Troubleshooting campaigns

Here are some tips to help you troubleshoot campaigns in Blueshift.

Search

Q. I can't find a particular campaign on the campaign index page. How do I search for a campaign?

You can find a list of all the campaigns on the Campaign Index page. If you are unable to find a particular campaign, verify the following points:

Check the filters that you might have set to filter the listed campaigns.
If the campaign is archived, select Archived for the Any Archived Status filter.
Ensure that you are selecting the correct Time range when you search for the campaign.

You can find the changes made to a campaign by accessing the audit trail for the campaign. In campaigns, the Audit Trail icon is located to the right of the campaign name. For campaign triggers, access the Audit Trail icon from the trigger actions menu.

Messaging

Q. Why didn't a customer receive an email from a particular campaign?

You can verify the following information for the customer to figure out why a message was not sent to the customer:

General:

Check if the customer has unsubscribed from receiving messages.
For an email campaign, verify that the user profile has an email address.
If the customer was expected to qualify for a particular trigger, ensure that the customer meets the filter criteria.
Check if any messaging limits are set for users.
Check if any rate limits are applied.

Event triggered campaigns:

Check that the customer qualifies for the campaign. For an event triggered campaign, verify that the event occurred for the customer.
If you are filtering based on Triggering Event Attributes, verify that the attribute is present in the event for that particular customer.
If the customer has already entered the journey, check the campaign journey re-qualification properties.

Segment triggered campaigns:

Check that the customer qualifies for the campaign. For a segment triggered campaign, verify that the customer is part of the segment.
If you have a global inclusion segment configured for your account, this might affect the inclusion of customers in the segment. To include all eligible users, set the “Skip global inclusion segment check” option in the campaign properties for the campaign that uses this segment.

Campaign behavior properties:

If you have set any of the Campaign behavior properties in the messaging template, verify the following points:

If you have added recommendations in the template, and if you have set the Campaign property "Do not message the user if any of the recommendation block(s) is empty" on the Properties tab, ensure that recommendations are available for the selected preview user.
If you have set the Campaign property "Do not message the user if any of the products in the event is not available in the catalogs" on the Properties tab, ensure that the products are currently available in the catalog.

SMS campaigns:

For SMS messages, ensure that the phone number is saved in E.164 format. If the phone number is not saved in the correct format, SMS providers might not be able to send messages.

Push or in-app campaigns:

For in-app or push messages, check if the customer has a “Last used device” set. If the customer does not have a “Last used device” set, messages are not sent to the user

Q. Why was the message sent to a customer at the wrong time even though Dayparting was set?

If you have set Dayparting for the Customer Time Zone, and the message was sent outside that time window, verify that the location is set for the customer in the customer profile. If the location and hence the timezone for the customer is not known, then the message is sent using the time zone of your account.

Q. Why did the customer receive a message from a different trigger than expected?

If a customer received a message from a particular trigger when the customer was expected to receive a message from another trigger, check the following information:

Ensure that the attributes that you are using to filter customers are set correctly.
Check that the attributes are present on the customer profile and that they are set to the expected values.

For example, if you are using a custom attribute “newsletter_language” to determine the language the customer receives an email in, and the customer received the English language newsletter instead of the French language newsletter, ensure that the attribute “newsletter_language” is present on the customer profile and that it has the expected value “fr” assigned to it.

Q. Why was a message sent to a customer after the customer was removed from a segment?

If the customer starts a journey based on segment membership, they don't have to remain in the segment the entire time to keep processing through the journey. If the customer has entered the campaign before being removed from the segment, the customer will continue in the campaign until the customer is filtered out or reaches the end of the campaign.

Q. Why didn't some customers receive messages from a transactional campaign?

Some customers who have previously reported your emails as spam or who may have unsubscribed might not receive messages from transactional campaigns even though you might have set all the correct messaging preferences for the campaign including selecting the “Message users who have unsubscribed or have reported your emails as spam” option. This is because your email or SMS provider might be dropping these messages to protect your sender reputation. Check with your provider for more information.

Campaign sends

Q. Why is the campaign not sending?

After the campaign starts sending, at times, there is a lag between the actual sends and the time the sends show up in the campaign reports.

If you still cannot see any sends after waiting for a while, try the following checks:

Campaign Properties:

Check the campaign Send time.
If you have multiple campaigns running at the same time, the messages might not be sent because of the Messaging Limits you have set. In the Campaign Execution Summary, look for “Skipped: Messaging Limits”.

Filter criteria:

Verify that the filter criteria is set correctly and uses the correct customer attributes.

Segment counts:

For a segment triggered campaign, verify that the segment has a user count greater than 0. If you are seeing fewer sends than expected, compare the sends to the segment count.
For a segment triggered campaign, verify that the segment has < 1M users. If a segment has more than 1 M users, consider splitting the segment into smaller segments and send using separate campaigns.
For one time campaigns, verify that the segment has < 10 M users. If a segment has more than 10 M users, consider splitting the segment into smaller segments and send using separate campaigns.

Customer attributes:

For in-app or push campaigns, in the Campaign Execution Summary, look for “Skipped: Device Not Found”. If the customer does not have a “Last used device” set, messages are not sent to the user.

Paused and restarted campaigns:

See the documentation to understand the effect of pausing and relaunching a campaign.

Q. Why is a paused campaign still sending?

You might see an increase in the sends or delivered count after you pause a campaign because at times, there is a lag between the actual sends and the time the sends show up in the campaign reports. Similarly, there might be a lag between the time that a message was sent, the message was delivered by your provider, and the information about the delivery was sent to Blueshift by your provider.