If your workspace sends email to spam trap addresses or breaches other thresholds of good sending performance, Intercom may restrict your email sending to protect both Intercom's and your sending reputation.
If your email sending has been restricted, full-permission admins on your workspace who have at some point used the Messages product will be notified by email.
You'll also see a banner in your workspace with this warning:
"Email sending for [Your Workspace] is currently restricted to active users only."
What does the restriction mean?
A limited workspace can send email to users and leads who have:
Been active within the last 180 days ("Last Seen")
Messaged you within the last 180 days ("Last Heard From")
Opened/clicked an email from your workspace in the last 180 days ("Last Opened Email", "Last Clicked Email")
Users and leads who satisfy one of these criteria will receive email. Those who show no activity at all will not receive emails.
Why is this happening?
This restriction exists to protect both your and Intercom's sending reputation.
We restrict sending when spam trap hit rate has exceeded our thresholds or when open rates are sufficiently low to raise concern.
Spam traps are addresses that aren't real and don't belong to real humans, however unlike a bounce, they are administered by organisations and email service providers to identify spammers. Sending to these addresses damages both your and Intercom's sending reputation.
Equally low open rates over an extended period might indicate sending reputation issues and your messages may be going to spam folders.
Which of my users are spam traps?
Spam traps are secret addresses which exist to catch spammers and cause blocklisting events. These addresses are by their very nature secret and administrated by organisations and email service providers. This means we can't tell you which of the users in your workspace have caused this issue.
How do I fix it?
We have written up the steps you can take to prevent spam trap hits in your workspace in our article: How do I avoid spam traps?
We have also written up the steps you can take to improve your open rate in our article: Improve your open rate and email deliverability
I've fixed it, how do I get restrictions removed?
Once you believe you have made sufficient changes to prevent spam trap hits and/or improve your open rate in your workspace, please respond to the email message we sent your admins about this issue or talk to us in our Messenger. Detail the actions you have taken and our deliverability team will review and assess whether we can remove the sending restrictions from your workspace.
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