Send Groups, do Not Work? Ultimately, useless as far as Tested. Please Help Twisted! Unusable for basic Email Platform Needs for this

[ridgerunner777]

Hey There @twisted1919 ... I am not sure what is going on here, but we did as you said, on a ton of attempts for Send Groups.

1. We made an email campaign, and all we did was change the segment IN the SAME List... and then all things the same on all automation, tags, etc we hit send on one, and it ONLY SENT just THAT campaign to that list segment only!!! So only the clickers got the email.. and I waited an hour and then finally just elimimated the clickers from the openers with increment rule, and hit send on openers only... but your system failed 100% as you gave instructions for how to send with send groups....


2. WE thought, Oh MY Gosh!! Maybe MailWizz is only going to do this silly send group thing where with different lists only!! ? Where you have to kill yourself DOING and Re Doing all your automation up each time you send to a different list, but nope!! did this too, and same result, hit send on one, and it only sent to that list, NOT ANY of the others!!

3. A send group is just a name, nothing more, and you cannot send to it and when you send a campaign that has that send group then the campaigns in it goes up by 1.. but that is non sense, we only had 2 in one of them, only sent to one list segment and that's it.. None of this makes sense!!

How can we actually launch ALL the segments in single list, so segments internally SAME LIST... at once! ? Even if not using multiple lists, I mean COME ON!!!

You have made this nearly impossible!!! Why not have segment groups in combined with any or all, or with each with and / or... vs one singular operator!! and then NO Exclusion lists or segments.!! ? really? But then oh my goodness.... the nail in the coffin on this front, is you ONLY allow us to send to one list, ok, fine, not a biggie, but ONLY ONE Segment IN the same list at a time!! ? Why!! ?

Please add back in on the details page, to allow more than 1 segment with + sign, but ONLY within the same list..., not another list, but segments in in the same list, so they dedupe, and send all at once. The reasons for this are the essential basic elementary of emailing 101.. Please get this in place..

Or if you had the ability to exclude even, or segment groups in the segment, more than one operator , or send groups that work, I mean My good man!!

ANY, ANY,... yes ANY of those 4 options even would MAKE the platform usable without moving all to another list and doing a bunch of work to purge inactives each time and do such an immense amount of work for a basic need that ALL Emailer senders have.

Happy to show you and discuss live, send a quick 5 min video link, other screen shots or even pay to get this developed, because it is honestly so essential, and mission critical I would love to help contribute to making MailWizz have the features it truly needs to be complete, ..... and hey it PACKS sooo MANY!! Other features and tools under one roof that any other esp I have used in over 19 years does not have at one spot, yet somehow it was a debacle in 1.x and now in 2.x... major super simplistic NECESSITIES are not present.

Open to suggestions. I have found a way to send to our users and be safe, but it is a ridiculous unnecessary process.. really.

 

[ng mailwizz]

+1 vote for multiple lists / segments as i MW 1.x, sending groups are really disappointment

 

[ridgerunner777]

For sure!!!! Honestly, the only thing that send groups do is really nothing much at all, all they do is just de dupe upon the send to the last email that is sent, so it's entirely useless for what is actually needed for most use cases unfortunately. We NEED ONE FULL SEND< sent, at the same TIME, all COMBINED showing stats accumulatively for the one single send. If I send as a pre scheduled email all at once, it goes out at the same time, and it DOUBLE SENDS to Everyone!!! BAD... the ONLY way is to schedule send 1, then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5 and in the same send group, and then send 2 dupes against send 1, and send 3 against send 2, and 4 against send 3.. and 99% of esps', just do this when you hit send to all lists, or a master list, or all segments for all lists, and hit send and only have to have one email, one set up, one time to hit send, and you see it in one report as is Needed. And none of it makes the least bit of sense, so honestly we will never be using a send group really..., although if in the case we wanted to send to our clickers first, then to our openers who did not click, it would be nice to then de dupe against the openers, since all clickers are openers.

