Sometimes when you send a message, it will fail to send for some or all recipients. Read this guide to understand why this can happen, and what you can do if you want to resend the message.
Failed Message Alert
When a message fails to send, Act-On will send an alert to the Marketing user who created the message in Act-On when:
- There are 20 or more recipients in the message (after suppressions)
AND - More than 20% of the recipients failed (not counting suppressions)
Reasons for a Failed Message
| Reason | Solution |
|
Sending the message would surpass your monthly Active Contact limit. |
Option A) Remove new contacts and send only to contacts you have already messaged this month Option B) Contact your Account Manager to discuss increasing your Active Contact limit. More info: Understanding Active Contacts |
|
The contact is missing an Email address |
Review your list mapping to ensure the email address column is correctly identified. Act-On cannot send a message without an email address. |
|
Missing/incorrect Personalized From setup |
Review your list fields and mapping, ensure the Sales Owner and their email appear on the list and are identified. More info: Personalized From Addresses |
|
Missing some personalization field (and no alternative was specified) |
Option A) Specify an alternative text for those contacts who do not have a field value, then re-send. More info: Using Personalization Fields in Emails Option B) Review the list and correct missing data, then re-send. |
View and Resend Failed Messages
Resending the message will depend on whether the entire message failed, or if there were only some recipients who failed.
Resend a Failed Message
For messages that have failed at 100% (eg no message was sent to any contact), you can also review these and resend them if the issue is corrected.
- Click Outbound > Other Messages > Failed.
- Each email message shown will specify why the email failed to send.
- Hover over the email to either Reschedule or Move To Drafts:
- Reschedule the message if no edits are necessary and you are ready to re-send (eg active contact increase, or a change to the list)
- Move to Drafts if you need to make a change to the message prior to re-sending
Resend to Failed Recipients
If your message is sent to some, but not all, recipients and you want to try again, you should first resolve the reasons for failure (such as a missing Personalization field).
Once you have addressed the error, you can re-send the message by going to Outbound > Sent Messages and locating your message. From the drop-down, choose Add Recipients & Resend.
You can use Choose Specific People to select the contact(s) that failed. Hint: If the amount of contacts is large, consider creating a segment to re-send the message to.
Re-validate the message in the Review tab, then go to the Send tab, choose a time to send your message, and submit the launch request.
Once the message has been sent, the contacts that you re-sent to will show in the same report, once as failed and once as Sent.