Some addresses stop accepting mail — the mailbox was closed, the address has a typo in it, or someone marked one of your emails as spam. When that happens the address is blocked, and TeachHero stops sending to it rather than sending into a void. Blocked addresses are flagged on the contact record, in the contacts list, and in the Recipients list of any email you send.
Why an address gets blocked
| What you see | What happened |
|---|---|
| Email bouncing | Mail to this address was rejected outright — the mailbox is closed, the domain is wrong, or the address has a typo. |
| Marked as spam | Someone at this address marked one of your school's emails as spam or junk. |
| Email blocked | The address was added to the block list by hand, rather than by a bounce or a spam report. |
A block isn't a one-off failure. It stays in place until the address is corrected, and while it's there nothing sends to that address.
What a block stops
All of it — email broadcasts and the automatic emails: invoices and payment reminders, receipts, application and waitlist updates, and the login codes parents use to sign in to the parent portal. If a family says they've stopped hearing from you and can't get into the portal, check for a block first.
Spot a blocked address
On the contact record. Go to Enrollment → Families and open the contact. A red Email delivery badge appears under the email address with the reason.
In the contacts list. Blocked contacts carry a red warning badge in the list. To see all of them at once, click the filter icon, set Email blocked to Blocked (bouncing or marked as spam), and apply.
In an email you've sent. Go to Communication → Emails, click Sent, and open the email. Blocked recipients show a Skipped status in the Recipients list — hover the badge for the reason — and a Skipped total appears at the top of the page next to Delivered and Failed.
The same statuses show on a contact's Emails tab, so you can see at a glance which of your recent emails reached them.
Get the family back in touch
The block belongs to the address, not to the person, so putting a working address on the contact clears it.
- Ask the family for a current email address.
- Go to Enrollment → Families and open the contact.
- Click Edit contact, and on the Contact tab replace the address in Primary email.
- Click Save changes.
The badge disappears as soon as you save, and the next email goes out normally.
To send them the message they missed:
- Open the email under Communication → Emails → Sent.
- Find the person in the Recipients list and click Send again.
- Check the Email address in the box, correct it if it's still wrong, and click Send again to confirm.
If the address is correct
Sometimes the address is right and a parent marked an email as spam by accident. Ask them to find the email in their spam or junk folder, mark it as not spam, and add your school's reply-to address to their contacts. That stops it happening again, but it doesn't lift the block that's already in place — a contact has one email address, and while it's blocked nothing sends to it. Ask for a different address you can put on the contact instead: a personal address alongside a work one, or a co-parent's, added on that parent's own contact record so the family still gets invoices and portal access.
Note: A skipped email is still saved to the family's parent portal under Emails, so a parent who can sign in can read it there.
Keep blocks from piling up
- Check the Email blocked filter in Enrollment → Families at the start of each enrollment season and clear out what you find.
- Confirm email addresses with families at enrollment rather than carrying last year's over untouched.
- Ask families to add your school's reply-to address to their contacts, so your email lands in the inbox and doesn't get reported as junk. See Editing a Draft Email for where the reply-to address is set.