Mail2 Upgrade

We're experiencing similar issues. Would be happy to connect, and with anyone else in the same situation.  

We've seen two specific errors:
- Scheduled campaigns running, but then kicking back an error at the time they are supposed to run
- Custom Views not pulling any data when testing, even though we've confirmed there is valid data in those parameters 

As an update: we've resolved the error around our scheduled campaigns and Custom Views.  There's a new setting in Account Settings that has you specify your date format (MM-DD-YYYY, etc.), and it turns out that the date format in your views need to match this in order for the data to pull correctly.

We're continuing to sort out through some other issues - if people think it would be helpful, I can post a list of our known issues (both resolved and unresolved).

Hi Reynaldi - we'd love to see your list of issues.  We're down for the upgrade in early February.

thanks for sharing

Alison

London Philharmonic Orchestra

I tried to post this last week Thursday, but am not sure it made it...in any case, hope this is helpful:

sarabill@umich.edu

Thanks, Sara, for your comprehensive post! I echo all these items as things we've been trying to sort out.  We've been on the new platform for about a month now, and I'd say that our challenges are less about bugs and glitches and more about just getting used to the new (and in my opinion, not as customer-friendly) interface.  

There's three main interface changes in particular that stand out for us: 

1. SMART EDITOR VS FULL EDITOR 

Smart Email Editor is similar to what the pre-upgrade editor looked like.  All the old templates that we had migrated into the Smart Email Editor, as well as the mobile optimized/responsive ones like the 1:2, 1:3, etc. However, Smart Email Editor lacks two crucial features:

• You cannot create Conditional/Dynamic content
• You cannot live-preview data from your list before sending

If you depend on either of these features, then you'll want to go with the Full Email Editor, which provides more flexibility, but definitely requires solid knowledge of HTML.

2. LIST UPLOAD NOTIFICATION

There is now a  section called "Message Center".  When you upload a list, instead of getting an email notification that the list has been uploaded, a line appears in the Message Center, saying "X number of contacts updated", but it doesn't tell you what list it was, which can get very confusing when you have multiple users updating lists. You have to click into the "X number of contacts" for the message detail, which you can then forward as an email, but personally I found it much more useful to upload a list and just look for the email notification.

Also, not sure if this is just us, but our list uploads are considerably slower than before. 

3. QUICK RESEND

You can no longer do a quick resend by just adding a single contact on to a campaign after it is sent (which is a feature that our Call Center found extremely useful when patrons would call and ask to be added to a certain mailing campaign).  Now you have to make a copy of the campaign, create a list with that single content, and then redeploy.


As other orgs upgrade, I'd be curious to hear how  folks are adapting! 

Hello Tessi Folks, 

Latoyah from Melbourne Recital Centre here! We upgraded just under a fortnight ago and have experienced all of the above. I thought I'd add some other issues we've experienced as well. Hope this helps, and wishing you all the best for your pending upgrades :)

• Public Lists Not Syncing Accurately Post Upgrade
  All of our public list contacts did not carry over correctly following the upgrade (only about 20% of contacts in the first instance), it took a couple of manual data syncing efforts on Mail2's side over a couple of days to ensure all contacts were transferred over.  
• Saved Search Transfers Triggering A Server Error
  When we first starting our SSX process, the exporting function would throw an unexpected server error. We also discovered whilst troubleshooting that similar to the above, the number of contacts in the SSX did not pull through completely. This was partially due to Mail2 transferring contacts in bulk lots of 1000 and something preventing the process completing correctly. 
• Scheduled Campaigns - HTML in Tessitura Content Fields Becoming Truncated By Character Limit
  We've recently learnt that all content fields which pull through to Scheduled Campaigns such as Event Reminders are becoming truncated by a 50 character limit, causing any text beyond the 50 character limit to be cut off in the email campaign. Mail2 are working on this unexpected issue, but no ETA has been confirmed on when this issue will be fixed.  
• Past Contact Engagement Scores Do Not Carry Over
  We use engagement scores and metrics as part of our list building, and discovered that the past engagement scores were not carried over into the new version. Mail2 suggested a workaround that involved creating a saved search of the relevant contacts' engagement scores, importing them into the new version of mail2 and adding them as a custom field in the mail2 account for future reference and future list building. The engagement scores are also not a standard part of the new version. You can request the engagement score functionality be enabled to monitor and track engagement on future campaign sends. 
• Google Analytics Integration No Longer Part Of The Post Campaign Report
  Due to the unreliable nature of the issues Mail2 currently have with GA returning data to mail2, they're discontinuing pushing this replicated data to the completed campaign reporting in the new mail2 dashboard (at least for the time being).
   
