Troubleshooting Campaigns

When sending campaigns, you may face a scenario where you added your targeted lists and segment but your estimated recipients are 0 or there are sending or delivery failures. This article will address common issues and how to troubleshoot them.

Estimated recipients showing 0 or less than expected

You may add your Send to lists and/or segments which has contacts but your estimated recipients are still showing 0 or less than expected.

Why this may happen and what you can do?

• Missing valid identifier (email, phone or push token): The contacts in your lists or segment do not have the valid identifier required for the channel selected for your campaign. For example,

  • For Email campaigns, email address is missing for the contacts

  • For SMS/WhatsApp/RCS campaigns, phone number is missing for the contacts

  • For Push campaigns, push token is missing for the contacts

Troubleshooting Steps:

• Go to Contacts and apply advanced filters to match the criteria of your lists or segments

• Add condition if Properties of contact > Email address exists OR Phone number exists

• You can click on any specific contact to see the identifiers like email, phone or push token

• If missing for some contacts, you can re-import them via csv or adjust your integration attributes mapping sync if the data is present in the source platform

• Subscription attribute not set as Subscribed: The contacts in your lists or segment do not have the Subscription attribute required for the channel set as Subscribed. For example,

  • For Email campaigns, Email Subscription needs to be set as Subscribed

  • For SMS campaigns, SMS Subscription needs to be set as Subscribed

  • For WhatsApp campaigns, WhatsApp Subscription needs to be set as Subscribed

  and so on.

Troubleshooting Steps:

• Go to Contacts and apply advanced filters to match the criteria of your lists or segments

• Add condition if Properties of contact > Email Subscription is Subscribed exists OR SMS Subscription is Subscribed OR WhatsApp Subscription is Subscribed etc. based on your channel for the campaign

• You can click on any specific contact to see the attributes like Email Subscription, SMS Subscription, WhatsApp Subscription and so on

• If the relevant subscription attribute is missing for some contacts, you can update the attributes by re-import them via csv or adjust your integration attributes mapping sync if the data is present in the source platform

• Contact identifier (email, phone) is suppressed: The contacts in your lists or segment are suppressed for the channel selected for your campaign for marketing use case. For example, contact's email address is suppressed for Email marketing.

Troubleshooting Steps:

• Go to Contacts and apply advanced filters to match the criteria of your lists or segments

• Add condition if If contact can receive Email Marketing OR SMS Marketing etc. based on your channel for the campaign

• You can click on any specific contact to see if their is a suppressed status on their identifier

• You can also search for the email or phone number in the Audience > Suppression lists section

• If you want to unsuppress the contact, you can manually go to their 3 dots and unsupress them, however we do not recommend unsuppressing unless you are sure that they have wrongly been suppressed. Identifiers will get automatically suppress due to opt outs and invalid identifier

• Don't Send to option has reduced your final recipients: The contacts in your included lists or segments under Send to have been reduced due to exclusion lists or segments you have selected under Don't Send to

Troubleshooting Steps:

• Go to Contacts and apply advanced filters to match the criteria of your lists or segments

• Further add conditions which match the criteria of your exclusion lists or segments to check the final count of your contacts

• Missing contact locale when using Strict locale matching: The contacts in your included lists or segments do not have the Locales attribute set with any value and you have selected Strict Locale matching.

Troubleshooting Steps:

• Go to Contacts and apply advanced filters to match the criteria of your lists or segments

• Add condition if Properties of contact > Locales has any value

• You can click on any specific contact to see the value of the Locales attribute

• If missing for some contacts, you can re-import them via csv or adjust your integration attributes mapping sync if the data is present in the source platform

Campaign messages are not sent

Your campaign has Sent status but has sent 0 or less than expected as compared to the targeted recipients

• Re-check your targeted recipients: If you have missed this while building the campaign or your targeted segment is dynamic it may change over a period of time, hence you can check the Recipients metric in Campaign report which indicates what was the target audience at the time of sending

• Limit maximum recipients: If you have set a max recipient limit when building the campaign, it will restrict sending to that number

• Check Failure Reasons Tab in Campaign Reports: Go to Campaign Reports > Failure Reasons to check why your messages are skipped or failed sending

Sending Failure Reasons will prevent all or partial messages of the campaign to be not sent. These can include the following:

Type	Failure Reason
Excluded lists/segments	Contacts skipped as Lists/Segments are selected to be excluded in the campaign
Frequency cap reached	Recently messaged contacts have been skipped due to frequency cap
Not subscribed	Subscription attribute of contacts is not marked Subscribed or they have opted out
Suppressed	Recipient identifier i.e.Email / Phone number is suppressed
Template inactive or missing	Content template is not in active or published or approved status or is missing. Note that WhatsApp templates can be paused (deactivated) by Meta mid-campaign due to low quality
WhatsApp sending restrictions	WhatsApp may have sending restrictions on a 24 hour rolling period for your account. WhatsApp also restricts sending marketing messages to US recipients.
Missing personalization	Personalization variable value not found for contact
Missing template attribute	Attribute referenced in the content template does not exist
Missing content block	Content block referenced in the template does not exist
Scheduled time passed	Recipients skipped as schedule time already passed in their timezone for local recipient timezone sending
No timezone found	Recipients skipped as no timezone is set on the contacts for local recipient timezone sending
Global Holdout	Recipients skipped due to global holdout applied on campaign
Campaign Holdout	Recipients skipped due to campaign holdout applied on campaign
Audience Generation Failed	Failed to generate the final audience for the campaign
Missing locale matching	Locale attribute is not set on the contact for strict locale matching
Missing Discount code	Discount pool referenced in the content template does not exist
Discount codes unavailable	Discount pool referenced in the content template does not have sufficient coupon codes
Admin Failure	Recipient address was failed by Bird’s default policies for spam complaints, bounce and unsubscribe
No subscription plan	Your subscription plan is terminated or expired
Insufficient wallet balance	Your wallet does not have sufficient balance to send
Unknown	Sending failed due to an unknown error
No coverage for phone number	No coverage is available for the recipient’s phone number
Invalid email/phone	Recipients do not have a valid email or phone number
Maximum Recipient limit	Recipients skipped due to maximum recipient limit is reached as set in the campaign
External data source error	External data source using Datafetch in liquid code of content template returned an error or cannot be parsed
Liquid error	Liquid code used in the content template returned an error due to rendering or parsing issue
Liquid nesting too deep	Liquid code used in the content template has more levels of nesting than supported causing rendering issues
Additional data missing	If all of your contacts do not have additional data personalization defined, they may be skipped

Campaign messages are sent but not delivered

This means that Bird has sent the message but it has not been successfully delivered to the recipient. This may happen due to a variety of reasons.

Check Failure Reasons Tab in Campaign Reports: Go to Campaign Reports > Failure Reasons to check why your messages have failed delivery