When an enrolment email doesn't arrive, arrives with blank gaps where a name should be, or comes back as a bounce, the cause is almost always one of four things: the message was never switched on, the sender details aren't set, the merge fields don't match the audience, or the recipient's mail server rejected it. This article shows you where to check each one.
Start in "Communications" and open the "Automated Messages" tab, then select the "Enrolment" folder in the left-hand list. Every message that can send itself during enrolment is listed here. The "Send from" column tells you which address each one goes out as, and "Triggered by" tells you whether a staff action or the applicant sets it off.
Scroll the table across to see "Triggered when" and the "Enable" column. A grey "OFF" toggle means that message will never send, no matter how many students reach the trigger - switch it on for each enrolment message you want sent, and use the eye icon in "Actions" to preview the content first.
If the message sends but comes from the wrong address, open the template with the pencil icon and check the "Set Up" step. "Sender Email" only offers addresses that already belong to an active staff user or to a connected inbox on your system. "Reply-To Email" is required, so the template won't save from this step while it is empty, and the "Target Audience" you set here decides which merge fields you can use later.
For blank gaps in the email, go to the "Email Template" step and check the merge fields. Pick a field from the "Mail Merge Field" list and click "Insert Field" rather than typing a token by hand, so you only ever insert fields that your target audience actually provides - then "Save".
To see what actually happened to a send, open the "Messages Summary" tab and look at "All Activity". The "Status" column shows the last event received, and the "Dropped", "Delivered", "Bounce" and "Open" columns show the counts behind it.
- A merge field that your chosen target audience doesn't provide is stripped out of the email before it sends, leaving an empty space rather than an error - this is the usual cause of "the email arrived blank".
- A recipient with no email address on record is skipped silently, so no row appears for them in the activity list.
- Recipients who have unsubscribed, or who never gave consent to be contacted, are removed from the send and logged as skipped.
- Emails to Hotmail, Outlook and Live addresses are always sent from the Applicaa address rather than your school address, because those providers reject mail sent on another domain's behalf.
- To send from your own school address at all, your DNS records need to be set up first. Ask Applicaa Support for the DNS request form, and your IT manager will be sent the instructions to apply.
- A send counts as failed when nothing was delivered and the log shows a bounce, a drop or a block. A bounce means the recipient's mail server refused it - check the address for typos before resending.
If a message is switched on, the sender details are complete, and the activity list still shows no attempt at all, contact Applicaa Support with the template name and the recipient's email address so the send can be traced.