I did find a way to do it, and it's manual using list unsub automation, and moves with increments from a work flow list to a master broadcast list..., a work around hack, and it's not bad.... I can share if you like... I put it in another post.. it does work, but hey it could be done just that the way the original mailwizz is architected it's going to be a BEAST to code and take into account all the logic and not break legacy stuff... but hey, all things eventually must go to EOL... at some point, just like 3G... and some day so will 4G.. etc. and Win 10 and more. EOL is inevitable... and reverse compatibility to use the new stuff... at some point is not possible...

 

[nadworks]

I've just done the following test:

• created a Send Group and sent a campaign to a single list (no segments)
• I then added 56 new records to that list and sent the campaign again (all details identical incl. Send Group)

The most confusing and rather annoying aspect is that I am not being told anywhere how many emails were actually sent. In the campaign listing, it gives the impression that the email went out to the entire (!!!) list again. Even though the "Sent" and "Delivered" columns should just show 56 for the 2nd broadcast. See below:



Why is the reporting on the Send Group broadcasts so inaccurate?
Why can it not say how many emails were actually sent?
I had to check in my AWS SES dashboard to be assured that indeed only those 56 emails went out. Nothing on MW could tell me that.

Equally, the open and click-through rates are totally off as you can see, since they're calculated on the entire list, not the number of emails that were sent. That's making my job much harder for my own reporting and analytics.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Send Group feature, it makes sense to me and I have use cases for it. But the reporting must be adjusted to reflect what's actually happening. I hope that's an easy thing to fix, but it should be prioritised.

 

[nadworks]

Hi, @ridgerunner777. Sorry I wasn't quite able to follow your issue entirely. But is it possible that your segmentation method is not quite taking the known lack of accuracy with the open and click-tracking into account? Google's proxy image server and Apple's new MMP are hugely muddying the water. I do measure engagement using the increments, but only for a general trend. I would not rely on it for individual campaigns.

Further, as per my comment above. It looks like the sent/delivered reporting fails in MW when re-sending campaigns using Send Groups. I sincerely hope this is something @twisted1919 and the team will sort out soon.

 

[ridgerunner777]

So check this out. The only thing that send groups do is DE DUPE , UpON the send, that is it!!!! It's useless for the most part, unless ALL you want to do is send 1, then 2, then, 3, then 4th list and have 1 go out first, ..., then list 2 de dupes against list 1 send after list 1 sent, then list 2 goes out de duped from list 1, then, list 3 FINALLY after list 2 is finished sending, then list 3's turn and it de dupes against list that already de duped against list 1, so it de dupes against both list 1 and 2, takes longer too!!! then list 3 is finished, and list 4 de dupes against the past 3 lists, so ALL IT DOES is make sure you do not multiple send to same subscribers!!! But now you have your segments in our case, clickers net 45 days, then openers with no clicks net 30 days, then those who are over 5 emails in 7 days old, but not over 22 send increment or 24 days old, but still safe to send to, and then your test list..., but that is NO GOOD... the list of clickers will do great, then openers ok, test list .. so what we know what that is, and the non openers non clickers list, but it's newer people not yet deemed inactive to purge are sent on their own and the results are terrible, NO WHERE in the world did anyone at MailWizz say to hit send in succession or sequential order like 1ST !! Send the First List you want to send...., then go and send what you want to send to the 2nd list, then wait till it's done!! then send the 3rd, and wait till 1, 2, 3 are done, then send 4.

So send groups are for ONE little thing and 1 thing only, to de dupe whatever you are sending in the staggered order of one send being completed before the next.... and if you add suppression lists in there, multiple in the 5mil and 9 mil range, well it could take a day or half a day to send an email that ALL NEEDS to, and ON 129 other ESP's does all go out at once in the fashion necessary in about 3 to 8 minutes for a 300K list.

