Broadcast Email Is Unreliable

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russellhltn
Community Administrator
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Location: U.S.

#21

Post by russellhltn »

I think the issue being expressed is that the mail isn't being sent at all as evidenced by lack of bouncebacks.

There is an issue of individual ISPs flagging things as spam, but that's a different issue.
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doughy
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Joined: Fri Oct 03, 2008 11:39 pm
Location: Salt Lake City, UT, USA

#22

Post by doughy »

I spent some time tonight trying some different things to see if I could pinpoint what was happening with this problem. Here's the report:

I created a test email with the following content:
Dear Ward,

This is a generic message that I am making up to test the ward email broadcast system.

Thank you,
-Bilbo Baggins
Then, I sent it a total of 6 times. I set it up so that I was the only recipient by sending only to "Elders Quorum Leadership" to avoid annoying the entire ward. The subject was "TEST-1", then "TEST-2" and so on... I received the following emails in this order :
  1. Stake/Ward Website email Verification
  2. Test-1
  3. Test-2
  4. Stake/Ward Website email Verification
  5. Test-5
  6. Stake/Ward Website email Verification
Test 1, 2, and 5 made it through. Test 3, 4, and 6 did not show up at all, nor did I get a verification. Notice how sometimes the verification showed up first, and sometimes the actual email showed up first, then the verification.

Just trying to get to the bottom of this. Hopefully this will lead to some kind of clue.
dmaynes
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Posts: 233
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2008 10:50 am
Location: Pleasant Grove, Utah

#23

Post by dmaynes »

Doughy wrote:Test 1, 2, and 5 made it through. Test 3, 4, and 6 did not show up at all, nor did I get a verification. Notice how sometimes the verification showed up first, and sometimes the actual email showed up first, then the verification.
I ran several tests a week ago, and thought that the e-mails were failing. I have observed that the order of receipt differs from the order of submission. However, the e-mails that I thought had failed just came through on a delayed basis.

It seems significant that the verification e-mails are also not being received. This probably indicates that the e-mails did not get sent. A quick statistical analysis on failures where verification e-mails were not received places the probability of sending 6 e-mails, not receiving 3 verifications, and also not receiving the 3 associated e-mails at .05 or one in 20. This is probably good enough to infer that the non-receipt of verification and the non-receipt of e-mail are not independent. Therefore, the problem is on the sending end, not the receiving end.

What happens when you send directly to your e-mail in the Membership directory (from the blue screens and logged in as a normal member)? Is it possible to determine if the failure is for all e-mail or for only e-mail sent by broadcast from the website administrator mode?
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AileneRHerrick
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Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:33 pm
Location: Moses Lake, Washington, United States

#24

Post by AileneRHerrick »

dmaynes wrote:What happens when you send directly to your e-mail in the Membership directory (from the blue screens and logged in as a normal member)? Is it possible to determine if the failure is for all e-mail or for only e-mail sent by broadcast from the website administrator mode?

Someone could try this by emailing their spouse, home teacher, visiting teacher (if you're a girl!) and anyone else who is willing to work with them. From my experience, I think that emails sent via the blue screens are generally received.

Ailene
dmaynes
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Posts: 233
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2008 10:50 am
Location: Pleasant Grove, Utah

#25

Post by dmaynes »

Doughy wrote:I spent some time tonight trying some different things to see if I could pinpoint what was happening with this problem.
I have attempted to send an e-mail broadcast four times this morning. Each time, the LUWS interface says the e-mail has been sent. I did not receive the confirmation e-mail for the first two attempts. I did receive a confirmation e-mail for the third attempt, but the actual e-mail was not delivered. The e-mail appears to have been sent and delivered on the fourth attempt. (I received the confirmation, the actual e-mail and notification of 5 bounce backs, as expected.)

I also tested the e-mail first by sending to myself in the member-to-member e-mail (from the blue screens). I did this twice. The e-mail was delivered without a problem both times. I don't have a lot of data, but I have not experienced any failures in the member-to-member mode, while I have seen many failures in the broadcast mode.

This e-mail is rather large (about 10K). I'm wondering if there is a size limit. I'm also wondering if there are parsing issues with double or single quotes. The confirmation screen definitely has parsing problems. It does not always display the e-mail text properly or consistently.

