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 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.

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