SendGrid
Last updated: December 20, 2021
SendGrid is the tool we use to manage and track all email activity that goes through, or comes from messages@fareharbor.com. We can use it to manage and track all emails that are being sent, delivered, and opened by our clients, and those who have unsubscribed from FareHarbor emails.
Employees who use SendGrid regularly will be given access to a personal SendGrid account/login. If you do not have a SendGrid account and require access to perform your daily responsibilities, please submit an IT Ticket.
Below are some instances when you may need to use SendGrid. Remember that your first step should always be to check that the Email Notifications are set up correctly in the Dashboard. You may also want to check the User Permissions to make sure the inquiring user isn’t limited to receiving emails for availability that they are assigned as crew on.
Client accidentally unsubscribed from FareHarbor emails
All of our emails, from booking notifications / daily manifests / crew reminders, to FareHarbor news and product updates, come from messages@fareharbor.com. If someone unsubscribes from a product update email, they will then stop receiving booking notifications as well.
To resubscribe a client to emails:
- Sign into SendGrid.
- From the home screen, (bottom left) go to Suppressions > Global Unsubscribes.
- Enter the client’s email address in the Search by email section.
- In the search results, check the box next to the email and click on the
Selectedicon in the top right. - Select “Delete (1) Selected Global Unsubscribe”.
This will resubscribe the client to all FareHarbor emails.
Note: It is important to be aware that if this happens too frequently, emails can get permanently blocked from email servers such as Google or AOL.
Client is concerned that they did not receive a notification email
If a client claims they aren’t receiving emails, complete the process above to check to see if they’ve unsubscribed themselves from email notifications. If they are not unsubscribed, check to see if emails sent to the provided client email address have in fact been delivered unsuccessfully.
- From the home screen, select Activity from the left hand side.
- Enter the client’s email address in the Search by email section.
- The history of emails sent to that specific address will populate.
Here you can see whether an email was Delivered or Not Delivered. Click into the specific email for more details about why the email wasn’t sent successfully.
Errors:
If the email was Processed this means SendGrid sent the email successfully. The following issues could have occurred to result in the email not being delivered through the client’s email provider:
- Bounces – The receiving server could not or would not accept the message (usually unsubscribed).
- Blocks – When your IP address has been blocked by the client’s email provider (Black listed emails, Spam filters, etc).
- Invalid – The email address that was supposed to receive the email was bad/incorrect.
Reasons:
This will show you a more detailed explanation of why the email was blocked, bounced, or was invalid. For example, in the screenshot above the client or the client’s email provider has marked emails coming from messages@fareharbor.com as Spam so the email was blocked.
Next Steps:
From this point, when you’ve found out the status of the email(s) in question you can proceed by explaining to the client that they in fact are being sent booking-confirmation emails and someone is opening them OR they have accidentally unsubscribed from or blocked emails from messages@fareharbor.com.
Additional Resources:
- Top reasons emails aren’t delivered
- How to whitelist an email
- How to prevent FH emails from going into Spam:
- Most email platforms allow you to mark an email as “Not Spam.”
- Adding the FH email address as a contact may also prevent this issue in the future.
- Double check that there aren’t filters putting them directly into the Spam/Junk folders.
Blocked emails from @me.com/@icloud.com/@mac.com
Email filtering for @me.com/@icloud.com/@mac.com accounts is very strict, meaning that some client emails coming from FareHarbor may be blocked before they even reach the recipient:
If you see a status like this, most likely it’s because something in the client or customer’s email provider is causing it to be blocked . The client may want to contact their customer by phone to see if they have an alternate email address they can use. It is also a good idea to try to get an alternative email address for the POC at the company if they have one of the emails listed above. We have seen issues with Support requests related to these email providers.
SendGrid Bugs and Talking Points
If you can see that a client has not received an email (the email in question wasn’t even attempted to be sent in SendGrid) and you’ve checked that the Dashboard email notification settings/permission settings are correct, you may need to report this issue in the #bug-reports Slack Channel.
Be sure to first check for an unresolved bug reported about this issue. If there is one, instead of creating a new one, add your example to the thread (be as detailed as possible). If there is not a report yet be sure to add one via the workflow.
Talking with Clients
Just like all companies, there are times when SendGrid has experienced intermittent issues that have caused a delay in sending confirmation emails. At these times, if a client calls and is concerned about their customers receiving emails in a timely manner, you can assure them that not only is SendGrid working on it, but other large companies, such as Uber, Spotify, AirBnB are also experiencing delays in confirmation emails being delivered to their clients.