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Frequently Asked Questions |
If you don't see an answer to your question here, please email support@emfluence.com.
You have the ability to create new email templates from scratch or edit/copy any current templates through Template Builder. If you don't see access to your templates, contact your Account Manager or emfluence Support to enable it in your account. Learn more about Template Builder here.
Landing Page templates are not editable by Platform Users as they have to be coded by an emfluence developer. Newer platform accounts may not have any page templates. If you use the Landing Page Drag & Drop options, you can create Landing Page Themes to reuse which can be edited by users with access to the page.
If you have access to a group you have the ability to add it to an email. However, if you have changed the Owner of an email to another user (so it will be tied to their record rather than yours), or if you are editing an email someone else started and now owns, and that user does not have access to the group you are trying to add, the platform will prevent you from adding the group (since that user doesn't have the ability to send to it). Client Admins can edit a user's group access either on the group itself, on the Options tab, by checking the user's box and saving, or on the user's record under the Group's tab by checking the box next to the group you want to give them access to and saving. Alternatively, you could also change the owner of the email to a user with access to the group you want to send to.
Both for security and for storage, emfluence only allows certain types of files to be uploaded. The only types of file extensions allowed are: gif, jpg, jpeg, png, zip, pdf, ics, ical, and vcf.
Also, because you shouldn't be uploading large files to send by email, we do put limits on how large a file can be to uploaded into the platform. The PDF maximum size is 10MB and other types of image files are 1MB.
If you don't remember your password and are locked out of your account, you can use the Forgot Password option on the sign-in page. Input your username and email address and you will receive an email with a link to reset your password.
If you are currently logged in and wish to change your password, you can do this by clicking on the User Cog next to your displayed login name (which will launch the User Detail modal and then you can click Edit User). Alternatively, you can also navigate into the Options menu and select Edit Profile, and then you can click Edit User. If you are a reseller user, clicking on the User Cog will allow you to edit the password of your reseller login (whereas changing information on Edit Profile only edits the user you are logged in through your reseller).
On the Edit User page, you will need to type in your existing password at the bottom of the screen which will then allow you to edit your username, email address, or enter a new password.
All Client Admins have the ability to create new users in the emfluence Marketing Platform in the Options menu under System Users. You will need a first name, last name, email and username, along with knowing which permissions to give the new user, and which templates and groups they should have access to. As a short-cut, you can begin by copying the permissions of a current user. You can find more on user creation here.
Unlike other email providers, Google does not return individual spam complaints. If your email has a good chunk of Gmail addresses, your complaint rate may be larger than shown. Google only shares high-level data per day (not per send or per contact) making in unable for emfluence to incorporate that data within our reporting. If you are seeing deliverability issues at Gmail, you may want to sign up for Google's Postmaster tool which will offer some limited insight on days where your may have exceeded the maximum-allowed number of spam complaints. You may choose to share access to that reporting with emfluence.
In 2021 Apple Mail's privacy updates changed how they deal with incoming messages with the implementation of Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). As the change was rolled out over the course of the year and more people opted-in to the program, Apple Mail began to block tracking pixels by automatically downloading images to a proxy server for every message received by an Apple Mail client that has the privacy setting activated. In doing so, this made it appear that everyone had downloaded the pixel (causing inflated false opens to be recorded) regardless of whether or not the email was ever actually opened by a human being. It is important to note, this does not just affect the Apple Mail app but could affect any mail apps on an Apple device with MPP enabled.
By making this change, Apple was causing a false positive for an email open/view that did not exist. This resulted in email view rates being artificially inflated by Apple Mail for contacts who didn't open your email. Because such activity can be recognized, at the beginning of 2022, emfluence began filtering out these kinds of false positives. Because of this, you may see your opens underreported rather than overreported. If MPP is enabled on an Apple device, those opens will be ignored unless further action is recorded (such as a link click by the contact).
