Delivery Workflow

Definitions:

• Message: The overall setup of the communications that will be generated to constituents.

• Email: The individually rendered communication that will be sent to a list member.

Diagram of mass email outbound workflow

Normal flow uses the following statuses, and the message naturally falls from the top of the list to the bottom as things change:

• draft

• scheduled: once the send date+time is set

• preflight: once stubbing has started

• archived: once sending has started

Individual emails can be in the following states:

• stub: The message is stubbed and ready to be rendered.

• pending: The message has the current render batch ID assigned and will be rendered with the batch.

• render-failed: There was an issue during the render process. *

• ready: The message is rendered and ready to send at the scheduled time.

• spooled: The message has been assigned the current batch ID and will be sent with the batch.

• send-failed: We were unable to transfer the message to Mailgun. This could be an issue on either the AlumnIQ or Mailgun side. The message will be picked up in the next batched and retried. *

• sent: Message was successfully sent to Mailgun for transfer to the recipient's email provider.

* AlumnIQ staff are alerted of all render/send failures and are investigated immediately. In the event of temporary disruptions or service outages, these emails will be retried automatically.

Halting the send of a mass email

Screen shot of message delivery progress and halt button

The halt button is available, based on your AlumnIQ permissions, from the time stubbing starts (preflight) until the last email for the message is sent. Clicking Halt does 5 things:

1. change message status back to draft

2. move the current scheduled send date + time to the anticipated send date + time

3. clear the scheduled send date + time

4. delete any emails in the pipeline for the message that haven't yet been sent (e.g. stubs, and rendered/waiting for send)

5. take you back to the edit-message screen for the message

What you should do next depends on why you halted it.

If you halted to make a last minute content change, simply make the change and set the scheduled date + time appropriately. (Setting them to a time in the past effectively sends immediately.) This will resume the send of the message and only send the updated content to list members who did not receive the pre-halt content.

Cloning is not necessary, and can be harmful. It creates a new message with all of the content of the original. If you halt a send after half of the emails have been sent, and then clone the message, and send the clone to the same list, then the people that received a copy of the original will also receive a copy of the clone. For this reason, we recommend against cloning a halted message in most circumstances.

If you halted because the wrong list was used, or for another non-content reason, then we should probably discuss the next course of action.