to another fun filled, action packed episode of The Techno Dinosaur Meets The I.T. Geek. I am the Techno Dinosaur Willie Nicol, so named because I am digitally challenged. However, I’m also a personal development life coach who helps people out with their stuff.

Willie Nicol: I am based in Troon, South Ayrshire, Scotland. With me today is my usual partner in crime David Logan, the I.T. Geek. So, David, how are you today and where are you?

David Logan: Hi Willie, I’m great. I’m based here in Annan, south of Scotland, U.K. It’s sunny and you’d think it’s still summer here this afternoon.

Willie Nicol: Well just keep that thought David. It IS still summer, okay?

David Logan: Stay positive.

Willie Nicol: Stay positive.

David Logan: The good news is I am the I.T. Geek and I can help you the Techno Dinosaur with your technical problems!

Willie Nicol: Well, here’s a question for you. Recently my emails weren’t getting delivered because I had a delivery failure message pop up. And, after a lot of hooing and hawing with the other person’s I.T. department and my service provider, the matter was resolved.

Willie Nicol: So, why would it happen out of the blue, that suddenly an email wouldn’t be delivered?

David Logan: Fantastic question Willie, great one. So, what we’re calling this here is “email reputation”. So, if we take it back to basics, if we take it back to human, ourselves, our reputation.

David Logan: If you know somebody who has a bad reputation, do you go and ask them for their advice?

Willie Nicol: No

David Logan: So, therefore, what I’m talking about here is email reputation. Attach that same thought process to emails.

David Logan: So, if the system knows that your email address has got a bad reputation, as in it’s sending out a lot of spam emails or a lot of rubbish, a lot of marketing emails, your reputation will get lower and the email systems out there in the wide world will mark that, your email, and say “We’re not delivering this to this email, to this mailbox. But this mailbox here, over here, can accept your reputation to a certain, to a lower, tolerance.“

David Logan: So, different email providers will have different tolerance levels of your reputation. Now, how this gets damaged, “It’s a risk. Oh dear, it’s sending out a lot of spam emails”. So, beware if you send out marketing emails, you’ve got to be very careful, or you get marked down.

David Logan: Now, we also …. we discuss, I’ve had instances where some mail providers will accept my emails and the odd one will reject as per your example, as per your scenario. That case there, there’s several steps you can do to review your reputation and make sure everything is in place.

David Logan: But first place for the Techno Dinosaur is to go back to your email provider. Is there an issue with my email server that’s providing this service?  

Willie Nicol: Well, the bizarre thing David, was that I sent an email to a lady in an organisation and that was fine. The next day all I sent was undeliverable. As a test, I then sent an email to another lady in exactly the same organisation and it was fine. So how do we explain that? Is it a glitch, a fault in the system? What would you think?

David Logan: I think there’s, yes, as we’d discussed when we weren’t live, some guys call it a glitch. I take this down to like in the “grey matter”, there’s no hard and fast answer to this Willie. What you have got is certain, all the email providers will, when they have incoming email, they can probably individually set this level. Now, the only thing, this is my thinking here, personally, I’ve got nothing I can refer to. But from my experience, potentially this mailbox for your lady overnight increased that tolerance level for your thing. Now, that’s based on different criteria. Now, things which can …. now I’ve told you one factor which can affect your …. which can affect your reputation of the email. Will it get through to that mailbox?

David Logan: Other factors can be your mail server in the cloud. Is that a shared server with other email accounts where they’re doing the same thing? They’re sending out a lot of spam email, that can damage you. Is it down to the email client or the hardware you’re sending it from?

David Logan: I’ll give you an example. We have got a client who doesn’t use Outlook, Microsoft Outlook to send emails. They use another email program but it gets blocked by an organisation, a well-known organisation which I’m not going to name here for confidential reasons. But if they use Outlook, same email address, same email server, only difference is the email program and then they can accept emails.

David Logan: But using the free programme, emails programme, it doesn’t accept them and it’s from two mailboxes to about three or four different mailboxes at the other organisation.

Willie Nicol: Well, I found it very frustrating, and it took the other party’s I.T. people and my I.T. people, the service provider, to sort it out. So, there was a time when I would have got quite narked about that, but I managed to maintain my equilibrium.

Willie Nicol: So, my concern would be if I was sending a critical email and then being paranoid about it not being received. So, what’s your advice there?

David Logan: My advice there would be to not rely solely on email. Yes, if it’s critical for business, send it but I would follow up with another form of communication, another channel. So, my advice is, have another channel of communication ready to follow up with it. Whether that’s over the phone, good old-fashioned phone, or even good old-fashioned handwritten note or maybe typed up, printed off and sent to them. Or, as we would do now a days, Messenger. Most business people use LinkedIn, Facebook, why not use the Messenger? Connect to them and do it but always follow up. I’d probably just say to use the phone. Worst case scenario, use the good old-fashioned fax machine.

Willie Nicol: Are they not obsolete now?

David Logan: I’ve not quite gone right to the stone age when we’d use the pigeon, but you can use the fax machine.

Willie Nicol: Thank you David.

David Logan: To summarise, email reputation is a grey area. There’s loads of things out there. Look, Google “email deliverability”. Search for that and there’s tons of stuff you can do and search.

David Logan: If you’ve got another question, to you the viewer, give me a shout.

Willie Nicol: Great, thank you David. I think we probably need to wrap up now. So, that was very useful.

Willie Nicol: In summary, email reputation, don’t fret about it. And secondly, if it’s important, follow up with some other means of communication, even carrier pigeon would do. OK?

Willie Nicol: So, thanks again David. All that remains for me to say to the viewer …. any questions, contact David, he’s the guy for the I.T stuff. Contact me if there’s anything in your personal life or professional life you need a wee bit of help with. So, stay safe, stay well, and remember “Have some fun”! Bye for now.

David Logan: Thanks for that Willie. Great, great topic today. To you the viewer, keep following all our videos. Share them, please share, we need the world out there. Share, comment engage.

David Logan: Have a good week everybody. Stay safe and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! Thank you.

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5,415 thoughts on “VLog #73 – Why are my Emails Not Being Delivered?”