Why NOT to allow sending marketing emails to the same contact multiple times

General Discussion
1

Hello,

I’d like to reflect to this conversation regarding sending emails with the same ID to the same person multiple times.
https://forum.mautic.org/t/allow-campaigns-to-send-marketing-emails-multiple-times/35653/5

There is a very good reason why this is not possible in Mautic, and I’d like to defend it.
I didn’t want to reopen that discussion cause it is a valid solution, I wanted to start a new discussion, because the dangers are not explained there.

@andrew_c3 , I’m reflecting on your comments. Just want to make sure you are aware of the dangers.

I have been working with segment emails which by default only allow you to send one email to a contact in the relevant segment. For some this is ok. But why limit it to one ?

You can send the SAME email to the SAME contact ONCE. The reason is, that this allows you to add contacts continously to the segment, and if the sending window is open the new contacts will receive that message once they joined the segement.

OR

If you have a contact in Segment A and Segment B, and you send an email to Segment A, then yuo decide to send to Segemnt B as well, you won’t sell the email 2x to this person.

Why would you want to send an email with the same Email ID to the same person? How would you manage the statistics for it? (open, time to open, unsubscribe?)

However if some contacts in the segment have typos in there email address the first send fails. If you correct the email typo the segment email is never resent.

  1. Tag your contacts who failed
  2. Create a segment with the people tagged + ‘has received email 1’
  3. Send to this segment

Cloning a segment email seems inefficient. Why not allow the the re-sending of emails to the same segment email multiple times without cloning ? Why clone if they are the same ?

It’s 2 clicks: clone + ok.
The point is, that each email has an email ID. If you clone, you’ll know who you resent to. If you keep sending the same email, you won’t know at all.
If you send the same email over and over again, how would your statistics look like?

Also from a testing point of view you may wish to resend the same segment email many times and you have to do that via a clone. Again multiple sends would be a big time saver during development of emails.

You can use the “send test feature”, and for the final test you can use the segment email. Clone and send. That easy.

The logic for sending one or many copies of the same segment email is a valid one. Why limit how many times a segment email can be sent.

It will create a mess, and you’ll never figure out why your numbers are not matching.
Once you schedule an email and people enter/leave a segment, you’ll send them the email over and over again.
There is a huge risk of creating sending loops.

You can make internal rules to limit the way you send emails and manage segments, for Example:

  • don’t use filters in Segements, especially not based on emails senr or opened or clicked
  • don’t use schedule emails, just wait until the progress bar sends the emails

But then why use Mautic?

Joey

1 Like
2

Hello joeyk,

This is why I’m advocating for the ability to resend segment emails in part or in whole.

Scenario

I wish to have a segment email campaign to inform contacts about a particular product launch.
I wish to run that campaign for twelve months as it does not change.
Over the next twelve months I add contacts to the segment so that emails are continually sent.
If the email is successfully sent all well and good.

However if an email fails to send then as you suggest the current method is to tag, clone and resend. You now have two segment campaigns, one for the original and one for the resend.
What happens if you have a second resend failure, do you tag, clone and resend again i.e. more duplication etc ?

We will have at least ten product campaigns active at any one time.
That’s at least two segments per actual campaign i.e. twenty campaigns and twenty segments to manage. Every five minutes the contact segment membership is recalculated putting the server under extra load.

In twelve months time I wish to restart the same campaign. Now I have to merge the original contact segment and any failed segments so that all the contacts get another email.
That’s another campaign and another segment. That’s more complexity and more load on the server.

Alternative Workflow

If an email fails to send then have logic so that the failed email can be resent without a tag, clone and resend. You could do that as many times as necessary over the life time of the campaign. No extra campaigns or segments needed. The database record for the campaign could record sent emails, failed emails and successful emails etc.You therefore have a single segment with all the contacts listed for the campaign. No merging necessary.

At the end of twelve months why can’t you restart the same campaign without a clone and resend ? Why can’t you restart a campaign with a single click ? The database could record how many times it has been restarted as well ? The same process could be used for testing before rollout as well ?

