This article covers how to troubleshoot email delivery issues for broadcast emails and automation emails, including how to check a contact's email status, understand why a contact may not be receiving emails, and what information to provide when contacting Support. This article does not cover domain authentication setup or building and editing automation email templates.

Table of Contents

1. Why Email Deliverability Matters for Your Business
2. How Email Delivery Works
3. What to Do When a Contact Reports a Missing Email
4. How to Check a Contact's Email Opt-In Status
5. Why Your Automation Email Is Not Sending to a Contact
6. Why a Contact Did Not Receive Your Broadcast
7. What the Difference Is Between Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Suppressed
8. How to Find Out If an Email Address Is Restricted
9. What Information to Provide When Reporting a Delivery Issue

Why Email Deliverability Matters for Your Business

Email is one of the most direct ways to stay in touch with your customers — whether you're sending appointment reminders, follow-ups, promotional offers, or re-engagement campaigns. When emails don't reach your contacts, you lose the opportunity to communicate at the right moment, which can affect bookings, repeat business, and customer satisfaction.

Understanding how email delivery works helps you identify and resolve issues faster, protect your sender reputation, and make sure your messages are reaching the people who want to hear from you.

How Email Delivery Works

When you send a broadcast or automation email through your account, both the platform and you as the sender share responsibility for successful email delivery. The platform provides and maintains the email infrastructure used to send messages. You, as the sender, are responsible for list quality, recipient permission, contact engagement, email content, and your domain's sending reputation.

Email providers — including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and Comcast — evaluate these factors each time a message arrives, and decide whether to accept, defer, reject, or filter the message. Successful delivery is not guaranteed and acceptance decisions are based on your sending reputation and mailing practices.

Once an email is accepted by the recipient's email provider, that provider determines whether the message appears in the Inbox, Promotions, Updates, Spam, or Junk folder. The platform cannot control how individual email providers classify or display accepted messages.

What to Do When a Contact Reports a Missing Email

If a contact tells you they did not receive an email, ask them to complete the following steps before escalating the issue:

1. Check their Inbox, Promotions, Updates, Spam, and Junk folders.
2. Search their mailbox for your business email address, your business name, or the subject line of the email.
3. Add your sending email address to their contacts or safe sender list to prevent future filtering.
4. Confirm that the email address on file is correct and free of typos.
5. Verify that they have not previously unsubscribed from receiving emails.

If the contact still cannot locate the email after completing these steps, use the troubleshooting steps in the sections below to determine whether the contact's email address is unsubscribed, bounced, suppressed, invalid, or experiencing another delivery issue.

How to Check a Contact's Email Opt-In Status

Each email address in your contact database has an email status that indicates whether the contact can receive marketing emails. There are four email statuses that allow marketing email delivery: Confirmed, Unconfirmed, Confirm (Legacy), and Unengaged Marketable. Any other email status will prevent email delivery to that contact.

You can check a contact's email status in two ways: from the contact record directly, or through the Email Status Search report.

To check email status from the contact record:

Click Contacts in the left-hand navigation and open the contact's record. Locate the contact's work email address in the right-hand information panel. The email status is displayed directly below the email address field. The right-hand information panel shows the contact's email address, phone number, and tags, with the email status label appearing underneath the email address.

To check email status using the Email Status Search report:

Click Reports in the left-hand navigation. In the search bar at the top of the Reports page, type Email Status and select Email Status Search from the results. Enter the contact's email address in the search field and click Search. The report displays the contact's current email status, the date the status was last updated, and the reason the status was set.

The four statuses that allow delivery are listed at the top of this section. If the contact's status is anything other than those four, contact Support to determine whether the status can be updated.

Why Your Automation Email Is Not Sending to a Contact

There are three common reasons a contact may not receive an automation email.

The contact is unsubscribed, bounced, or suppressed. If a contact's email status is anything other than Confirmed, Unconfirmed, Confirm (Legacy), or Unengaged Marketable, the automation will skip the email step for that contact. Check the contact's email status using the steps in the "How to Check a Contact's Email Opt-In Status" section above.

The contact has not yet reached the email step, or never entered the automation. Automation emails only send when a contact reaches the specific email step in the automation sequence. If the contact entered the automation recently, they may not have reached the email step yet. If the contact was not enrolled in the automation at all, they will not receive any emails from it. To verify enrollment, open the automation in the automation builder and check the contact's status in the automation.

The From Address in the email template uses a domain that has not been authenticated. Each automation email template has a From Address — the email address your message appears to come from. If the domain used in that From Address has not been authenticated, the email may be blocked or filtered by the recipient's email provider. To check and update the From Address, open the email template in the automation builder and review the From Address field. Contact Support if you need assistance authenticating your sending domain.

In rare cases, automation email sending may be disabled at the account level due to severe deliverability concerns. If you have ruled out the three causes above and automation emails are still not sending, contact Support to review your account's sending status.

Why a Contact Did Not Receive Your Broadcast

If a specific contact did not receive a broadcast email, the most common cause is that the contact's email status prevents delivery. Verify that the contact is not unsubscribed, bounced, or suppressed before resending. Use the Email Status Search report to confirm the contact's current status, as described in the "How to Check a Contact's Email Opt-In Status" section above.

If the contact's email status is eligible for delivery but the contact still did not receive the broadcast, ask the contact to check their Spam and Junk folders, and to search their mailbox for your sending email address. Broadcast emails are sometimes filtered by the recipient's email provider based on content or sending reputation rather than email status alone.

What the Difference Is Between Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Suppressed

These three email statuses each indicate a different kind of delivery restriction, and resolving each one requires a different action.

An unsubscribed contact has opted out of receiving marketing emails. This can happen when a contact clicks the unsubscribe link in an email, submits a spam complaint, or is manually unsubscribed. Sending marketing emails to an unsubscribed contact is not permitted and will not be delivered.

A bounced email status means there was a delivery failure when the platform attempted to send an email to that address. Hard bounces (permanent failures, such as an invalid or nonexistent address) will set the contact's status to bounced and prevent future sends. Soft bounces (temporary failures, such as a full inbox) may resolve on their own.

A suppressed contact has a system-wide block that prevents email delivery across all accounts. Suppression is applied for one of the following reasons: the recipient requested suppression, the recipient's email provider requested the address be suppressed, or security or deliverability concerns were identified. Suppression cannot be self-resolved — contact Support to request a review of a suppressed address.

How to Find Out If an Email Address Is Restricted

It is uncommon for an email address to appear on the platform's Restricted Sending List. More commonly, a contact is not receiving emails because the contact has unsubscribed, the address has previously bounced, or the email was delivered to a Spam or Junk folder.

If you have ruled out unsubscribed status, bounced status, and spam folder filtering, and you believe the address may be on the Restricted Sending List, contact Support. Support can review the address and determine whether it is eligible for removal from the Restricted Sending List.

Support can also review any email address to confirm whether it is suppressed, unsubscribed, bounced, or experiencing another type of delivery restriction.

What Information to Provide When Reporting a Delivery Issue

When contacting Support about an email delivery issue, providing complete details helps Support investigate and resolve the issue faster. Include the following information in your support request:

• The contact's full email address
• The name of the broadcast or automation email
• The approximate date and time the email was sent
• Whether the issue affects one contact or multiple contacts
• Any screenshots from the contact record or email reports that show the contact's email status or send history