E-Mail Delivery

E-Mail is a great way to communicate - as long as the messages you send get delivered!

Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. For example, if the e-mail address was not entered correctly, it will never work!

In other cases the user may have clicked the Unsubscribe link on an earlier message, causing him to be blocked from future messages.  Reporting a message as "spam" can have the same effect.

And in some cases the user's e-mail service may reject the message for reasons of their own.

This month we added tools that let you view the status of e-mail delivery and manage these issues.

My E-Mail Delivery Status

When you log on to the site, the system will check your e-mail addresses to see if any are being blocked.  If they are, you will see a message like this at the top of every page:

If you see this message, you should go to the E-Mail menu and select My E-Mail Delivery Status, which will display a page that looks like this:

This page will show you any of your e-mail addresses that are being blocked.  For each such address, it will show you the reason it is being blocked and recommend how to resolve the problem.

If the blocking is because you accidentally unsubscribed or reported a message as spam, you can remove the blocking by clicking the Remove Blocking button.  This will immediately remove you from the blacklist and allow you to resume receiving future e-mails from the site.

Blocked E-Mail Addresses

Site administrators and users who have the "Membership" user role can view all e-mail addresses that are being blocked on a new page, Blocked E-Mail Addresses on the E-Mail menu.   From there they can remove blocking for users who unsubscribed or reported e-mail from the site as spam.

This page provides a summary of the four possible reasons for e-mail blocking, and provides recommendations for how to resolve each type of problem.

In the future, when a user unsubscribes or reports a message from the site, we will send them a message alerting them to the fact, so they can correct it if it was done in error.

Scouts Who Don't Have E-Mail Addresses

Until now, the Compose E-Mail page only showed you those members of your troop who have e-mail addresses as potential receipients.  That seemed reasonable, since we can't send an e-mail to someone who doesn't have an e-mail address.

But when we added the Send To Parents Of Selected Scouts option, this no longer made as much sense.

We've changed this rule, as you can see from the above example.  Scouts who do not have an e-mail address will now appear on this list and can be selected to receive a message.

Of course, they will not actually receive the message if they don't have an e-mail address.  But if you select Also Send To Parents Of Selected Scouts, their parents will receive the message.

It works this way on the E-Mail Participants page, too, so you can be sure to contact everyone who is signed up for an event - or at least their parents.  In fact, it works this way on all pages with the Also Send To Parents Of Selected Scouts option.

Later, when you view the e-mail from My Inbox or My Sent E-Mail or View All E-Mail the recipient list will now show you all of the people to whom the message was actually sent, i.e. those recipients with e-mail address and the parents, as well, if you selected that option.

If you have any questions or suggestions about TroopWebHost, please contact us at info@TroopWebHost.com.

When you do, please include your troop number and city in your message so we'll know exactly who you are.

Thank you for your support!

John Corning
TroopWebHost