Recommended Email Settings¶

Many email systems and networks are setup to use email filtering systems to reduce the amount of unwanted email (SPAM) they receive. In some cases, these email filtering tools also prevent legitimate mail from reaching the recipient. There are three areas that impact delivering email messages:

1. The volunteer or Coordinator's own settings in their email account
2. The settings inside of your Volgistics account, and
3. The settings on your network that are put in place by your service provider or IT department.

This help topic explains some of the strategies that can be used in each of these areas to help ensure that your messages are received.

Volunteers and Coordinators¶

Volunteers and Coordinators may need to make changes inside of their email accounts in order to receive email messages sent by you. Primarily this is making sure Volgistics, and the email addresses you use as reply-to addresses, are on their safe-sender or white list.

Encourage White-Listing¶

When you send email through Volgistics, volunteers and Coordinators may see your messages as coming from you, with your own email address as the reply-to address. Or, depending on your account settings, they may see the messages as coming from volgistics.com with your own email address as the reply-to address. Volunteers and Coordinators can be sure their SPAM filters will not block the messages you send them through Volgistics by adding volgistics.com to their safe sender or white-list. The steps for doing this vary from one email system to another, and must be performed by the volunteer or Coordinator because it will involve accessing the settings in their email account.

If you'd like, you can provide your volunteers or Coordinators with instructions on how to do this. The following sample text can serve as the basis for your instructions. If you email often, consider adding these instructions - or something similar - to a web page volunteers and Coordinators see (such as the VicNet Home page). Other strategies to get the information to the recipients is to put it in a volunteer newsletter, or you could add it to a welcome message you send to new volunteers.

Volgistics Account Settings¶

There are two easy changes you can make to the settings in your Volgistics account that will often dramatically improve email delivery. These settings are on the Messages Ground Rules page which can be accessed with these steps:

1. Select Setup from the menu.
2. Expand Messages.
3. Click Ground Rules.

Use Sender ID¶

Sender ID is a method of sending email so that receiving email systems can verify that the sender of a message is who they say they are. With Sender ID, the mail you send to volunteers and Coordinators through Volgistics can be verified more accurately by receiving mail systems, often bypassing spam filters and giving your email a better chance of arriving in each recipient's inbox. In addition, many email providers like Hotmail will flag your email as authenticated when you use Sender ID, which improves the probability of your emails being opened by volunteers and Coordinators. To check your Sender ID setting, locate the Email authentication section on the Messages Ground Rules page.

In the majority of cases, you should use the Let Volgistics handle Sender ID (recommended) setting. The Volgistics team has already made sure that the necessary records are in place so email providers can verify your messages were sent by Volgistics on your behalf so nothing further needs to be done.

Some organizations may want to handle Sender ID on their own. Typically, these are larger organizations that have an IT department, but it can be any organization whose team has the expertise to make changes to the domain name system (DNS) record for their domain. In this case, select the Use each message's reply-to address as the from address setting. Please remember: Simply selecting this setting will not create a Sender ID policy for your organization. There will also need to be a sender policy framework (SPF) entry on the DNS record for your organization's domain. You can find more information on this in Add Sender ID Policy.

Change From Address¶

When an email message is received by an email provider, they check to see if the message originated from the same domain as the message claims to be sent from. If the message appears to be sent by servers at a different domain than the message is from, quite often the email provider will reject or block the message from being delivered to the recipient. With Volgistics, the email messages you send to your volunteers and Coordinators always originate from the servers at Volgistics so another easy change you can make is to change the from email address used for the messages you send. To check this setting, locate the From address section on the Messages Ground Rules page.

We strongly suggest using the Use VolunteerMail as the from address (recommended) setting so email providers are less likely to reject or block your messages. This is because the provider will view the message as being sent from the servers at Volgistics, and being from the same domain (@volgistics.com). This setting will not impact the reply-to address for your email messages. As long as recipients click the reply option on the message you send, your email address will be used as the reply-to address.

As with Sender ID, some organizations may wish to have email addresses from their organization's domain used as the from address. In this case, the Use each message's reply-to address as the from address setting should be selected. Again, please remember when this setting is selected the SPF record for the organization's domain must show that Volgistics is permitted to send email messages on your organization's behalf to assure message delivery. You can find more informaiton on this in Add Sender ID Policy.

Network or Provider Settings¶

In many cases, the changes outlined in the sections above will be adequate to make sure your email messages get delivered. If you are still experiencing problems with email message delivery after implementing the changes, you may need to have your internet provider, or the IT team that oversees your organization's network, make changes. The following sections have more information on this.

Email Addresses with Your Organization's Domain¶

Depending on your organization's network setup, volunteers and Coordinator records that have the same domain as your organization may have trouble receiving email messages. For example, if your organization's domain is @volunteer.org and a Coordinator has an email address that is JBrown@volunteer.org, email sent through Volgistics may be blocked or sent to a spam or junk mail folder. In these cases, you (or your IT or IS department) may need to whitelist Volgistics as described above.

Adding IP Addresses for Volgistics' Email Servers¶

There may also be cases where the IP addresses of the Volgistics email servers need to be listed in the security software for your organization's email service. This may be necessary so that email messages sent by you through Volgistics are allowed to pass through to the recipient. These IP addresses are:

• 69.87.157.214
• 69.87.157.215
• 69.87.157.216
• 69.87.157.217

Related Help¶

• Email Delivery Speed
• Update Sender ID Settings
• Track Message History
• Find Volunteers With an Invalid Email Address
• Update Email Reply-To Fields