Why are employees not receiving emails sent to customers and employees when no bounces are reported?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Sender explains that the employee email could of been provided to the client wrong and emails have been sent to an incorrect email address that looks very similar to the users.
Email marketer from Gmass shares that a strict DMARC policy could be causing the issue if the email is sent 'on behalf of' the company domain but not through authorized servers. These emails might be rejected or silently dropped.
Email marketer from Superuser suggests that the internal email routing is configured to have emails from an external domain be delivered to customer inboxes and any local users on the companies domain be blocked.
Email marketer from Email on Acid explains incorrect internal server configurations can prevent some emails from reaching employees. Specifically, internal mail routing may not be properly set up to handle certain types of messages.
Email marketer from Stackoverflow shares that Greylisting could be causing the emails to be heavily delayed to internal addresses as the email is coming from an external source.
Email marketer from Mailjet responds that emails can be marked as spam internally. Employees should check their spam folders, and internal IT should whitelist the sending domain/IP.
Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog shares that internal firewalls or spam filters might be blocking emails sent to employees, even if external customers receive them. IT departments often have strict rules.
Email marketer from Reddit shares that some companies have overly aggressive internal filters that block legitimate emails. Recommends contacting internal IT to investigate.
Email marketer from Litmus answers that some email clients have unique filtering rules. Certain content or formatting may trigger these filters for internal recipients, even if external recipients receive the email fine.
What the experts say6Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that some companies use aggressive list-unsubscribe headers that can inadvertently block internal employees from receiving emails, especially if they've ever unsubscribed from anything related to the company. The header is blocking any emails sent to users of that email address so it is important to ensure that unsubscribes are limited to just the specific marketing list.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that if the company uses spam filters like O365, the domain admin can instruct the filter to discard mail that triggers certain rules. Once the message is accepted, it is the accepting server’s responsibility, and internal IT should be contacted.
Expert from Email Geeks shares “Your system accepted the message and took responsibility for it. Once it’s been accepted, I can’t tell you what happened to it.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests a possible reason: “someone checkmarked the ‘throw away mail using our domain without coming from our servers’ box.” This setting will discard messages like the one described.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that quarantine won’t return a bounce because the mail is accepted by the receiving MX. Bounces only happen when the message is not accepted by the MX.
Expert from Spam Resource answers that employee filters may be misconfigured or too aggressive, resulting in legitimate emails being flagged as spam or blocked. Admins should audit internal filtering rules.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help responds that the domain could be on a blocklist. Admins need to check if their domain or IP is listed on any public blocklists, which would prevent delivery. Also, check the email logs to see if the messages are being blocked or delayed.
Email marketer from Cisco Talos shares that If the sending server's IP or domain has a poor reputation, internal security systems are more likely to block or filter those emails.
Documentation from Microsoft Docs explains that Exchange Online Protection (EOP) might filter messages based on anti-spam policies. Admins can review quarantined messages and adjust policies.
Documentation from RFC details that an improperly configured SPF record can cause receiving mail servers to reject emails. Ensure the SPF record includes all authorized sending sources.