# Email Delivery and Statuses

### How emails are delivered

Every email sent by UbiQuity is digitally signed using DKIM, which helps receiving mail servers verify the email is legitimate and improves deliverability.

UbiQuity will also attempt to send emails using TLS encryption if the receiving mail server supports it. If not, the email is sent unencrypted.

If a recipient marks an email as spam, UbiQuity automatically opts them out. This is handled through industry feedback loops that UbiQuity is enrolled in.

***

### Message statuses

After sending a mailout, the **Mailout Recipients** screen shows a status for each message. Statuses can update for several days after a mailout is sent as delivery receipts come back from servers.

<table><thead><tr><th width="130.98828125">Status</th><th>Meaning</th><th>Common examples</th><th>What happens next</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Scheduled</td><td>UbiQuity is preparing the email or attempting delivery.</td><td>Mailout still processing. Recipient inbox may be full. Carrier connectivity issues.</td><td>UbiQuity will attempt to send or retry up to 12 times with increasing intervals.</td></tr><tr><td>Pending</td><td>Email is processed and queued for delivery.</td><td>Often a temporary status. May indicate an A/B test where the winning version has not yet been selected.</td><td>The email will be delivered or move to another status.</td></tr><tr><td>Soft-bounce</td><td>UbiQuity was unable to deliver after exhausting retries.</td><td>Inbox full. Destination server misconfigured. DNS timeout.</td><td>The email will not be sent.</td></tr><tr><td>Error</td><td>UbiQuity failed to process part of the email.</td><td>Dynamic attachment could not be generated.</td><td>The email will not be sent.</td></tr><tr><td>Cancelled</td><td>The entire mailout was cancelled.</td><td>A user cancelled the mailout from the dashboard.</td><td>The email will not be sent.</td></tr><tr><td>Hard-bounce</td><td>Permanent delivery failure.</td><td>Mailbox does not exist. Domain not found (likely a typo). Email address on the Amazon SES suppression list. Missing merge field data in the From address.</td><td>The email will not be sent. The contact is automatically set to GNA and excluded from future mailouts.</td></tr><tr><td>Delivered</td><td>UbiQuity has successfully delivered the email to the recipient's mail server.</td><td>—</td><td>The contact should receive the email.</td></tr></tbody></table>

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### Opt-outs and GNA

Each contact in your database has two flags that determine whether they can receive emails: **Opted Out** and **GNA (Gone No Address)**.

#### GNA

If a contact receives a hard bounce from any mailout within UbiQuity, they are placed on the Amazon SES suppression list and their GNA flag is set to Yes. They are then excluded from all subsequent mailouts.

The GNA flag cannot be manually reset. The only way to remove it is to update the contact's email address — either manually, by import, or via the API. Changing the email address resets the GNA flag and the contact will start receiving emails again.

If you believe an email address is valid but has been incorrectly flagged (for example, a work email for someone who left and returned to a company), contact UbiQuity to update the suppression list.

#### Opted Out

Contacts who have clicked an opt-out link in an email and set their Opted Out field to Yes will not receive future mailouts.

You can manually change the Opted Out flag for a contact, but only do so if you have a valid reason — sending emails to opted-out contacts is against the law and can harm your sender reputation.

> **Important:** Do not delete GNA or opted-out contacts from your database to work around these restrictions. Leave them in UbiQuity and allow UbiQuity to manage exclusions for you. Deleting and re-importing contacts to bypass suppression can seriously damage your deliverability.

Note that GNA and opted-out contacts will still receive triggered emails from Forms, Surveys, and Events — these exclusions apply only to mailouts and automated mailouts.


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