Anyways, because at the same time MailWizz is soooo bad ass, awesome, in other ways I figured out a work around to nail a full send of all combined lists, segments, with all that you want and nothing you don't at the same time, and set up the auto responder work flows with custom stats and our own endpoint and fix the mess up that brings over none of your own custom fields, with a hit to the redis cache with the info welll, kind of a custom webhook, and thanks to a lot of raw data and open source, and more options under one roof than any other platform, Mailwizz is still a very solid and viable source, but it has it's shortcomings, missing basic features, insanely limited and dangerous things you have to watch out for that most other places you don't, but then again, that is what also makes it so powerful and customizable.

Main thing is to figure out the 99 ways to NOT get the result you want or the 89 ways that are way to insane to then find the 100th way, which is the glorious truth and answer.

But for us, we took send groups, and we for now and the time being decided to forget they every existed and take them out of our vocabulary, because they are not what we thought, understood, or ever hoped they were, although we can certainly see the benefit and appeal in some use cases.

Cheers!!

J aka RidgeRunner 7

 

[nadworks]

I've just done the following test:

• created a Send Group and sent a campaign to a single list (no segments)
• I then added 56 new records to that list and sent the campaign again (all details identical incl. Send Group)

The most confusing and rather annoying aspect is that I am not being told anywhere how many emails were actually sent. In the campaign listing, it gives the impression that the email went out to the entire (!!!) list again. Even though the "Sent" and "Delivered" columns should just show 56 for the 2nd broadcast. See below:

View attachment 15157

Why is the reporting on the Send Group broadcasts so inaccurate?
Why can it not say how many emails were actually sent?
I had to check in my AWS SES dashboard to be assured that indeed only those 56 emails went out. Nothing on MW could tell me that.

Equally, the open and click-through rates are totally off as you can see, since they're calculated on the entire list, not the number of emails that were sent. That's making my job much harder for my own reporting and analytics.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Send Group feature, it makes sense to me and I have use cases for it. But the reporting must be adjusted to reflect what's actually happening. I hope that's an easy thing to fix, but it should be prioritised.

Thanks for fixing this, @twisted1919 !!!

 

[ridgerunner777]

Thanks for fixing this, @twisted1919 !!!

That is good it is working now and I guess there are some use cases for this, just very narrow, and all it really is a glorified de dupe feature that you can use if you want to do something like first send to your best clickers then schedule 10 min after that in the same send group to go to your openers, and then 30 min later to the rest of your list so when openers only send it will not send to your clickers that just already got the last same email, and then so on with the next, but still you have to do 3 separate emails all in the same send group, and have them spread out, and no way to send to 90 day clickers, 30 day openers, and the last 9 days of new subscribers that are older than x days that finished the work flow, so still really does not allow segments or multiple lists and segments to be mixed and sent as one single email as they NEED to be, so we have figured out a way to do this and built out our own api, and reporting for work flows, all the end points and more and we have the cron run 3 x a day to clear out inactive users and place them in a list that then unsubs them from all the others to be safe as well, so always a way to get it done in mailwizz if you know about stuff in the back end and figure out all the various operations to execute, but there are some bugs for sure, and the main issue is NO Video tutorials, instructions, documentation on any of this, THAT IS THE ONE AND MOST Terrible thing about MailWizz is just that you have to nearly figure all things out on your own, and support is not live and no real solid faq db for new stuff, or introduction about new releases, versions, updates and upgrades, it's just a few release notes and then it's forum time or test and trial and error to figure it out from there. But I guess hey as you do all of this and go through the grind and process, you do learn a TON while in the process !! lol!!

@twisted1919 , you honestly just NEED to test and then set up and do a 3 min video screen share voice over tutorial and dictate and SHOW in action what a new feature IS, what ALL it can DO and how to use it properly, and what results then to expect and verify it worked and you did it right. The logic of send groups was so silly new and unnatural it appeared you put everyone in it and could go hit send on a sengroup, lol!! nope, it's just to tie stuff together inside a list or other lists or segments to avoid duplicate sending of a single email, in sequential order, one after another, that is it!! really.