Email Guide: Tracking, Statistics, Removing Email Blocks and SPAM Flags

Overview

SendGrid is the first-class email service used to send emails from Gnosis. Your SendGrid account provides information that can support you in reviewing your email statistics and researching delivery issues.

The article includes the following:

• Email Statistics & Detailed Underlying Information
• Removing a SPAM or Other Permanent Block in Gnosis
• Checking on the Delivery Status of an Email in Gnosis
• When to Access/Utilize SendGrid Account Pages
• Accessing Your SendGrid Account
• SendGrid Overview
• Removing multiple Incorrect SPAM or Permanent Blocks on an Addresses in SendGrid

Email Statistics & Detailed Underlying Information

Statistics are available for each send/run of a communications item.  To obtain statistics for an email run, choose the "Statistics" option within the email screen:

If the communication has been run multiple times (such as a daily reminder), on the statistics screen, select the run date/time to choose stats for that particular run:

Finally, a detailed statistics report is available which outputs a PDF with the statistics plus details of the underlying clicks and recipient actions for the email run.  You'll find a button for this report at the bottom of the statistics screen:

Category & Overall Statistics

While the above info provides statistics for each email, statistics for an entire category are available via your SendGrid portal.  Go to this page (in "Stats | Category Stats" - SendGrid Login Required) to access your category stats.  If you choose the desired Communications category, set your period to 90 days, and point frequency to Month or week, you will see all of the stats for that category over that period.

Removing a SPAM or Other Permanent Block in Gnosis

If someone has incorrectly marked an email as SPAM or an email address has been blocked or recorded as a permanent bounce for some other reason that has now been corrected, SendGrid will place a semi-permanent block on that address and Gnosis will be prevented from sending email to it.

If one of these things has taken place for an email address in Gnosis, the email will be displayed in a colored font as follows:

• Blue-Violet indicates one email address in the list of addresses is invalid or that an email has had bounces/transmission rejects
• Orange-Red indicates all email addresses in the list are invalid.

If you are using Gnosis version 1.2.911 or later, you may further examine the status of the email address(es) by pressing the "Manage Emails" button on the person form below the email address display. The following window will appear:
 

See below for the numbered reference explaining the components of this window:

1. This is will have either a Valid check or Invalid cross that tells Gnosis whether or not to attempt to send an email. When it displays a red "x". You can click on it to change its status between valid (green-checkmark) and invalid (red-cross). To the left of this checkbox is the “number of soft bounces” (#rejected) for each email address and the date that the email address was last successfully used.

2. The current SendGrid status in each of the three suppression categories is shown here.  A green checkmark indicates that the email address is all clear and no block is present for each of:

   • Blocked: Sending to this address is blocked as a result of past issues with emails to this address.
   • Bounce: Past sends to this address have bounced with a fixable problem (like a mailbox is full) so sending to the address has been paused for 14 days.
   • SPAM: The recipient has reported an email sent to them as SPAM, so in accordance with rules, no further emails will be sent to that address.
3. Press the 'Revalidate' button (3) to re-enable an email and clear any suppression settings in SendGrid.  There is no need to open any SendGrid pages to clear these blocks.
4. Hovering over the Help Icon will display information about the options on the form.  Clicking on the icon will load this reference page.

If an email is successfully delivered to an address that has soft bounces marked against it, the soft bounce count is reset to zero and the process starts over again with the next email that is sent to that address.
 

Checking on the Delivery Status of an Email in Gnosis

The current status of an email sent to each individual is displayed in the Contact Management tab:

This information ("A" above) is updated periodically throughout the day based on information sent to Gnosis from SendGrid.  If you wish to obtain more real-time delivery information directly from SendGrid, you may do so by clicking on the "View Live Status" link ("B" above), and the current status will be obtained and displayed in a message box:

When to Access/Utilize SendGrid Account Pages

There are two reasons why you might want to access your SendGrid Account.

1. Delivery tracking and click-through statistics.
2. Cancel permanent blocks (a permanent bounce or SPAM report) for multiple addresses

Accessing Your SendGrid Account

NOTE: You will need to contact your Gnosis system administrator to have an account created to allow you access if you do not have it. An account is required for all options except for the built-in global email statistics option in Gnosis Pro version 1.2.773 and later.

 The "Mail Service Options" panel at the top right-hand corner of the Communications Center will take you to the relevant SendGrid page for the topic you desire.

This panel provides access to global statistics, email suppressions (bounce, SPAM, invalid, block) lists, and recent email activity.  Skip to the "Overview" section below for additional information on each area.

The "Global Email Statistics" button opens a spreadsheet view showing the last 30 days of activity and statistics collected therefrom. 

The options presented by the "SendGrid Pages" button all require you to log in with your SendGrid username and password. If you are the primary Gnosis contact for your organization and do not know this information, email [e-mail] to obtain your username after which you can reset your password to get access. If you are not the primary Gnosis Contact, contact that person to obtain your own username and password to gain access.

SendGrid Overview

Dashboard

The "Dashboard" option (on the left-hand side menu) provides an overview of your email activity for the past week or past month as selected in the top right-hand corner of the display area.

Statistics Options

On the left-hand side of the screen, click on “Stats” to review your email statistics. The following statistics options are applicable to your SendGrid account (the other options listed do not apply when using Gnosis):

1. Overview
2. Global Stats
3. Geographical
4. Email Clients & Devices
5. Mailbox Provider Stats
6. Mailbox Provider Comparison
7. Browser Stats
8. Browser Comparison

You may change the filter period and type of statistics shown by selecting the options in the top right-hand area of the display.

Activity

The activity area allows you to drill-down to review specific deliverability issues for specified email addresses or days over the past few weeks.  This option provides more granular information about delivery for specific email addresses and/or periods of days.

Removing multiple Incorrect SPAM or Permanent Blocks on an Addresses in SendGrid

The suppressions area allows you to view delivery issues under the following categories (these are the only categories that apply to Gnosis based emails):

• Bounces - Invalid or undeliverable addresses
• Spam Reports - deliveries that received SPAM reports from the recipient
• Blocks - emails blocked due to recipient issues
• Invalid - email addresses where the provider address part is incorrect or they are syntactically incorrect.

PLEASE NOTE: Any unsubscribe actions are handled by a separate process in Gnosis and that data is not available in the "Unsubscribe" options in SendGrid. See Managing Communications Preferences for guidance.

Complete the following steps to make bulk changes to emails that have been marked Invalid.

First, in SendGrid go to SPAM or Blocks within the Suppressions list (which area you need is indicated in the Gnosis reject info),

1. Search for and select (by the checkbox) the necessary email addresses.
2. Click the 1 Selected button.
3. Click to Remove Selected Block or SPAM Reports

NOTE: The "Invalid" checkmark will be set for all emails blocked in SendGrid so that checkmark must be cleared also for Gnosis to begin sending to the address.  Gnosis support can assist in the bulk resetting of this item.