How to check if a recipient received their digital gift card

Every gift card recipient email that goes out is logged with its delivery status, so you can check whether it reached the recipient. This works for any send: contacts portal and widget orders, cards you create in the dashboard, re-sends and sends through the API.

You can't open the exact copy a recipient got. Recipients shows whether each send arrived, and the email under Settings → Giftcards shows how it looks now, which can differ if it was edited since.

Check the delivery status

1. If the card was bought online, find the order first. Go to Store → Giftcards, pick the program the card was sold from, open the order under Online sales → Orders in the sidebar and note the Giftcard code, and the Recipient contact. When the buyer bought the card for themselves, there's no Recipient card, so note the Buyer instead.
2. Click the gear icon at the top right of the dashboard to open Settings, then click Giftcards under Functionalities. This isn't the Settings item in the sidebar of Store → Giftcards. That one holds a program's own settings, like its name and expiry, and no emails. Under Giftcard recipient emails, click View details on the email that was sent. Portal and widget orders use the one marked Default.
3. Open Recipients and filter on the Contact. Find the row whose Giftcard column shows the card from the order. If that doesn't settle it, match the Created at time with the order.
4. Look at the Status of that row.

What the status means

• Created or Processed: the email is on its way out. Processed means our email provider has it, but the recipient's mail server hasn't confirmed it yet. Give it a few minutes.
• Delivered: the recipient's mail server accepted it. If they can't find it, ask them to check their spam folder and promotions tab, and to search for your sender name. Opens shows whether it was opened.
• Deferred: the recipient's mail server is holding it back for now. Wait before doing anything.
• Bounced: the recipient's mail server refused it. Check the address for typos, correct it on the contact and send it again.
• Dropped: our email provider didn't try to deliver it. The address contains a mistake, or it's on a suppression list: it bounced before, the recipient marked an earlier email as spam, or they unsubscribed from all email. Sending it again to the same address won't help. Look the address up in Bounces and spam reports under Settings → Marketing, see Bounces and spam reports: why a contact stopped receiving your emails, and what to do. If the address has a typo, correct it on the contact and send the card again.
• Spam report: the recipient marked the email as spam. From then on, emails to that address are Dropped.

For every status in more detail, see What an email's delivery status means. To send it again, see How to re-send a digital gift card email.

There's no row at all

Then the email was never sent, because it couldn't be built. Usually the email has neither the Card number (hash) tag nor the URL tag, or your account isn't approved yet. See How to create gift card recipient emails. For a send through the API, a contact who isn't subscribed to the email's subscription type is also refused before anything is sent. For a portal or widget order, your account admins also get an email titled "Giftcard order recipient email failed" with the reason. Fix the cause, then send the card from its page.

An issuance also shows an email status per recipient on the issuance's own page.