Conclusions

Tag, clone and resend just creates more segments and campaigns and complexity to manage. And puts the server under more load. Software should make our working lives easier and to reduce management complexity etc.

With logic to allow resends you effectively have one campaign with one contact segment.
The database records failed sends and retries etc. And how many times a campaign has been restarted. That’s reduced load on the server by minimising the number of needed campaigns and contact segments. And more importantly reduces management complexity saving manpower.

Why Mautic ?

Mautic does a great job of sending email campaigns and has many great features.

We can both have different view on how the workflow should work and the forum should be the place to discuss that openly.

More importantly Mautic is open source and highly customisable which is great for us as we can change the workflow logic to suit our own business model and reduce operational complexity etc.

At the end of the day software is here to make our working lives easier and reduce complexity. I’m just advocating a different workflow process.

Thanks.

3

Okay, thanks for the explanation.
Couple of questions to help me to understand your process:

  1. How many contacts are we talking about daily / weekly / yearly?
  2. By campaign do you mean ‘segment email’ or an email in a campaign as ‘template email’ ?
  3. How do you detect if an email fails?
  4. Do you use double optin to make sure only valid emails are added to campaigns, or any API call to Zerobounce / Email oversight?

Joey

4

Hello joeyk,

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate your time is valuable.

I’ve spent my whole career working on technology projects and I have learnt to do my due diligence on all software before contemplating any rollout.

I’m currently doing a feasibility study or pilot program on Mautic to learn a few key facts and I have been posting questions and or making suggestions on the forum as my journey with Mautic evolves.

Key facts
How to install Mautic on our on-premise web platform
Learn to write code to modify the workflow to match our business model
Determine how to design email templates and modify them with the builder
Determine how to design emails on a staging site and migrate them to a live site
Simulate the sending of various types of email campaigns etc to our internal email gateway
Evaluate how emails look on different target devices i.e. computer, smartphones, tablets etc.
Simulate email delivery failure and resend functionality
Simulate 10,000 dummy contacts and 100 segments to determine server hardware requirements
Determine if it will scale to 100,000 contacts and 500 segments and determine extra hardware requirements
Determine what security measures are in place to deter hackers
Look at any reporting features that are available
Determine how good the forum is at providing prompt help
Determine if the forum is open to discussing new ideas
Write a strategy on how to use Mautic in production
Implement a Mautic rollout

Mautic will evolve in its own way driven by the community. The key factor for me is learning the skills necessary to code and extend Mautic myself and become self-sufficient so I can add the extra workflow I need for our successful rollout.

Thanks.

5

Cool.

I’m not picking on you, just trying to help :slight_smile:
As a first step I wanted to clarify if you understand the different between sending emails via segments / campaigns. And within campaigns sending transactional (re-sendable) and marketing emails. Mautic is able to resend emails with the same Email ID to the same contact unlimited number of times.

Here are some hints for your list:

Learn to write code to modify the workflow to match our business model

I would keep an open mind about checking if there are any plugins supporting a certain business model. Mautic has a bunch of well maintained plugins, that help you to achieve your goals.

Simulate email delivery failure and resend functionality

In my opinion your goal should be to avoid delivery failure because it really hurts deliverability. If you are building a tool, that is expecially targeting cold campaigns, then a totally different approach is needed. I suggest to use Multi SMTP plugin, Multi Domain plugin and use a lot of email cleaning via Webhook + API.

Determine if it will scale to 100,000 contacts and 500 segments and determine extra hardware requirements

You probably don’t need 500 segments to achieve your business goals. Campaign coniditions, dynamic content can help you to cut down the number of segments. 500 segments are really hard to manage, keep updated in a prompt way. You will face the decision: would I create segments by filters or by using manual segment memberships. Or mixed. Its managable.

Look at any reporting features that are available

If you have specific reporting requirements, I suggest to add PowerBI or Metabase.

Recommendation:
Don’t forget knowledge base for your team, where you capture how campaigns work, how your custom fields are used and what assets you.

Joey