In my day job I deal with many questions regarding email and spam and considering how important people think email is they really don’t know much about it. Here I’ll try to go through some of the more common questions I get and try to dispel some of the more common myths.
Why didn’t they get my message?
Honestly, I have no idea, but something that people don’t seem to realize with email is that it is not guaranteed. If you send an email there is no way to verify the recipient actually got it. Email is very much like snail mail, when you drop that letter into a mailbox it is gone and unless the person receiving it lets you know, you have’d have no idea they got it. Yes there are things like read receipts and encrypted messages but for the average user they won’t be using them.
So why didn’t they get it, the most common reasons are a misspelled email address, size of the message was too large, the recipient mail server rejected the message either for spam or content.
Misspelled email address: This is pretty self explanatory, its the age old saying: Garbage in Garbage out
Size of the message: Most companies will not accept messages large than 10MB, that wonderful 30minute video of junior running after the cat will not get delivered or those 30 images of your wonderful trip to Cancun.
Rejected because of spam or content: Nearly every company has a spam or content filter in place and trying to send your buddies the latest “Man from Nantucket” limerick will probably end up getting blocked and don’t even think about that Viagra joke.
Why didn’t someone tell me?
There are no hard and fast rules in place for messages that do not get delivered. Non-Delivery Reports, those messages you get back saying why your message was not delivered that no one usually reads, are not required to be sent out. Many companies block outbound non-delivery reports in an effort to combat directory harvest attacks, spammers send a mass of email with fake names, anything that doesn’t get rejected is a valid email address.
Another problem with non-delivery reports is they really don’t provide very much information. Usually all you get is and error code with some generic error message. For the basic errors like, wrong email address, message too big, etc this is fine but for more serious problems there isn’t very much to go on.
What should I do?
If you get a non-delivery report determine if the reason is something simple like a mis-spelled address or the message size was too big. If you didn’t get a non-delivery report then check the message in your sent items, verify the email address, check the attachments, etc. If you still can figure out why your message didn’t reach the intended recipient contact your mail administrator.
Tips
If your message is business critical and needs to be received here are a few tips that will help:
- Don’t use a free email service for critical messages (hotmail, gmail, etc) these are so abused by spammers that some companies will blocked anything coming from them
- Check your spelling, spam filters look for mis-spelling of popular words.
- Don’t send large messages, if you need to send large files at the very least compress them. You can also check with the recipient before sending to find out the size limit
- Follow up with a phone call or a simple message asking if they received it.
Following these will not guarantee that your message will get delivered but it will help.
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