What an email's delivery status means: Delivered, Deferred, Bounced, Dropped and more
Every email Leat sends to a contact is logged with a status, so you can see how far it got. You'll find it in the Recipients list of a campaign or automated email, in the recipients of gift card, voucher and system emails, and on the runs of a points or voucher issuance.
Leat delivers email through SendGrid, our email delivery provider. Once an email leaves Leat, SendGrid reports back what the contact's mail server did with it, and that's what the status shows.
The statuses, in the order an email goes through them
Created. The email is ready in Leat and waiting to go out. Some lists show Awaiting sending for the same moment.
Sent. Leat has handed the email to SendGrid.
Processed. SendGrid has it and is about to deliver it. The contact's mail server hasn't answered yet, so give it a few minutes.
Deferred. The contact's mail server didn't accept the email yet and asked to try again later. Some filters call this Deferred (retrying). This is temporary: mail servers do this when they're busy, when they check new senders before letting them in, or when a mailbox is full. SendGrid keeps retrying on its own for up to 72 hours, and you don't need to do anything. If it gets through, the status changes to Delivered.
Delivered. The contact's mail server accepted the email. That's as far as anyone can follow it. If the contact 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.
Bounced. The contact's mail server refused the email for good, for example because the address doesn't exist, the domain is misspelled or the mailbox was closed. Check the address on the contact for typos. After a bounce, SendGrid stops sending to that address, so the next email to it shows Dropped. An address that doesn't exist, or whose domain doesn't accept email, is also listed under Hard bounces in Bounces and spam reports.
Dropped. SendGrid didn't try to deliver the email at all. That happens when the address contains a mistake, like gmail.comc, or when it's on one of SendGrid's suppression lists: it bounced before, the contact marked an earlier email as spam, or they unsubscribed from all email. Hard bounces, addresses with a mistake and spam reports are listed in Bounces and spam reports, with the contact and the email it happened on. See Bounces and spam reports: why a contact stopped receiving your emails, and what to do.
Spam report. The email was delivered and the contact marked it as spam. From then on, emails to that address are Dropped. The address is also listed under Spam reports in Bounces and spam reports, and with Unsubscribe after a spam report on, the contact is unsubscribed from the subscription type the email was sent under.
Failed to send. The email never left Leat, so SendGrid never had it.
A status only moves forward
SendGrid's updates don't always arrive in order, so a status never goes back to an earlier step. An email that was Deferred and then delivered shows Delivered, and one that was delivered and then marked as spam shows Spam report. You only see the furthest point it reached.
Which ones need you to do something
- Created, Sent, Processed or Deferred: wait. The email is still on its way.
- Delivered: nothing on our side. If it's missing, it's in the contact's spam or filtered by their mail server.
- Bounced: correct the address on the contact, then send the email again.
- Dropped or Spam report: look the address up in Bounces and spam reports before sending again. If it has a typo, correct it on the contact. If the contact unsubscribed or reported spam, respect that.
Delayed isn't an email status
An automation run can show Delayed. That means the run is waiting at a Delay step in the automation and will carry on when the delay is over. It says nothing about whether an email arrived. To see how an automation's email did, open the automated email and look at its Recipients.