• Outlook Does Not Register Old Font Size Formatting In New HTML Formatting
  The old HTML formatting style used to include pixels for font size, now it's grouped in small, medium and large etc. This has resulting in the temporary workaround of us manually editing the HTML in our campaigns to include pixels rather than size groups to ensure our campaigns render correctly primarily in Outlook (as well as other semi-challenging clients).
   
• General Formatting Issues In Custom Templates Previously Built By Mail2
  In addition to the above formatting issue, we've also encountered other issues/bugs in our custom built Mail2 template post upgrade with linespacing (which can't be fixed in HTML), lines of text randomly jumping out of order and switching places with other lines, the creation of random spacing that can't be deleted (sometimes they're sneaky div statements, other times they're breaks and other times they can't be seen in the HTML at all).

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch. Happy to help whenever and wherever I can!

Cheers,

Latoyah

We had a very in-depth call with the M2 support team, specifically around the last two issues (sizing and formatting).  

SIZING:
In Smart Email Editor, the formatting palette on the right gives options for font size in pixels, wheareas the WYSIWYG editor gives them in points.  However, if you go into the HTML, it translates it into style (x-small, small, etc.).  So we would go in and manually edit these as well (same as you, it sounds like), but those edits wouldn't always stick.  M2 told us that this is a known bug, and they are working on a fix with their developers that will standardize all the sizing to pixels.

FORMATTING: 
We had the same thing happen, and were repeatedly told that it was based on copying old campaigns and templates from the previous platform. M2 built us a new template from scratch (following the 1:2 mobile optimized template), which had all clean code, but the lines were still jumping, so they are continuing to investigate.  

We haven't gotten a solid on either of these fixes, but if I learn more I'll definitely share it with the forum.

Hi Latoyah,

Just sharing that we've also had a lot of template issues since the upgrade - lines or texts randomly jumping, random spaces, inexplicable line breaks, emails looking different from one test to another. It's quite frustrating, and I'd be curious to hear if Mail2 provided any helpful tips in response to that! They've largely told us to work with the Full Email Editor (which, as none of us really know html, is not that helpful), and to always start from a new template, which is fine but a bit of a drag when we'd like to just copy from an existing email. A bit frustrating!

Emily, 

For what it's worth there are issues with the Full Email Editor too. Not sure if that gives any comfort.... I've had the same issues with what I call "text scrambling."

Next time it happens stop what you're doing, copy the campaign and let support know. I always manually unscramble the text before saving a version for Mail2 support to look at and they can never find an issue or duplicate the problem.

Happy Emailing,

Kaylee

So glad it's not just us having these "buggy" issues with templates! Our formatting randomly gets lost and we also have experienced the random spaces, etc. Sometimes we send the test and it looks fine then send the real thing (having made no changes at all) and things are messed up! We also don't have the staff capability to use full email editor so not using the mart editor isn't an option!

If you use the “save as a template” function in the Smart Editor, you can then go to your templates (now in the My Account section) and copy the full HTML and then Paste that into the Full Editor and work with it there.  I have had more problems with the Full Editor not displaying correctly, and better luck with the Smart Editor though... Even using exactly the same code. Go figure.

Also, my Media Library did not update correctly, I am missing a lot of recent images, and seeing a lot of images that I deleted months ago. Many of the images in my saved templates were broken and I’ve had to go find the new link, and re-link it in the HTML. A real pain if you have a lot of templates.

