AppFolio "Recipient marked as spam": how to get tenant move-out notices back in your inbox

Tenants submit their move-out notices through the tenant portal, but the emails never reach your inbox or your secondary address. When you track the emails down in AppFolio, they carry the status "Recipient marked as spam". What does that mean, and how do you get the notices back?

"Recipient marked as spam" means that your email account marked an AppFolio email as spam, so AppFolio has stopped sending to that address. The fix has three parts. Tell your email account that AppFolio mail is wanted, ask AppFolio support to remove the address from its Spam suppression list, and send yourself a test email.

What the status means

The recipient in this message is you, not the tenant. Your email account marked an AppFolio email as spam, likely "donotreply@appfolio.com". AppFolio then stopped sending to that address.

This is why the problem does not fix itself. The tenant did everything right. The email is not sitting in a spam folder waiting to be found, because AppFolio is no longer sending to the address at all.

Why a sender stops after a spam report

This is common practice for companies that send a lot of email. When a mailbox reports a message as spam, the sender is expected to stop writing to that mailbox. A sender that keeps writing to people who reported it risks having its mail treated as spam for everyone.

So the sender keeps a list of addresses that it will not write to. In AppFolio's case you ask for the address to be taken off the list, which is step 3 below. Until then, one email marked as spam is enough to stop the ones that follow.

How to fix it

1. Find the last AppFolio email in your spam folder and mark it "not spam". This tells your email account that mail from AppFolio is wanted.
2. If you cannot find it, add the AppFolio senders to your safe senders. Add donotreply@appfolio.com and mailer.appfolio.us. The name of the safe senders list differs between email providers. If your office email is managed by an IT person or an outside company, ask them to add these addresses for you.
3. Open a support request with AppFolio. Ask AppFolio to remove the address from its Spam suppression list, and include proof that you have done step 1 or step 2. Keep a record of what you did, so that you have it ready for the request.
4. Send yourself a test email. Make sure the setting "When mentioned in a note" is enabled, then tag yourself in a note anywhere in the database.

Do the steps in this order. If the address is taken off the list before your email account accepts AppFolio mail, the next email may be marked as spam again, and you are back where you started.

If your secondary address shows the same status, repeat the steps for that address. Each address has its own mailbox and its own spam folder.

While you wait

Do not rely on the inbox for move-out notices until the test email has arrived. You already know where the notices can be found in AppFolio, because that is where you saw the status. Have one person look there on a fixed schedule, daily if you can, and pass each notice on to whoever plans the move-out.

A notice that sits unseen costs you time. The sooner you know that a tenant is leaving, the sooner you can schedule the inspection, plan the turnover work and start marketing the unit.

Write down the date on which each notice was submitted, not the date on which you found it. The two can be days apart when the emails are not arriving.

Keeping it from happening again

If several people clear the same inbox, any one of them can mark a message as spam without the others knowing. Tell everyone who uses the inbox to delete or archive the AppFolio emails they do not need, and never to mark them as spam. Put that rule in writing for new staff.

Name one person who owns the inbox that receives tenant notices. Ask that person to look through the spam folder once a week and to mark anything from AppFolio as "not spam".

A change of email provider, or a new spam filter, is a good moment to repeat step 2. Safe senders lists do not always move with you.

What to check afterwards

Check twice after the fix. First, confirm that the test email arrived. Second, when the next tenant gives notice through the portal, confirm that the email reached both of your addresses.

If a notice goes missing again, look at the status of the email in AppFolio before anything else. If it reads "Recipient marked as spam" again, go through the same steps.

APM Help's AppFolio consultants can help troubleshoot issues like this in your database. Schedule a 30-minute consultation with us today to get started!