diff --git a/lib/email/receiver.rb b/lib/email/receiver.rb
index 5c184cecf68..3f33e3a38c6 100644
--- a/lib/email/receiver.rb
+++ b/lib/email/receiver.rb
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ module Email
     def initialize(mail_string)
       raise EmptyEmailError if mail_string.blank?
       @staged_users_created = 0
-      @raw_email = mail_string
+      @raw_email = try_to_encode(mail_string, "UTF-8") || try_to_encode(mail_string, "ISO-8859-1") || mail_string
       @mail = Mail.new(@raw_email)
       @message_id = @mail.message_id.presence || Digest::MD5.hexdigest(mail_string)
     end
@@ -236,14 +236,16 @@ module Email
 
       return nil if string.blank?
 
-      # 1) use the charset provided
-      if mail_part.charset.present?
-        fixed = try_to_encode(string, mail_part.charset)
+      # common encodings
+      encodings = ["UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1"]
+      encodings.unshift(mail_part.charset) if mail_part.charset.present?
+
+      encodings.uniq.each do |encoding|
+        fixed = try_to_encode(string, encoding)
         return fixed if fixed.present?
       end
 
-      # 2) try most used encodings
-      try_to_encode(string, "UTF-8") || try_to_encode(string, "ISO-8859-1")
+      nil
     end
 
     def try_to_encode(string, encoding)