Is anyone else having issues with Data imports and summaries? I’m getting all kinds of wonky things happening with contact data.

Maurya

For everyone's reference, here's a tracking sheet I created, to give a sense of how many bugs/errors/changes we came across and needed assistance with. Feel free to review, and shoot my any questions about anything - I'll offer insight if I can!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qq2r85Efzsd-i0sKFs4qGZ9wa-yf6oa71GyRP686HD0/edit#gid=908019569 

Hi there Emily, 

We were provided with a little bit of info about how Outlook doesn't register the new HTML font size formatting in the Smart Editor (once we submitted a support ticket), whereby originally the HTML font size was formatted for example as 12px, but post upgrade it's changed to 'small', which Outlook doesn't register, causing font sizes and layouts to go haywire.

We've been told that we'll need to manually update the HTML for each text field within our templates while working on a campaign as a workaround for now while they make time to fix it, but there's been no ETA given on when a fix will be applied. 

I also asked the M2 team to go through the HTML of our most utilised custom created templates to make sure that no bugs had crept in during/post upgrade and were contributing to the formatting issues we were experiencing, and they happily obliged. So if you're still encountering odd issues, I definitely recommend getting in touch with them and requesting that they do that. 

I hope this helps! If you have any other questions please feel free to contact me directly, too, very happy to help where I can!

latoyah.forsyth@melbournerecital.com.au

Hi there Emily, 

We were provided with a little bit of info about how Outlook doesn't register the new HTML font size formatting in the Smart Editor (once we submitted a support ticket), whereby originally the HTML font size was formatted for example as 12px, but post upgrade it's changed to 'small', which Outlook doesn't register, causing font sizes and layouts to go haywire.

We've been told that we'll need to manually update the HTML for each text field within our templates while working on a campaign as a workaround for now while they make time to fix it, but there's been no ETA given on when a fix will be applied. 

I also asked the M2 team to go through the HTML of our most utilised custom created templates to make sure that no bugs had crept in during/post upgrade and were contributing to the formatting issues we were experiencing, and they happily obliged. So if you're still encountering odd issues, I definitely recommend getting in touch with them and requesting that they do that. 

I hope this helps! If you have any other questions please feel free to contact me directly, too, very happy to help where I can!

latoyah.forsyth@melbournerecital.com.au

Aha, nice! Our approach was to use a shared Trello board.

I've expressed to Mail2 that having regular and verbose status updates on changes to the Campaigner platform would be greatly appreciated. Campaigner tends to push updates on Monday mornings, and we've been bitten by some unexpected behavior right when we're composing our weekly e-blast a few times as a result. But at the very least, knowing that schedule has made it easier to deal with.

I must say I'm surprised to see people's frustration expressed so tamely.

Reynaldi, that's a great document you've got going there, we've encountered these 2 additional issues in case you want to add and I'm opening a ticket:

Unsubscribe/Manage Subscription tokens in footers don't seem to work properly in scheduled campaigns (40%-50% of our email deployment) but work as normal via conventional deployment.

Not all new Surveys/Events appearing across all survey dashboards - I've had to switch profiles to help troubleshoot for other users plus other users can't access surveys I've built to analyse results.

Kevin, I think we all saved our frustrations for mail2 and decided to take a more civil tone here in an attempt to help our colleagues :)  I know I was not completely tame in expressing my frustration to mail2. Happily, that was two months ago and our issues have largely been resolved. Time heals all wounds, right?

Kevin, I think we all saved our frustrations for mail2 and decided to take a more civil tone here in an attempt to help our colleagues :)  I know I was not completely tame in expressing my frustration to mail2. Happily, that was two months ago and our issues have largely been resolved. Time heals all wounds, right?

Absolutely the right thing to do, Sara :D  There's been plenty of deep breathing, yoga and wine in this office. As for time healing wounds, I'll come back to you in two months' time :)