Troubleshooting Campaigns

Creating and launching your email campaign should be a smooth process, however sometimes things don’t go to plan. These things happen and where we can, StoneShot is here to help! This guide will go through some of the most common issues encountered when managing your campaign.

To learn about the main campaign reporting available within StoneShot, please look at the articles in the Reporting section.

Why does my campaign have contacts removed?

You can personalize your emails using a whole host of different solutions within the StoneShot platform. We want to make sure you’re always making the best impression possible so you’ll find some safeguards in place to help.

When you send out a campaign our system checks to see if all the information is available for each contact and if it’s not then it will simply not send them the email rather than them receiving something incomplete.

A notification will appear in the Campaign Summary section of the individual email as shown below and you should get an alert via email too:

You obviously still want to send to these contacts so let’s see what may have caused this to happen.

If your email is pulling in the contact’s First Name or a value from the Salutation field it could be down to this being blank.

If you click on the number shown you can see who these contacts are. You can Export this into Excel (button located in top right hand of the page), add in the First Name or Salutation for each contact and reimport into the StoneShot platform. If it’s a handful of contacts it may be easier to just click into each record, add these in manually and Save.

Perhaps you’re sending from Sales Managers and the system can’t find the relevant information? Again, you can click on the number of contacts dropped…

And then use the Segmentation option to see who they are assigned to:

In some cases they may not have a Sales Manager in which case you will have to assign them to one.

Or it could be that the email is pulling in the Sales Manager’s From Name, From Email and Sign-off details but this hasn’t been set up yet. Don’t worry, this is easy to sort out.

• Go to Options > Segments

• Click on Sales Manager, and navigate to Segments

• Click into the Display Name of the Sales Manager

• Fill in the Dynamic From Name, Dynamic From Email and add in the sign-off (see Updating dynamic sender sign offs).

• Once you’re done click the Save button located at the top right hand of the page

If you’re using other Segments or Custom fields to pull in information into the email you can follow the same steps above to fix the records.

Once you’ve done this you can go back into the Campaign Summary screen and hit the Resend button. This will send the email to only the contacts that were dropped/removed.

Are you still getting the same error? Let us know and we can take a look.

I’ve sent out a tracked email with an incorrect link. What now?

Once a campaign has gone out from StoneShot there is no way to recall it. If you find any errors in the email, you’ll need to fix them in the email template and then resend the email to your list, perhaps with an apology. There is one element however of an email campaign that you are able to change after launch – tracked links.

Due to how tracked links work, the contact will always come through to StoneShot first (so that we can register their click-through) before visiting the final destination (e.g. the website or pdf). This means that you can update the link so that even recipients that have already received the email, will be redirected to the correct destination. This can happen where a pdf has needed to have been updated or simply a typo in the URL.

To fix it yourself, find the tracking ID for the link you’d like to update – you can hover over the link in the email and it should show at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen:

Then in the left-hand panel click the Content icon and select Links:

In the Search and Filter field do a search for the tracking ID and once you’ve found it click into the URL:

Change the Source URL and click the Save button. Check that the link redirects to the correct place from a test you sent yourself earlier:

One of my contacts has a lot of opens. Is there an issue with the tracking?

First, we’ll explain how our two types of email tracking work – Link tracking and Open tracking.

Link tracking allows you to track which of your email recipients have clicked on a particular link. A code called ‘MemberURLID’ is added to the end of every link, and this allows us to identify a contact, the link they hit and the campaign that was sent.

Open tracking allows you to monitor the number of opens, or “Reads”, your email is getting. This is done by inserting a tiny 1px by 1px graphic into the very bottom of your email, known as a web beacon. This is downloaded by our servers once the recipient has opened the email and downloaded images. Every time this unique graphic is downloaded, this is counted as an “open” on your campaign report against the contact.

Open and Click tracking is added automatically, as long as both options are turned on. You’ll find these options within the Email Builder under “Email Tracking” on the Advanced tab.

It’s important to keep how the tracking works in mind when looking at a high number of opens or clicks against a single contact. It could be entirely genuine with that contact accessing the email many times. What can happen is that a contact forwards the email on to colleagues for them to view the email and its content. The issue is that the email will still have the original contact’s ID.

The StoneShot Platform will not recognise that this is a different person clicking or opening the email and will record the stats against the original recipient. Whilst this is something to be aware of when reporting, it can only be seen as a positive, as it is still genuine that people are interacting with your content.

We’d recommend including an easy way for people to sign up to receive your content in this situation with a link to a sign-up form or preference centre in the email, something such as “Want to receive this newsletter to your own inbox? Sign up here”.

Why can’t I see all of my campaigns?

If you cannot see your full list of campaigns, first check that you are assigned to the team with access to the email. If you are, the issue is most likely caused by one or more filters currently applied on the Campaigns page.

To view all available campaigns:

1. Go to the Campaigns page in StoneShot.
2. Click the blue arrow in the top-right corner of the page.
3. This will open the Search and Filters panel.
4. Review the Activity Time Range filter and adjust the date range to include the campaigns you are looking for.

Once the filter has been updated, your campaign list will refresh and display any campaigns that fall within the selected date range.

Why can’t I see my launched email in the Campaigns section?

In the Campaign Summary section, make sure your filters are set to the correct Activity Time Range by clicking the blue arrow in the top-right corner of the page.

If the campaign report is not showing, click into the Recipient list you picked, select a few contacts, and review their Activity Log to check whether the email has been queued or sent to them.

If, after checking several contacts, you cannot see the email in their individual activity logs, it is likely that the email campaign has not been sent.

Why wasn’t my email sent to everyone in my recipient list?

If your email was sent to fewer contacts than expected, it could be due to one of the following reasons:

• You are looking at the total number of contacts in the list rather than the Reach figure. The Reach does not include suppressed contacts, such as email addresses that have bounced or contacts who have opted out of receiving emails.
• The list is a dynamic list, so the number of contacts may have changed since the last time the email was sent.
• The email was sent to more than one recipient list. By default, StoneShot deduplicates contacts across multiple lists, so if a contact appears in more than one list, they will only receive the email once and will only be counted once in the reporting.
• The Include contacts that have received this message before option is disabled in the Advanced tab. This option is disabled by default when sending an email to multiple recipient lists to prevent contacts who appear in more than one list from receiving duplicate emails. If you later add a new recipient list to the same email, any contacts who have already received that email will be excluded from the send. Similarly, if you overwrite an email that has already been sent instead of cloning it to create a new edition, StoneShot will recognise that the contacts have previously received the email and will not send it to them again. As best practice, we recommend cloning the template when creating a new edition of an email rather than overwriting an existing one.
• The email may have a suppression list applied, which will exclude the selected contacts from receiving the email.

I added contacts after scheduling my email. Will they receive it?

No. When an email is scheduled, StoneShot takes a snapshot of both the email and its recipient list at that point in time. Any changes made after the email has been scheduled, including adding new contacts to the list, will not be reflected in the scheduled send.

To include any newly added contacts, you will need to cancel the existing scheduled launch and schedule the email again.

Why has my email campaign stopped sending before reaching all recipients?

If your campaign report appears to stop at a certain number of contacts, it may be because Send Time Optimization has been enabled.

When Send Time Optimization is used, emails are delivered gradually throughout the time period specified when the campaign is launched, rather than being sent to all recipients at once. As a result, not all contacts will appear in the campaign report immediately. Visit Send Time Optimization for more information.

If I click Resend, will it send to everyone in the campaign?

No. The Resend option will only send the email to contacts that were dropped from the send.

If you need any assistance, please contact the Agency Team who will be able to help.