Address checks, and when sending pauses

Every newsletter, broadcast and automation email from every business on doTask leaves through the same sending service. When an old imported list goes out and one email in ten bounces, the mailbox providers start treating that sending service as a spammer, and everybody’s mail suffers. Address checks catch the dead addresses before the send instead of after it.

Checking addresses

1. Press Check addresses on a list (Customers › Lists and segments, on its row or on the list’s own page), on a segment’s row, or on the review step of a newsletter or an email broadcast, where it checks exactly the audience you picked. Customers › Address checks also has Check all subscribers.
2. The check runs in the background, a batch every minute. Customers › Address checks shows its progress and keeps itself up to date; you can leave the page.
3. Open a check to see every address with its result, filtered by Valid, Will not send, Risky and Could not tell, and searchable.

The free checks come first and cost nothing: an address that is not an email address at all, a common misspelling of a big provider (gmial.com, hotmial.com, yahooo.com, with the corrected address offered), a throw-away inbox, a shared inbox like info@, a domain with no mail server, and an address that bounced or reported spam before, here or for another business on doTask (kept only as a one-way fingerprint, never the address itself). The rest are asked of the mailbox itself through the connected checking service; the cost line on a check says how many paid checks it made. An address checked in the last 90 days is not paid for again. Settings › Email › Address checking says whether a checking service is connected; without one only the free checks run and the rest show as Could not tell.

• Valid: the mailbox exists. It sends.
• Will not send: the mailbox does not exist, the address is mistyped or throw-away, the domain takes no mail, or it bounced before. Every send skips it, and the send report says why.
• Risky: a shared inbox, a domain that accepts mail for any name, or an address known for trouble. It still sends; consider taking it off the list.
• Could not tell: the mail server did not say. It still sends.

A customer’s page shows their own result under Consent (Address check: Valid, and the date), with the corrected spelling when there is one.

The 200-address limit on unchecked imports

A newsletter or broadcast that includes more than 200 people who were imported, whose address was never checked, and who have never opened or clicked one of your emails is refused, with the number. Check them first, or send to at most 200 of them at a time. The review step shows how many addresses in the audience are not checked yet before you press Send. Switching on an automation that looks back over everyone (days since a visit or an order) is held to the same limit.

When sending pauses

If more than 5% of a workspace’s marketing emails bounced over the last seven days (counted once there are 100 or more), its sending pauses: newsletters, broadcasts and automation emails wait, and every Email page says so with the rate. Other workspaces are not affected. Run Check addresses on what you were sending to; once a check has finished after the pause, the owner can press Resume sending on the Email pages. Questions: [email protected].

A workspace that sends from a dedicated sending account of its own (Settings › Email › Sending account) is not paused by doTask and is not held to the 200-address limit: both become a warning an owner or admin ticks before sending, because only that workspace’s own sending is at stake. See Your own sending account.

Why an email bounced

A send’s report lists every recipient. For one that bounced, the Detail column says why in plain words: the mailbox was disabled by its provider, the mailbox does not exist, the company’s mail server rejected it, the mailbox is full, or the receiving server’s own words, shortened. Hover to read the full text.

Open Address checks →