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Corrina_Q
Level 2
October 15, 2026
Question

Emails showing as delivered, but clients aren’t receiving them. How can I investigate further?

Hi everyone,

I’ve recently set up Marketo Engage for our email communications and started sending campaigns to clients. 

I’m finding it frustrating that clients are reporting they haven’t received emails, but when I check their activity records in Marketo, the emails show as delivered. I’m having to investigate individual recipients across multiple sends, without being able to establish where the emails have ended up.

I’ve checked with our own IT team. I’ve also asked whether affected clients can have their IT teams check for filtering or quarantine, but the feedback is that clients are too busy to investigate. That means we aren’t getting any information from the receiving side, and the responsibility for finding a solution is sitting with me.

I understand that “delivered” doesn’t necessarily mean the email reached the inbox, but I’m struggling to see how to move the investigation forward with the information available.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation, particularly where getting the recipient’s IT team involved isn’t a practical option?

Any guidance would be appreciated. I want to address the underlying issue and have more confidence that our communications are reaching clients.

    7 replies

    BlaneMcMichen-1
    Adobe Employee
    BlaneMcMichen-1Adobe Employee
    Adobe Employee
    October 15, 2026

    Did you setup for Email Deliverability?

    • SPF
    • DKIM
    • DMARC (this is newer and required for Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)

    https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/email-marketing/deliverability/set-up-spf-and-dkim-for-your-email-deliverability

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    Corrina_QAuthor
    Level 2
    October 15, 2026

    Thanks, Blane. Yes, we worked through the email authentication setup with our IT team before starting our campaigns. SPF and DKIM are configured and showing as verified in Marketo.

    I’ve also checked with IT about the current issue. The affected recipients show as delivered in Marketo, but report that they haven’t received the emails.

    What would you recommend investigating next from our side? Can Adobe Support review the sending logs and IP reputation to help identify the cause? Getting the recipients’ IT teams involved is proving difficult, so I’m trying to establish what we can investigate without their input.

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    sandy_logitech
    User Group Leader
    sandy_logitechUser Group Leader
    User Group Leader
    October 16, 2026

    SPF for your From: domain never makes a difference btw. It’ll never be checked by recipients. Only SPF for your branded envelope sender domain, if you have that add-on, ever matters.

     

    DKIM may look verified, but are you triple-sure you’re using the exact domain for which you set up DKIM? We’ve seen clients set up DKIM for example.com and at some point start using mktg.example.com without realizing that means emails are no longer signed. Of course, merely being unsigned doesn’t make a diff on its own. Really only if you also have DMARC enforcing DKIM that recipients start to care.

     

    But in any case, something tells me this isn’t related to any of these kinds of authentication but with domain or IP reputation.

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    BlaneMcMichen-1
    Adobe Employee
    BlaneMcMichen-1Adobe Employee
    Adobe Employee
    October 15, 2026
    • I would confirm that the DMARC is set for your root domain, too.  
    • You can open a support ticket to check to see that the configurations are good.
    • If you on a shared IP then you don’t need to warm-up, but if you are on a dedicated IP then you need to go through an IP warming process to build your sending reputation.
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    Corrina_QAuthor
    Level 2
    October 16, 2026

    Thanks both, that’s helpful. We’re sending from communications@email.storedvalue.com, and SPF and DKIM were configured and verified for email.storedvalue.com during setup.

    I’ll open a support ticket to have Adobe check the authentication on an actual sent message, confirm our shared/dedicated IP setup, and investigate the sending IP and domain reputation.

    Our average reported delivery rate is 98.4%, with a 27.5% open rate, but we have specific recipients reporting missing emails despite a delivered activity. I’ll include those examples in the ticket.

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    BlaneMcMichen-1
    Adobe Employee
    BlaneMcMichen-1Adobe Employee
    Adobe Employee
    October 16, 2026

    Also, FYI…

    In the Email Performance report you can add a column called “Pending” that will show emails that have been “delivered” to the mail system, but have not been released to the recipient mailboxes.

    It is not widely known, but some email services will hold emails from new addresses that are not on their blocklist but are not recognized as a trusted sender. (This is related to warm-up.) The mail service will release a few to some inboxes and monitor if the email is engaged, by the recipient.  As things look good, they release more to additional recipients.  You can see this behavior as you look at the pending deliveries counts slowly drop to zero in the hours/days after sending. Eventually they should all drop to zero.
     

     

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