Email FAQ

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What permissions are required for users to create and send email campaigns?: Administrators can use TargetX Permission Scanner to set permissions individually or via Permission Set.

What is the difference between an email campaign and a broadcast?

A Campaign is a collection of Broadcasts. The Campaign contains the filter criteria that specify "who" gets the email. The Broadcasts are the individual email blasts that are sent to those recipients.

For example, you can schedule an Email Campaign to send an email to all new inquiries every day. If you were to schedule this Campaign to run at 3PM daily for the month of March, a total of 31 Broadcasts would be generated.

Note: Email Broadcasts have a limit of 1,000 broadcast records per Campaign.

What are the different types of emails I can send?: Text - A plain text email is text only, without any formatting.
HTML - can be created using the built-in Editor or by pasting code from an outside source.

What is the difference between Seed and Test Lists?: Anyone designated as part of the seed list will receive the email broadcast when each broadcast goes live. You can have two different test lists. Both test lists will only receive an email when it’s being tested, not when the email broadcast goes live. You can also test messages to the seed list.

This Seed/Test List section of Email Preferences is part of the Legacy UI.

How can I test emails in a sandbox instance?: For details on testing emails in a sandbox instance, see the article Testing emails in a sandbox instance.

Why won't my email go out?

Verify on the Email Preferences tab that your address information is properly filled out.
Verify in the Company Profile you are not over API requests.
Verify your account has not expired.

How do I see the contents of an email sent to a student?

Navigate to the student's detail view by searching for the student's name. Scroll down to the Email Campaign Activity section. Checkmarks will display depending on whether the contact has received, viewed, etc. If a recipient received the message, a ✓ will appear in the Received column. If a recipient did not receive the message (bounced), an X will appear in the Received column. Click on the View link for the email message you wish to view. You have the option to View the email that was sent as well as Resend the email by selecting the links under Message:

Email campaign activity screen

Note: Campaign History is stored in the Contact object and allows for quick viewing of individual student email history.

Note: If you are using Lightning, your Administrator will need to update the Contact page layout to replace S-controls in order to view this information: Replacing S-Controls for Lightning compatibility.

Why does my report show more records than my email campaign count?: The email system is configured to filter out any Email opt-out and Bounced contacts and, when enabled, to send the email to contacts only once, which is not accounted for in a report.

For a more accurate report count, you may add filter criteria for Email Opt Out and Bounced, and if you are loading Broadcast Member Data, you can also filter for those contacts who have already received the email.

For more information on managing Broadcast Data, please see How to Manage Email Campaign Statistics on Campaign and Broadcast Level.

Why don't my custom object merge fields show up in my test message?: For details on testing custom object merge fields, see the article Testing that custom object merge fields show up in your email message.

How do I change the address that appears in my Email Footer?: Currently, the Email Preferences area of your CRM only houses one Contact Address. However, you can choose not to display the Contact Address in any email. Uncheck the Include Contact Address checkbox in the Footer Defaults area. This is a global change, so removing it will do so for all emails sent from your org.

How do I merge a specific value into an Email for a student who has more than one of these related record types (ie highest Test score)?: If more than one record of the same type exists in a related list for a student (i.e. Test scores, applications), running a report based on this data will generate one row for each record belonging to the student. To pull the highest value, you need to filter your report with additional criteria (such as Start Term and Year for application) or create a custom formula field to extract the desired data (such as highest test score) for filtering purposes on the report.

Why do Aborted emails still send?: The Status field on the Campaign object does not impact the Broadcast and is not managed through the TargetX Email package. To prevent a Broadcast from being sent before the Start Date and Time on the Broadcast record, the Start Date value needs to be deleted.

The Broadcast Email tool regularly looks to see what broadcasts will be pulled in based on the Broadcast object's value in the Start Date and Time field. If the value isn't present, the Broadcast is not picked up.

How long will it take for my email to send?

Emails typically go out within an hour of the scheduled time. For example, if you schedule a broadcast to be sent at 10:00 am, it should go out before 11:00 am. Anything beyond that can be considered delayed.

Send Immediately means that the Campaign will immediately be placed into the queue. At that point, the above 'expected send time' applies.

What data center will my institution use?

To determine which Data Center to use, the system looks at the Country field in Company Information. Once this field is populated, the system will auto-populate the Domain field on all User records to either the US (suite) or EU (suite4sf) domain, depending on which Country was entered for the Company.

To view/validate your Company Information:

Navigate to Setup and search for Company Information.
In the Address section, validate the Country field is set correctly.

If any of the following two-letter codes are provided in the Country field, the Email package will point to the EU data center. All other values, including no value, will point to the default (U.S.) data center. The following is a list of EU member states, plus those with some affiliation to the EU or preside on the continent. The two-letter code is the International Standards Organization country code (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) for these countries.

AT - Austria
BE - Belgium
BG - Bulgaria
HR - Croatia
CY - Cyprus
CZ - Czech Republic
DK - Denmark
EE - Estonia
FI - Finland
DE - Germany
GR - Greece
HU - Hungary
IE - Ireland
IS - Iceland
IT - Italy
LV - Latvia
LT - Lithuania
LU - Luxembourg
LI - Liechtenstein
MT - Malta
NL - Netherlands
NO - Norway
PL - Poland
PT - Portugal
RO - Romania
SK - Slovakia
SI - Slovenia
ES - Spain
SE - Sweden
CH - Switzerland
UK, GB, AC, DG, or TA - United Kingdom

Why do emails go on ‘hold'?

The ‘Email is on hold due to a significant change in the number of recipients since the broadcast was queued’ message is sent based on the following logic:

The hold logic works like this:

If the Original Recipient Count <= 100, it never goes on hold If the Original Recipient Count > 100, it goes on hold if the Original Recipient Count is more than 10% off the Calculated Recipient Count at the time the submitter picks it up.

In the Campaign Builder, the Original Recipient Count is computed asynchronously, meaning when the campaign is saved, the Original Recipient Count will initially be null, but the request to compute it will go off to the recipient list service in the backend. It could take a while for a large recipient count, but once computed, it updates the Original Recipient Count on the campaign. So it’s asynchronous.

Campaigns can also go on hold if the Original Recipient Count was never set in the first place. This could happen when there’s an immediate send in the new builder of a super large broadcast, but it takes a while to compute the Original Recipient Count. Note: Number of records = recipient count

Administrators can release a hold via the Email Dashboard.

Note: Broadcasts will only go on hold due to a change in recipient count as described above; this includes Broadcast hold-chain; if one broadcast goes on hold, this impacts future broadcasts until the hold is resolved.