Deliverability & Messaging

Email deliverability

AwareCX sends survey emails from a dedicated subdomain, feedback.awarecx.com. The sending domain is shared across all customers and is not configurable per organization, but every message uses your organization name and branding.

Domain authentication

SPF and DKIM records are configured on the sending domain to verify that emails originate from an authorized source.

A DMARC policy of p=quarantine is also enforced. This instructs receiving mail servers to quarantine messages that fail authentication checks.

Sending practices that protect your reputation

Throttled dispatch

Emails are dispatched in small parallel batches (typically five at a time) with automatic back-off when the upstream provider returns a rate-limit response. This smooths traffic to mailbox providers like Gmail and Outlook without burst-related rejections. There is no fixed per-message delay; throttling is adaptive.

No open or click tracking

Open-pixel and click-redirect tracking are intentionally disabled. These tracking mechanisms are a common trigger for spam filters and can reduce inbox placement rates.

Email verification

Before dispatch, each recipient address is verified through an email-validation service. Addresses flagged as undeliverable are automatically skipped and marked as failed (with the verification reason). This helps protect your sender reputation from hard bounces.

If the verification service is unavailable, the sender falls back to dispatching without verification rather than blocking your campaign.

One-click unsubscribe (RFC 8058)

Every survey email includes List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click headers. Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail render a native one-click unsubscribe button at the top of the message, in addition to the unsubscribe link in the footer. Unsubscribes are recorded in your organization's suppression list and honored automatically on future sends.

Delivery event tracking

AwareCX automatically captures three delivery events from the email provider:

• Delivered. The message was accepted by the recipient's mail server.
• Bounced. The message could not be delivered. This may happen because of an invalid address, full inbox, or similar issue.
• Complained. The recipient marked the email as spam.

These events update the recipient record in real time, so you always know the delivery status of every send.

Tips for maximizing deliverability

• Keep your contact lists clean. Remove invalid addresses regularly or rely on automatic verification.
• Avoid sending to purchased or scraped lists.
• Use the Send Test Email feature on any survey to verify inbox placement before a full send.
• Monitor bounce and complaint rates in your send results. A complaint rate above 0.1% signals a list quality issue.

SMS sending best practices

SMS surveys are available on Growth, Professional, and Enterprise plans. Messages use a reply-based model: the recipient replies directly to the message with their score, and a follow-up message invites optional written feedback.

Quiet hours enforcement

AwareCX enforces quiet hours automatically. SMS messages are not sent before 8:00 AM or after 8:00 PM in the recipient's local time zone.

Time zones are determined from the phone number's area code for the United States and Canada. If the area code cannot be mapped, Central Time is used as the default.

Phone number format

All phone numbers are normalized to E.164 format (for example, +15551234567). Contacts imported in other formats, including parentheses, dashes, or spaces, are automatically converted.

Reply flow

• The recipient receives an SMS containing the survey question and score scale (0–10 for NPS, 1–5 for CSAT, 1–7 for CES).
• The recipient replies with their score.
• A follow-up message invites them to share additional feedback, either by replying directly or by clicking a link to the web form.
• Every outbound message ends with "Reply STOP to opt out."

Custom question text

If you have configured custom question text on a survey, that text is used in the SMS body instead of the default wording. Messages are capped at 306 characters total (two SMS segments). Long custom questions are truncated automatically so the score prompt and opt-out line always fit.

Opt-in & compliance

Email

AwareCX is designed for relationship-based feedback. You should only survey contacts with whom your organization has an existing business relationship.

The cooldown system, with a default setting of 30 days, helps prevent over-surveying. A contact who was recently surveyed is automatically suppressed from the next send unless you explicitly override that suppression.

Every survey email includes a Powered by AwareCX footer, an unsubscribe link, and RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe headers. You do not need to add unsubscribe language yourself; it is included automatically.

SMS

AwareCX maintains an SMS opt-out list. When a recipient replies with a standard opt-out keyword (STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT), they are added to the opt-out table and will not receive future SMS surveys from your organization. Replying START or UNSTOPremoves them from the opt-out list.

Delivery events, including sent, delivered, and failed, are tracked for every SMS just as they are for email.

Sender identity

All survey emails are sent from:

{Your Organization Name} Feedback <feedback@feedback.awarecx.com>

The From name matches your organization name as configured in Settings, so recipients see a familiar sender in their inbox. Your logo and brand colors are automatically embedded in the email template.

Reminders

AwareCX supports reminder emails for recipients who have not yet responded. Reminders are manually triggered per send — there is no scheduled cadence — so you decide when to follow up based on response rates.

How reminders work

• Open a send and click Send Reminder. AwareCX sends to recipients with status sent who have not responded, bounced, complained, or unsubscribed.
• Reminder emails use a friendly subject line (e.g. "Just a friendly reminder") rather than prefixing your original subject.
• A reminder count is tracked per recipient so you can see who has already received one.
• The same verification, suppression, and deliverability protections that apply to original survey emails also apply to reminders.

Key takeaways

• Your sender reputation is protected by default through throttling, DMARC, and disabled tracking.
• Email addresses are verified before every send to reduce bounces.
• SMS respects quiet hours and opt-out preferences automatically.
• Use the Send Test Email feature to confirm inbox placement before launching a campaign.
• Keep contact lists based on real business relationships for the best results.

SMS survey FAQ

For a deeper read on why SMS works so well for service businesses and how to evaluate SMS-capable platforms, see SMS survey software for service businesses.

Want to lift response rates across both channels? How to increase survey response rates covers the seven levers that actually move the number.