Every message the platform sends is logged, whether it succeeded or failed.
The principle
A failed email never fails the action. If the allotment email bounces, the delegate is still allotted. The failure is recorded with its error.
This is deliberate: an email provider having a bad minute should not stop a conference running. It does mean nobody finds out about failures unless somebody looks.
Where failures surface
On the admin overview, as a card of emails that went wrong and were not put right since. A failure that was later sent successfully drops off. Check it daily.
On the delegate, in the drawer at the registrations desk. Its Emails section is a read-only history: every message, the address it went to, and what happened. The heading counts outcomes separately ("4 sent · 1 bounced").
What each outcome means:
- accepted by the email service: handed over; nothing more is known yet.
- delivered: the delegate's mail server took it. Shown only once the provider reports deliveries.
- delayed, bounced, marked as spam, did not send: as they say.
Sending something now
The actions sit in the box at the top of the delegate's record, and appear only when they apply: Send current seat details, Send current payment link, Retry registration notice. Each builds the email from what is true now (their seat, their link, their address), shows who it goes to, and asks once before sending. It is not a copy of an old email.
If their address bounced or marked us as spam, the box offers Fix the address and WhatsApp instead. Sending to that address again does nothing useful and harms the sending account.
The messages
Delegates get: registration received, co-delegate registered, allotment, co-delegate notice, payment confirmed, payment reminder. Writers get the three review outcomes. Staff get the invite. Anyone can get a magic link. Recruitment sends selection emails.
Delegate-facing detail is in emails you will receive, which is worth reading so you know what your delegates have been told.
Why an email fails
In rough order of frequency: a typo in the address, an institutional mail server rejecting it, a full mailbox, and provider problems. The recorded error usually says which.
A typo is fixable: correct the address on the delegate record, then send the current version from the top of their record.
Bounces and spam complaints
Some failures arrive after we thought the message had gone. The mail provider accepts it, tries to deliver, and tells us minutes later that the address does not exist, or that the person pressed "this is spam". Both land back in the platform automatically.
- Hard bounce (no such address): the address is marked bounced. Outreach never mails it again. The delegate's email history shows bounced on the email it was about.
- Spam complaint: that contact is unsubscribed immediately and never mailed again.
- Delayed (a full mailbox or a busy server): recorded, nothing suppressed. The provider keeps trying.
This is not optional housekeeping. Repeatedly mailing dead addresses is what gets a sending account throttled or suspended, taking allotment and payment mail down with it. If a delegate says they never got their mail and their history shows a bounce, correct the address on their record and send again from the top of their record: fixing the address clears the way. Payment reminders also skip a bounced address until it is fixed.
Mail to many delegates (Mail tab)
- Who gets it. The count is who matches now. A scheduled mail picks its final list when it starts sending; tick Use these N people when scheduling to fix the list to today's matches instead.
- The daily limit. A large mail that hits the provider's daily limit says how many are waiting and roughly when more can go. Send the next batch now appears only while this mail has people waiting and the limit has room, and sends this mail only.
- Failures. A mail that reached most people reads Completed with N failures, never just "sent". Review failures lists each person with the cause and one safe action: a temporary failure can be retried; a bounce needs the address fixed first (the retry then goes to the new address); a send interrupted part way may have arrived, so it is only retried once you tick that you checked with them. Retry failed recipients sends to those people only, so nobody who got it can get it twice. Duplicate as a new draft is different: it goes to everyone again.
Staging
On a preview deployment every outgoing message is redirected to a single address and its subject is prefixed to make that obvious. If you are testing and the delegate did not get their mail, check whether you were on staging.