Newsletter Stats Not Showing Bounces?

[User]

I set up the plugin and sent an email newsletter yesterday. The delivery took about 9 hours.

4,009 subscribers
3,623 emails delivered
78 opened (this is WAAAY too low to be correct)
17 clicked a link

And:
4 unsubscribes
0 complaints
0 bounces

My wife and I both have gmail accounts on the list, neither of us received anything, not even in spam. I believe most of the emails were simply not delivered or bounced. But there is nothing indicating that in the newsletter report. I also saw nothing in the website’s error log that looked like failed deliveries.

The weirdest part is afterward I decided to prune my email list of obvious spam and broken addresses. Which took the list down from 4,009 to 3,605… very close to the figure the newsletter plugin is giving for delivered. But I don’t believe the majority are being delivered, especially since I’m not even getting anything at my own personal email.

My domain is readingjunkie DOT com. The emails are my readers who signed up over about 10 years.

EDIT: I usually get an open rate of around 30-40% with this list. From watching the stats update in real time, I get the feeling that the first batches of emails in the first hour or two were being sent successfully, then at some point the system just gave up, and that’s why the open/click rate suddenly fell off.

EDIT 2: most of the 400 bad addresses I deleted were new since the last time I had sent any messages. It is possible to give me your email on the website, and my anti-spam filter wasn’t set up carefully enough.

[Stefano]

Hi, the plugin “sends” emails but the delivery is then by your mailing server. If you don’t have an SMTP plugin or a delivery addon, that server is usually the web server where the site is running.

I can suggest installing the WP Mail logging plugin: it records every sent email so you can see if an email has actually been sent. If it’s not received, it has been dropped by the mailing server or rejected by the receiver. I know it sounds complicated, but this is how the email system works.

If you setup a return path on the Newsletter/Settings, you may receive error feedback from providers and which help understanding if something is going wrong.
I can suggest registering to Google Postmaster and checking the domain status: https://gmail.com/postmaster/
Don’t be scared if you see a low reputation; it could be due to recent activity when even a few subscribers mark your communication as spam. But it’s a interesting tool.

I can even suggest to setup an SMTP plugin in your blog and connect the site with the SMTP you use to manage your email @readingjunkie.com: setting up a dedicated mailbox (like newsletter@readingjunkie.com), if possible, is a good choice.

Last but not least, you can ask the hosting provider if they have records about dropped emails, for example for exceeded limits.

[Stefano]

For reference, this is a schema of the email delivery when first sent by WP.

https://www.satollo.net/how-email-delivery-works-in-wordpress-and-why-it-can-fail

[Stefano]

Looking at blackslists, your domain is listed
https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=dmarc%3areadingjunkie.com&run=toolpage#
but it is worth to know usually providers like google do not use those systems.

[User]

Hello Stefano, thank you for the response! I’m aware of the dedicated server distinction, and I had checked to make sure my mailing was in compliance with Hostgator’s rules. BUT I did not think of reaching out to them directly until you mentioned it. I will do that today.

I also installed the wp mail logging plugin.

Will read over your comments carefully, do some troubleshooting, and let you know what the outcome is.

Many thanks!

[User]

I talked to customer service and discovered the problem. The Hostgator server itself was blocking bulk email messages, which was why Newsletter plugin was reporting the message as sent without error, but very few people got it.

[Author]

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