Mandrill Studying Email Delivery

Since we use a Mandrill, a third-party service, to deliver email, we can figure out if there are major problems with the email, at least we can figure out if the designated mailserver on their end got the mail.

1. Log into Mandrillapp.com. Username and password can be obtained from the admins.
2. You can use
   • the link on the bottom of the contact email (like "Mandrill Link: https://mandrillapp.com/activity/?q=xxx%40hotmail.com"
   • The mandrill link on their "Current Status Page" (like https://www.warmshowers.org/user/17303/admin_details)
   • The link on their profile page ("mandrill") if you have privileges.
   • Or just go to the outbound link on Mandrill and put in all (preferable) or part of their email address, or other search criteria. You'll often want to change from the default 7 days to 30 or 60 (you can actually only search 30 days).

At that point, you can see whether mail is being delivered successfully. That doesn't mean it may not end up in their spam folder.

Options:

• Hard bounce: The email just doesn't work. Could be a typo or other problem
• Soft bounce: Usually from lower-end email providers, full mailbox issues, etc.
• Rejected: Most common: Means that one of the other things has happened, and you have to find out which. Rejected means that Mandrill has decided not to try to deliver it.

One reason for "Rejected" is that the user reported a mail as spam, which then causes Mandrill to put it in the rejected class for a month or more. Since all members need to be able to receive mail from [email protected], this status has to be cleaned up in settings->Rejection Lists->Rejection Blacklist - I generally clean up all the ones marked as spam periodically.