Troubleshooting Campaigns and FAQs
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 estimated and targeted recipients: If you have missed this while building the campaign, check your estimated recipients by viewing your campaign again.
Note that 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
Troubleshooting
Excluded lists/segments
Contacts skipped as Lists/Segments are selected to be excluded in the campaign
Try recreating a segment with all your inclusions and exclusion segments/lists to check the final recipient count
Frequency cap reached
Recently messaged contacts have been skipped due to frequency cap
Turn off the toggle under Recipients > Advanced to Skip recently messaged contacts. Update frequency cap setting if needed.
Not subscribed
Subscription attribute of contacts is not marked Subscribed or they have opted out
Update the Subscription attribute if you think these are incorrect. Add condition in segment Properties of contact > Email/SMS/WhatsApp Subscription is Subscribed
Suppressed
Recipient identifier i.e.Email / Phone number is suppressed
Create a segment adding the condition If contact can received Email/SMS/WhatsApp Marketing
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
Send again by duplicating and reselecting the active/published template
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.
Check your sending limits in WhatsApp Business Manager
Missing personalization
Personalization variable value not found for contact
Ensure you have a default value provided for all personalization variables
Missing template attribute
Attribute referenced in the content template does not exist
Check any references to contact attributes and ensure they do exist under Contacts > Manage data > Contact attributes
Missing content block
Content block referenced in the template does not exist
Check any references to Content blocks and ensure they do exist under Content blocks
Scheduled time passed
Recipients skipped as schedule time already passed in their timezone for local recipient timezone sending
Always ensure for your campaigns: Under Schedule > Time passed > Send immediately
No timezone found
Recipients skipped as no timezone is set on the contacts for local recipient timezone sending
Check the Timezone attribute of your contacts. Add condition to segment Properties of contact > Timezone > exists
Global Holdout
Recipients skipped due to global holdout applied on campaign
Check global holdout toggle under Recipients > Advanced
Campaign Holdout
Recipients skipped due to campaign holdout applied on campaign
Check Percentage holdout toggle under Recipients > Advanced
Audience Generation Failed
Failed to generate the final audience for the campaign
Try to resend the campaign by duplicating
Missing locale matching
Locale attribute is not set on the contact for strict locale matching
Check Locales attribute on contacts. Add condition: Properties of contact > Locales > exists
Missing Discount code
Discount pool referenced in the content template does not exist
Ensure you have referenced a discount pool in content which exists under Discounts
Discount codes unavailable
Discount pool referenced in the content template does not have sufficient coupon codes
Ensure you have sufficient number of available discount codes in the discount pool used in your content
Admin Failure
Recipient address was failed by Bird’s default policies for spam complaints, bounce and unsubscribe
You cannot bypass these failures as they help in reputation building
No subscription plan
Your subscription plan is terminated or expired
Please check your billing invoice status under Admin console > Billing > Invoices
Insufficient wallet balance
Your wallet does not have sufficient balance to send
Top up your wallet balance for SMS and WhatsApp third party fee under Admin console > Billing > Wallets
Unknown
Sending failed due to an unknown error
Try sending the campaign again after some time
No coverage for phone number
No coverage is available for the recipient’s phone number
Go to Admin console > Connectivity > Channels > SMS > Click on a channel > Destinations to check
Invalid email/phone
Recipients do not have a valid email or phone number
Check email address and phone identifiers of your contacts. These hard bounces will be suppressed for future
Maximum Recipient limit
Recipients skipped due to maximum recipient limit is reached as set in the campaign
Check your campaign > Recipients > Advanced > MAximum Recipient Limit
External data source error
External data source using Datafetch in liquid code of content template returned an error or cannot be parsed
Check your External data Source by clicking on Test configuration
Liquid error
Liquid code used in the content template returned an error due to rendering or parsing issue
Check the liquid syntax used in your template
Liquid nesting too deep
Liquid code used in the content template has more levels of nesting than supported causing rendering issues
Check the liquid syntax used in your template
Additional data missing
If all of your contacts do not have additional data personalization defined, they may be skipped
Check your additional data csv file has rows for all your recipients
Exceeding Sending Limits
If you are using a test sender which has sending limits
Do not use test channels like @birdmailbox.com for sending as they have limits
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.
Campaign Reports:
Failure Reasons Tab in Campaign Reports: Go to Campaign Reports > Failure Reasons to check why your messages have failed delivery
You can also check the following sections in Campaign Report
Campaign Reports > Recipient Activity > Bounced for Emails
Campaign Reports > Recipient Activity > Failed for SMS, WhatsApp and Push
Additionally, you can go to check the message logs for each platform
Message Logs: Go to Developer > Select the platform and got to Logs to check the error.
Developer > Email > Emails Log
Developer > SMS > Message Log
Developer > WhatsApp > Message Log
For any WhatsApp related delivery error messages coming from Facebook, please refer to the details on WhatsApp Error Documentation.
Campaigns seems to be stuck as Ongoing
Certain campaigns may take longer period of time for sending especially when the scheduling is based on Recipient local timezone.
It may take 24-48 hours to run the campaign for all timezones of the world. However, you can easily monitor the campaign report in real-time and sometimes majority of all your messages may have already been sent while waiting for a few timezones to come.
Read more about this: Scheduling campaign.
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