In today’s world people are no longer sitting in front of a computer when they send you an email – and that can influence whether or not the email arrives successfully.

Recently we had a support query from one of our clients who discovered that an agent based overseas was sending email to head office – but it wasn’t arriving.

After a little investigation it turned out that the agent was using a BlackBerry to send emails and this was being bounced at the point of arrival, so it wasn’t even getting as far as the spam folder.

The problem is that, for most companies, their email system only deals with know IP addresses when the email has already been processed through a third party server.  Mobile phones don’t always do this – they sometimes try to send email direct – and the receiving server responds with ‘You’re not allowed to email us.  Go away!’

iPhones are not usually a problem as they’re set up to deal with this, but other mobiles can need a little reprogramming to remove this problem.  So if people complain their emails are not getting through, it may not be a problem at your end – but the method they’re using to send their emails.