This document covers troubleshooting for when you fail to receive emails from your own domain through the OrderPort Marketing module. This issue happens when your domain has callback verification enabled. This will be explained in further detail below.
For the purposes of this document, mail@yourdomain.com is the FROM email, while receive@yourdomain.com is the TO email.
Table of Contents
Diagnosing the Issue
Before attempting one of the solutions, please verify the following:
Notification BCCs are being rejected with a status message containing, "Sender verify failed".
If you don't see this error message, you are experiencing a different issue.
If you need to test this, you can add receive@yourdomain.com to the NewCustomerAccount notification. After doing this, create a new customer account. View the report for the notification and check to see if there is a failed attempt where the message includes "Sender verify failed".
Note: The email for the failed entry will show main recipient's address, not your BCC email. The failed delivery still refers to the BCC if it says, "Sender verify failed".
The Cause of the Issue
You do not need to understand the cause of the failed deliveries to implement a solution, but it may add helpful context if you are interested.
Callback verification is an outdated anti-spam measure which checks to see if the sender is a valid email address. A sender is considered valid when it can receive emails. It is disabled by default on most email providers, including Gmail and Outlook, because it is ineffective and can cause issues when receiving emails (like in this case).
Callback Verification may be enabled by default on some email providers, most notably, older versions of WHM.
Notifications and campaigns in OrderPort are sent via MailGun. The TXT records you added to your domain when you first set up the Marketing module gives MailGun permission to send emails on behalf of your domain. When MailGun sends an email from your domain, it automatically generates a temporary address to send from (this is on the backend and not apparent to the recipient). MailGun automatically converts the example@yourdomain.com into an email which looks like this:
bounce+trackinginfo-example=yourdomain.com@yourdomain.com
Your recipient address, receive@yourdomain.com, checks yourdomain.com to see if the automatically generated address exists in your receiving records or not. Since MailGun generated it, it won't be found, and the email is rejected.
Resolving the Issue
There are two options to fix this issue. The first method is recommended over the second.
Method 1: Turn off callback verification in your email service provider
If you are encountering this error, it is likely that your technology department utilizes WHM to manage your email. Please refer to this documentation: https://docs.cpanel.net/whm/service-configuration/exim-configuration-manager-basic-editor/#_sender-verification-callouts_. You will need to turn off Sender Verification Callouts.
If you are not using WHM, you may need to search online for how to resolve this issue.
Method 2: Using a subdomain for sending marketing emails
You can set up a new subdomain, specifically for the OrderPort Marketing module. The subdomain must utilize MailGun's SPF and DKIM records, but also the MX records. Since MailGun is the one automatically generating the email addresses, MailGun's MX records will be able to identify the temporary addresses as real, thus passing the sender verification check.
This would entail you sending from mail@mg.yourdomain.com, instead of mail@yourdomain.com (mg standing for MailGun).
1. Create a new subdomain in your domain manager. This can be named however you like. Here are some ideas: mail.yourdomain.com, mg.yourdomain.com, op.yourdomain.com.
2. You must reach out to OrderPort support to change your marketing domain to the new subdomain.
3. After the marketing module is updated, add all the txt records and MX records into this new subdomain. The MX records are required this time.
Important Note: Do not add the MailGun MX records to your root domain if you already have MX records pointing to a seperate email service provider. This will cause a conflict and may result in you not receiving any emails.