It took me two attempts last week before I could confirm that the e-mail was actually sent. There are 88 members in my e-mail list with 5 bounce backs and 1 disabled account. I don't know if e-mail list size is related to the delivery failures.

I'm tempted to e-mail directly, except that I have to find and mark the e-mails that are "public" versus "private." I suppose that I could "blind-copy" on the private e-mails.

Thanks,
Dennis
matthewmenzie-p40
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Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2009 2:43 pm
Location: Palm Bay, FL (Cocoa Stake)

Same Problem Here

#26

Post by matthewmenzie-p40 »

I believe that less that 50% of emails that I send via the email broadcast on the ward site are ever received by the ward members.

Has there been any "fixes" or suggestions rather than making a email group to broadcast ward emails?

I suffered the embarrassment of promising an email to be sent to the ward and have nobody receive it. I have made a group now for emails that require important and time sensitive information but they need to be recreated often to ensure all new members are included in the broadcast.
dmaynes
Member
Posts: 233
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2008 10:50 am
Location: Pleasant Grove, Utah

#27

Post by dmaynes »

matthewmenzie wrote:I believe that less that 50% of emails that I send via the email broadcast on the ward site are ever received by the ward members.

Has there been any "fixes" or suggestions rather than making a email group to broadcast ward emails?

I suffered the embarrassment of promising an email to be sent to the ward and have nobody receive it. I have made a group now for emails that require important and time sensitive information but they need to be recreated often to ensure all new members are included in the broadcast.
Can you be a little more descriptive when you say <<less than 50% of emails>> are delivered?

Do you mean that only half of the people receive the email and the rest do not receive the email?
Or, do you mean that all of the people received the email only half of the time?

The second situation describes the problem I have been dealing with. In that case, I have continued to resend the email until I could verify that it has actually been sent and received. Usually, I am sending entire ward emails, so I am on the distribution list and I can verify when the email is received.

Thanks,
Dennis
nutterb
Member
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Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:06 am
Location: Berea, KY, USA

#28

Post by nutterb »

I have experienced this problem recently, too. However, the failed send, for me, appears to be related to which box I check to select my recipients. When I check the "Send to All Registered Users" box, the e-mail doesn't send. I have circumvented the problem by selecting the box that sends to all the auxiliary mailing lists. Doing this has sent all my e-mails thus far.

This isn't a complete solution to the problem, but at least it gets the e-mails out to anyone subscribed to a list (if a user has opted to receive no mail from auxiliaries, I assume they won't get these e-mails either).
techgy
Community Moderators
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Joined: Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:48 pm
Location: California

#29

Post by techgy »

I've been observing this thread for some time and I guess I'm one of the many fortunate ones. Email that I send through the LUWS goes through everytime. I've never had a problem.

It's entirely conceivable that problems may exist on individual accounts, but it's also possible that some problems may be traceable as mentioned earlier in this thread to mail servers treating an Email as spam.

I'd like to ask a favor of those who have been having problems with the Email broadcast that you include the domain of your Email account. It might be interesting to see if some of these problems are related to just a few selected domains. The domain I use is gmail.com
dmaynes
Member
Posts: 233
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2008 10:50 am
Location: Pleasant Grove, Utah

#30

Post by dmaynes »

Techgy wrote:I'd like to ask a favor of those who have been having problems with the Email broadcast that you include the domain of your Email account. It might be interesting to see if some of these problems are related to just a few selected domains. The domain I use is gmail.com
My domain is with my company. We are using a Microsoft Exchange server. Our ISP aggressively applies spam filtering, but spam filtering has not been a problem for me.

I have never had trouble sending e-mail as a website administrator directly to a member. I have had trouble sending e-mail broadcasts to subscription lists for the auxiliaries and for all ward members. The failure rate seems to be between 1/3 and 1/2 for me. The most attempts that I have had to make to send a broadcast has been four.

Why would spam filtering cause this kind of random failure? I don't know much about e-mail, but I do not believe that the website e-mail broadcast mechanism attempts to validate e-mail accounts before broadcasting. It might be an interesting question to explore though. That is the only scenario where I would agree that the website admin's e-mail domain might be an issue.

Thanks,
Dennis
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