What each status means

Every status Issue Mint shows belongs to one of nine things: an issue, a subscriber, an import, a recipient of a particular issue, a domain, one DNS record, your sending, a sponsorship slot or a sponsorship enquiry. This page gives one line to each. Where a word also has a wider meaning in email, the glossary has that, and this page stays with what the screen is telling you.

Issue statuses

An issue holds one of six statuses, and only two of them can still be edited.

• Draft. Being written. Editable, invisible to readers, and not counted anywhere.
• Scheduled. Waiting for a date and time you set. Still editable right up to the minute it sends.
• Waiting for review. You pressed send on a first send large enough to be checked. Frozen while it waits, because whoever releases it is approving the issue in front of them.
• Sending. Going out in batches. The content is fixed at this point, including the version published on your website.
• Sent. Finished. This is the only status that appears on your public archive and in your feed, and the only one with a report.
• Failed. Sending stopped part way through, which in practice means sending was paused while the issue was going out. The issue carries the reason, and anybody who already had it keeps it.

Subscriber statuses

A subscriber holds one of six statuses, and only one of them can be sent an issue.

• Active. Confirmed and receiving issues. The only mailable status, and the only one that counts towards a plan limit or the hosted subscriber cap.
• Pending. Signed up and not yet confirmed, on a newsletter using double opt-in. Nothing is sent to a pending subscriber except the confirmation itself.
• Waiting for review. Arrived in an import that is held for a check. The address holds its place on your list without being mailable.
• Unsubscribed. Left, either by their own choice or because you removed them.
• Bounced. Mail to the address failed permanently.
• Complained. Reported an issue as spam. Suppressed for good, and never revived by a later signup or import.

Import statuses

An import moves through up to six statuses, and two of them mean a person is involved rather than the software.

• Awaiting mapping. The file is uploaded and Issue Mint is waiting for you to say which column is the address.
• Queued. Mapped and waiting for a worker.
• Importing. Rows are landing. An import destined for review says the same thing while it reads, because that is what is happening.
• Waiting for review. Every row is in, all of them unmailable, and somebody here has to release them.
• Complete. Finished, with counts of what was added, skipped and refused.
• Failed. The file could not be read to the end. What had already been added stays.

Recipient statuses on an issue report

Each recipient of a sent issue holds one of seven statuses, which is where the figures on a report come from.

• Queued. Recorded when the issue was published, not yet handed to the sending provider.
• Sent. Accepted by the provider. This is the marker that stops anybody being mailed twice.
• Delivered. The receiving mailbox accepted it.
• Bounced. Came back afterwards as undeliverable.
• Complained. The reader marked it as spam.
• Failed. The provider refused that one message. The rest of the send carried on.
• Skipped. The address was on the suppression list by the time the send reached it, so Issue Mint declined to mail it. A skipped address is not counted as a recipient, is not billed and does not count against a sending allowance.

Domain and DNS record statuses

A custom domain holds one status of its own, and every record in its table holds another, checked independently.

The domain

A domain holds one of four statuses, and only one of them means your website and sending are on it.

• Not checked yet. Added moments ago. The records are generated and the first check has not run.
• Partly verified. Some records are in place and others are outstanding, which is the normal state for a few minutes or a few hours.
• Verified. Everything Issue Mint relies on resolves correctly.
• Not working. Either it never came good, or it was working and has since broken. A domain that breaks after being verified is emailed about straight away, because that is nearly always an accident at the DNS provider.

Each record

Each record in the table on your domain tab holds one of three statuses.

• Not found yet. Our resolvers cannot see it. Either it has not been added, or the change has not spread yet.
• Verified. Found, with the value Issue Mint expects.
• Wrong value. Found, with something else. The table shows what it found underneath what it wanted, which is the fastest diagnosis available.

Sending statuses

Sending carries two separate statuses: one for the setup on a newsletter, and one for where your account stands on hosted sending.

Your sending setup

• Not set up. No credentials on this newsletter. Only ever seen while somebody is part way through connecting their own provider, because hosted sending needs no setup.
• Finishing setup. Credentials accepted, and a test send has not yet proved they work.
• Verified. A real message got through. Publishing an issue requires this.
• Not working. Credentials that worked have stopped, or the weekly health check failed. Scheduled issues will not go out until it is fixed.

Your account’s sending standing

• Sending normally. Nothing to report, and nothing shown to you.
• Under watch. Bounces or complaints crossed a warning threshold. Sending continues at half the usual rate, the issue in flight finishes, and you get an email saying what was seen.
• Sending paused. A threshold was crossed that stops sending between batches. A banner you cannot dismiss appears across the dashboard, your website, archive, list and subscribers are untouched, and a person here has to lift it.
• Suspended. Amazon stopped this account’s sending at their end rather than us. Rare, and already in front of somebody here when it happens, because it raises an alarm immediately.

Sponsorship slot statuses

A slot on your sponsorship calendar holds one of three statuses, and a sponsor sees a different word from the one you see.

• Available. On sale. A sponsor sees “Available”.
• Reserved. An enquiry has claimed it and you have not decided yet. A sponsor sees “On hold” rather than “Sold”, because a lapsed reservation puts it back on sale and the wrong word there costs you a booking.
• Booked. Confirmed. A sponsor sees “Sold”.

Sponsorship enquiry statuses

An enquiry holds one of four statuses, and two of them mean it is still on your desk.

• New. Arrived and unread. Counted in the unread number on your enquiry inbox.
• Replied. You have written back and the enquiry is still open.
• Confirmed. You took the booking. The dates it asked for become booked, and the enquiry cannot be confirmed twice.
• Declined. You turned it down. Any dates it was holding go back on sale.