Understanding and Fixing Campaign Errors
A single errored task can quietly bring a campaign to a crawl without any obvious warning. This article explains why errors hold up your campaign, how to spot them quickly using the error tags on each step, and exactly what to do to clear them so your contacts can start moving again.
Overview
When a campaign task cannot be completed it shows up as an error. Errors are one of the most common reasons a campaign slows down or stops letting new contacts in. This article explains what causes errors, why they matter, and how to fix them.
What Is a Campaign Error?
An error means a task could not be sent or completed. In the platform you may see it labeled as Not Sent. Common causes include:
- A missing or broken template variable in the email
- No valid email address for the contact
- A failure at the email provider such as Gmail or Outlook
- A disconnected inbox
A bounce is not the same as an error. If an email was sent but bounced afterward it still counted as a send. An error means the email never went out at all.
Why Do Errors Slow Down a Campaign?
This is the part that catches most people off guard. An errored task does not just disappear. It holds its spot in the campaign step until someone does something about it.
Think of it like a car broken down in a lane of traffic. The cars behind it cannot move forward until the broken down car is dealt with. Every errored task is holding a send slot that no new contact can take until the error is fixed, skipped, or removed.
This means if you have 10 errored tasks in a step, 10 spots in that step are being held up and no new contacts can move in to fill them. The more errors that pile up the slower the campaign moves.
How Do I Find Errors?
There are three places to find errors in a campaign:
Step card — Each step in your campaign shows a yellow tag and a red tag. The yellow tag counts user errors which are things you can fix yourself like a missing template variable. The red tag counts system errors like a provider failure. Both tags show up no matter what status the campaign is in including when it is paused. Clicking either tag takes you straight to the Tasks page filtered to that step and error type so you can work through them.
Campaign header — If any of your connected inboxes are disconnected you will see a notice in the campaign header that says N Disconnected. Clicking it opens the reconnect window so you can get the inbox back online.
Tasks tab — From the Tasks tab you can see all errored tasks and take action on them one by one or in bulk.
How Do I Fix an Error?
You have a few options depending on what caused the error:
Fix and retry — If the error is something you can fix like a missing variable open the task, fix the issue, and click Retry. The contact stays in their spot and the email goes out as soon as the schedule is open.
Skip the task — If you do not want to fix the error you can skip the task. This frees up the spot immediately and the next contact in line moves in. Skipping works on any campaign task including while the campaign is paused.
Remove the contact — If you want to remove the contact from the campaign entirely that also frees up the spot.
All of these actions work whether the campaign is Active or Paused so you do not need to resume the campaign just to clear errors.
What About a Disconnected Inbox?
If an inbox gets disconnected any contacts whose emails were supposed to go out from that inbox will error and hold their spots. The campaign does not pause automatically. It just stops being able to send from that inbox.
To fix it click the N Disconnected notice in the campaign header, reconnect the inbox, and then either send the failed emails from the reconnect window or retry them from the Tasks tab. Until you do that each failed email is still holding its spot.
How Do I Know If Errors Are the Problem?
If your campaign looks like it has room but no new contacts are moving in, errors are almost always the reason. Check the yellow and red tags on each step card. If either tag shows a number that is your answer.
Quick Summary
- An error means a task could not be sent. It is labeled Not Sent in the platform.
- Errored tasks hold their spot and block new contacts from moving in.
- Find errors using the yellow and red tags on each step card, the campaign header for disconnected inboxes, and the Tasks tab.
- You can fix and retry, skip, or remove the contact to free up the spot.
- All of these actions work while the campaign is paused.
- If a campaign has room but no new contacts are moving in check for errors first.
