Troubleshooting emails

Start with the quick checks. If the problem continues, find what you're seeing below.

The email shows Inactive

• Something it needs is missing. An email sends only when it has a company profile, content, a subject and a list, plus a delay or send time for follow-up and scheduled emails. Open the email, find the section on the summary step without a tick, fill it in, and set the email to Active or Scheduled again.
• A follow-up email had nothing to send for a long time. It's set to Inactive after 90 days if it has never sent, or 30 days if it has sent before and nothing has gone out lately. Set it to Active again when you expect more entries.
• Your plan changed. Scheduled emails are included in the Max and Enterprise plans. On another plan, scheduled emails waiting to send are set to Inactive. See Upgrading your plan.
• Your account was paused. Follow-up and scheduled emails stay Inactive after you resume. Set each one you still need back to Active.

Nobody is receiving the email

• The email is held for review. A new account's emails that contain links are held until support reviews the account, and you see Your account must be manually reviewed before including links in your emails. During business hours, reviews usually take minutes; at weekends, up to 24 hours. See New accounts and protecting deliverability.
• Double opt-in is on, and no one has subscribed yet. With Require Double Opt-In turned on in the company profile, follow-up and scheduled emails go only to people who clicked the subscribe link in your autoresponder. Check that your autoresponder includes the link, or turn the setting off if you don't need it. See How to create double opt-in emails.
• It's connected to the wrong list. A campaign with more than one form can have more than one list. Open the email and check the list on the summary step.
• A follow-up email's start time hasn't arrived, or the delay hasn't passed yet. Check Start at and Number of Days on the summary step.
• The filters exclude everyone. Remove filters one at a time to see which one is narrowing it down.
• Your SendGrid account can't send. If the email's company profile has your SendGrid API key, every email using it stops when your SendGrid account runs out of credits, or when the From address isn't verified in SendGrid, such as a ShortStack no-reply address. See Setting up and connecting SendGrid.

Some people didn't receive the email

These people are skipped, so a list of 500 entries can send fewer than 500 emails:

• Test entries, deleted entries, and entries without a valid email address.
• People who unsubscribed. Unsubscribing applies to the company profile they unsubscribed from. If you use more than one profile, they can still receive emails sent with your other profiles.
• People who entered before an autoresponder was active. An autoresponder sends to new entries from the moment it's activated. To reach earlier entrants, send a scheduled email.
• Repeat entries in a follow-up email. A follow-up goes to each email address once. To send one per entry, turn on the Include repeat entries filter.
• People who haven't confirmed, if double opt-in is on.

If the person should have received it, ask them to check their spam or junk folder, then see the next section.

Emails land in spam or are rejected

The usual cause is the From address. When it's on a domain you own and that domain has a strict DMARC policy, receiving mail servers treat email sent through ShortStack as suspicious. The email wizard's summary step shows a red warning in the From section, such as:

DMARC policy found with p=quarantine.

With p=quarantine, emails are likely to land in spam. With p=reject, they're turned away. To fix it, do one of these:

• Use a ShortStack no-reply address: no-reply@shortstack.page, no-reply@lndg.page or no-reply@cmpgn.page. These pass SPF, DKIM and DMARC checks.
• Ask whoever manages your domain to change its DMARC policy to p=none.
• Send through your own SendGrid account, which lets you keep a strict policy. See Setting up and connecting SendGrid.

My From address can't be used, or changed to no-reply

• The address is a free email address, such as @gmail.com or @yahoo.com. Use a ShortStack no-reply address, or an address on a domain you own, instead. Those providers' DMARC policies turn away email sent in their name from other services.
• An address on a ShortStack campaign domain other than the no-reply ones is changed to the no-reply address.
• The From address is blank. It uses the Default From Email in your company profile. If that's blank too, it uses no-reply@campaign-mail-1.com.

Replies aren't reaching me

Replies to a ShortStack no-reply address aren't delivered. To receive replies, use a From address on a domain you own. See Which From address to use.

My test email won't send

• The address isn't verified. Test emails go only to addresses verified on your account. Request the verification email and click its link within 3 days. The link works once; request a new one if it has expired.
• The subscribe link is missing from the test. That's expected: {{subscribe}} fills in only on emails sent to real entrants. Enter your published campaign with your own address to see it.

Test emails have [TEST] at the start of the subject line. An email sent because of a test entry has [TEST ENTRY] instead.

Merge fields show up blank

• The entrant left that form field empty. Make the field required in the form so every entry has a value.
• The form doesn't have that field. Check the merge field matches a field on the form connected to the email's list.
• The merge field was edited. Merge fields such as {{entry.first_name}} must stay exactly as inserted, braces included. Delete it and insert it again from Available Merge Fields.

See Using merge fields in emails.

I can't add another autoresponder

Each list can have one autoresponder, and one set to Inactive still holds that place. Edit the existing one, or delete it and create the new one.

Still stuck

Contact support with:

• the name of the email and the list it's connected to;
• the email address that should have received it, and when that person entered;
• a screenshot of the email's summary step.

Related resources

• Creating autoresponder emails
• Email checklist
• Error messages
• New accounts and protecting deliverability
• Emails Manager