Email Delivery Issues

What to do if emails are being bounced, rejected or marked as SPAM?

If you find that many emails sent by Certify'em are being rejected or bounced back to you, or marked as SPAM, see the applicable suggestions below:

New Workspace Domain?

If you or your organization uses Google Workspace, and your domain is relatively new, you may experience bounced emails when the recipient is outside of your own domain.  This is because Google treats new domains more strictly when it comes to scripts and Add-ons to prevent them from being used maliciously by spammers.

You may also encounter many emails being marked as SPAM if certain email records (specifically "SPF" and "DKIM" records) have not been set up properly To prevent and/or remediate this, it is strongly suggested you or your I.T. department review the article Using Add-ons in Google Workspace (specifically the topic "Does Workspace require any special setup to work with my Add-on?").

Even once those setup steps are followed correctly, it may take additional time (i.e. several weeks or more) before emails stop bouncing. In the interim, you can still share certificates using the "Share via: Google Drive" option in the "Advanced Settings" of Certify'em. This works because the email notifications are sent by Google Drive, and not Certify'em. Note however that recipients will need a Google account (i.e. Workspace or @gmail.com) to be able to print or download the certificate. Else they will only be able to view the file and will have to take a screenshot of it.

Other Tips:

1. Remove any hyperlinks (i.e. www.mycoolclub.com) from the body of your email, as these can cause your email to look like SPAM by some filters.

2. If all of your  emails always contain the same identical content, this can also make your emails appear as SPAM by some filters. Try varying up your content by using merge tags such as {{full name}}, {{email}}, and {{date}} such that each delivered email is slightly different. See this page for a complete table of all available merge tags that can be used both in certificates, as well as emails. Be sure to do this both for certificate emails sent upon passing, and emails sent when exam-takers don't pass.

3. If you use Workspace, have your I.T. admin check if any Gmail "restrict delivery" settings have been set in the Workspace Admin Console (admin.google.com): Apps -> Workspace-> Settings for Gmail -> Advanced settings -> restrict delivery