Overview
Configuring "Settings > Mail Settings" within a SendGrid account allows for various and specific configuration differences for how your account generally behaves, often in relationship to sending mail using Web API or SMTP Relay.
What You Need To Know
Webhook Settings
The Event Webhook Setting allows for an enabled option in which a connection from your SendGrid account to a third party URL endpoint may be established, collecting various email event data (e.g. delivered events, click events, unsubscribe events). After configuring a webhook URL in this way (see help documentation here), event data is collected automatically based on the mail routed through the same account, provided the URL is correctly configured to handle incoming POST data.
While requiring some developmental work to configure initially, this ultimately may allow for a longer-term strategy and way to manage event data generated from mail and retention of the same data in a way that benefits your email usage and business. The collection of email event data may be limited to how much and how long your selected third party can store posted information to your endpoint.
Included within this setting are:
- Options for enabling security on the third party URL (see here)
- Abilities to enable multiple webhook URLs on a single account for data collection (different plan types have different maximum allowed webhook limits)
- Customization of which events to collect (i.e. collect clicks, but not opens)
Event Settings
Forward Bounce Messages
Under Event Settings, it is possible to enable a setting to Forward Bounce Messages. As the name suggests, this allows designation of an email address to receive bounces that result from mail send on the account. Insert the email address to which you would like to receive these bounce reports.
You will not be charged an email when these reports are forwarded to you.
Forward Bounce Messages will only forward "Bounce" events (permanent failures), while "Block" events (temporary failures) will not be included in the forwarding for this setting. These kinds of mail failures (Blocks and Bounces) are types of suppressions that also appear after occurring under "suppressions" in your SendGrid account. To learn more about the differences between "Bounce" and "Block" events, please see this documentation.
Forward Spam Reports
Activating Forward Spam Reports allows you to specify an email address to which spam reports are forwarded. Insert the email address to which you would like to receive spam reports. You will not be charged an email when these reports are forwarded to you.
Important note: Not all Mailbox Service Providers (e.g. Gmail, YahooMail) provide spam report data, so these forwarded messages may not include for all spam reports against your emails. This is based on how individual Mailbox Service Providers handle their privacy policies with their inbox users and share spam report data to Email Providers such as (but not limited to) SendGrid. Practically speaking, this means that spam reports may still impact sending and should be avoided, but the data is not shared by the Mailbox Provider to us.
Forwarding abuse is possible using this setting. The email address specified in the Forward Spam mail setting may also be used to receive emails sent to abuse@ and postmaster@ role addresses if you have authenticated your domain.
For example, if you create a valid authenticated domain with a custom return path of sub and a root domain example and have turned on Forward Spam, any emails sent to abuse@sub.example.com or postmaster@sub.example.com will be forwarded to the email address you entered in the Forward Spam mail setting.
Suppression Settings
Purge Bounces & Blocks
Allows you to set a schedule for your SendGrid account to automatically purge bounced and blocked email addresses from "suppressions > blocks" and "suppressions > bounces" lists.
Important note: this does not delete or change any contacts stored for Marketing Campaigns if this product is used. Enabling this setting effectively only purges the suppression list and should not be used unless there is a business use-case for attempting delivery to previously bounced email addresses. This setting should not be used as a means to force delivery attempts to a recipient or clean mail sending lists.
Here is further detail on these settings:
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Soft Bounces - The number of days soft bounces will be kept in your soft bounces suppression list. Any soft bounces older than this value will be purged (Min: 1, Max: 3650).
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Hard Bounces - The number of days hard bounces will be kept in your hard bounces suppression list. Any hard bounces older than this value will be purged (Min: 1, Max: 3650).
- Enabling this setting without specifying a numeric value will have the enabled setting be ignored.
Address Allow List
Normally sending to an email address that was permanently failed as a "bounce" or "unsubscribe" event results in a "dropped" message attempt. These email addresses (after a bounce or unsubscribe, for instance) get logged under "suppressions" in a SendGrid account. To learn more about suppressions (i.e. what they are and how they work), please see here.
The Address Allow List setting can enable a specified email address or domain to be designated, which then bypasses any suppressions for that same email address or domain entirely.
For example, you own the domain “example.com” and one or more of your recipients use email@example.com addresses. By placing example.com in the Address Allow List setting, all bounces and unsubscribes (for example) logged under "suppressions" in your SendGrid account will be bypassed and sent as if under normal sending conditions.
This setting should be used with extreme caution as to not violate sending to those that marked messages as spam reports or flagging an entire domain you do not control as a bypass (e.g. "gmail.com").
Legacy Template Settings
Email Template
The Email Template setting will allow for usage of a template when sending messages via the API. Use the embedded HTML editor and plain text entry fields to create the content of the templates to be inserted into your emails. This feature is not affect any messages sent using the Marketing Campaigns product and it is generally advisable to use our Dynamic Templates instead of this feature. You can read more about Dynamic Templates here.
Email Footer
The Email Footer setting will insert a custom footer at the bottom of the text and HTML bodies. Use the embedded HTML editor and plain text entry fields to create the content of the footers to be inserted into your emails. This feature is not affect any messages sent using the Marketing Campaigns product.