If a user isn’t receiving an expected email campaign, this step-by-step guide will help you diagnose and resolve the issue.
Campaign Configuration
✔️ Was the campaign published (not just scheduled or archived)?
Emails only trigger for campaigns that have been published. If it’s still scheduled or was archived, no emails will be sent.
✔️ Was the campaign scheduled correctly?
Double-check the scheduled date and time, and status:
- Campaigns scheduled in the past may publish without sending emails.
- Campaigns can be saved in a Draft status with a scheduled date and time. Be sure to click Publish or Schedule from the Review tab.
✔️ Was an audience defined?
If a campaign is only assigned to a topic without a specific audience, no emails will be delivered. Make sure an audience was selected during setup.
User Eligibility and Audience Membership
✔️ Is the user in the campaign’s targeted audience?
The platform will only attempt delivery to users explicitly included in the selected audience.
✔️ Is the user active in the system?
If the user has been deactivated (blocked), they will not receive any campaign content via email.
✔️ Does the user have a valid email address in their profile?
Check the user’s email field for formatting errors, typos, or missing information.
Intelligent Delivery Logic
✔️ Is Engagement Boost enabled?
Engagement Boost may delay email delivery for some users based on optimal engagement timing.
✔️ Were other delivery channels selected (e.g., Push, Notification Center)?
The user may have been notified through other channels instead of email.
✔️ Has the user already opened the campaign on another platform?
Creator Studio’s Intelligent Delivery suppresses emails if the user has already viewed the content in the web, mobile app, or microapp experiences. This can happen even with engagement boost disabled — for example, if the campaign is published to a topic or shows up in a user's For You feed and they view it immediately.
Check for Delivery Failures
✔️ Did the email go to spam or junk?
Ask the user to check their spam/junk folder. Some corporate email systems may also quarantine messages before delivery. Their IT department may be able to confirm.
✔️ Is the email being deferred?
If the campaign shows as “email sent” but not delivered — and there’s no error or bounce — it could be a deferred delivery.
This occurs when:
The recipient’s mail server delays delivery (throttling, greylisting)
The email is queued by our delivery service for retry
Bounce and Unsubscribe Status
✔️ Has the user unsubscribed?
Check the user's profile from People | Users. The Channels section shows whether the individual's Email status is Subscribed or Unsubscribed. Individuals can be resubscribed from this screen.
If Unsubscribed, this will also show the reason that the user is unsubscribed.
There are two main reasons a user may appear on the unsubscribe list:
They manually unsubscribed via the email footer (Workflow emails only)
The system received a hard bounce when emailing them in the past
For more information:
✔️ What is a hard bounce?
A hard bounce indicates a permanent delivery failure due to:
Invalid address
Nonexistent domain
Unrecognized recipient
Once a hard bounce is recorded, we will auto-drop all future emails to that address in compliance with sender reputation best practices.
Diagnostics and Tools
✔️ Check the Campaigns list
The Results Page and Insights report can take 1-2 hours to show recent activity. Instead, review the overview metrics from the Campaigns list.
✔️ Check for system-wide issues
Visit https://status.firstup.io to see if there are any current disruptions in email delivery.
Still Not Resolved?
If the above checklist doesn’t resolve the issue, gather the following and contact Support:
Campaign name and link to campaign in Creator Studio
Targeted audience information
Affected user’s email address
Screenshots or Results Page data if available
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