Why this is important: Around 50% of email opens happen on a device with Apple MPP activated. The percentage can vary between clients given the makeup of their lists. The percentage may be higher with B2C clients or lower with B2B lists. With the only options being able to report with the inflated numbers being excluded (meaning you will lose some data on contacts opening on these devices) or included (which skews real inbox engagement and may also cause contacts to be added to automated workflows without them taking any true action), emfluence chooses to exclude those numbers.
There is a known bug in some versions of Outlook where the background color of an email can bleed into the email in the form of a thin single-pixel line. While Outlook is aware of the issue there isn't one simple fix. Email on Acid has an article about this you can find here. Because it only shows up in some versions of Outlook, and only on some devices, it makes it hard to troubleshoot. However, there are some steps you can take to eliminate the line if you see this occurring:
before you close a </td> table cell. You would need to get into the code in able to do this, but you can make this addition and see if the lines disappear.<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]> <style type="text/css"> table { border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0; } </style> <![endif]-->
Spam filters used by some inboxes can read the links in your email while checking for malicious code and count them towards your metrics. emfluence takes steps to try and count only actual views and clicks, but occasionally these types of spam filters can count towards your total and alter your metrics. The most common example of this is the VAWP link at the top of our email being read by a spam filter. Ways you can differentiate actual views vs. these types of views:
There are a variety of possible explanations for a browser time-out when composing an email in the emfluence Marketing Platform. The most common reason is coded image has pasted into an email. This often results in a long, complex image URL, which can cause a server time-out. If your browser freezes or crashes, ask yourself these questions:
If these solutions don't work, please contact support@emfluence.com, and a programmer will take a look at your email to troubleshoot the problem.
Every provider is going to have slightly different spam settings which are going to be a mix of your domain's reputation and the content of your message. Showing up as spam in pre-flight may be a result of email content, domain reputation, default behavior of how some inboxes treat bulk sending, or some combination.
If content is the issue, there are items you may look for:
Some providers have started moving bulk email to spam by default (which is why you may see some show up as heading for the junk/spam folder). Your sending domain may also have a reputation at certain providers that may skew you to junk/spam. It's important to remember that pre-flight is only a guide. It doesn't take into account your history with a contact or whether or not they have you in their safe sender list or address book. Also remember that (just like in the renderings) you are unlikely to be sending to all spam filters that show up in pre-flight (ex: GMX Mail is a free German email service that, unless you send to the EU, is unlikely in your contact list).
While emfluence provides the standard set of fonts which email clients prefer to render, you can set a default font on your template (including the use of Google Fonts - find more info here). However, Outlook will often refuse to display font stacks. There is a snippet of code you can add to help. Find more here. NOTE: This may not work for all Outlook clients.
You can download an HTML version of your email in the Preview tab. With HTML selected, click the download tab on the far right. If you want to create a PDF of your saved file, most browsers like Chrome will allow you to open the file and save as a PDF. To save on Chrome, open your saved file and right-click outside the content. Find the Print option and then choose Save as a PDF.
When you import a new contact list to the emfluence Marketing Platform, you must select a valid Row Delimiter. Most of the time the default row delimiter {CR}{LF} will work, but you may need to choose either {CR} or {LF}, depending on your browser and how your file was saved.
If you have sent multiple proofs to Gmail, or several emails with similar titles and content that show up under the same thread, you may see the inbox start to treat the later copies differently. Gmail has started changing the default black text of those emails to purple to signify they are copies. Deleting all but a single copy of the email, or deleting all the copies and resending a new email proof will give you the actual rendering (without the Gmail edits).
Using the Drag & Drop Editor you can add an Embedded Video element which will allow you to use video in your email. Understanding that not all inboxes will play video, the Embedded Video element does allow you to use a fallback image and link to a webpage where those contacts can watch. Also, because the video is playing within the email (which only a small number of devices support) you lose the ability to track those views which you would see on a webpage. Your video will need to be hosted on a site where it is publicly available and the raw video file can be linked to; emfluence does not allow hosting video on its servers. Another option is to take a screenshot of the video within the player, and overlay a Play button to emphasize that the video is clickable. Link this image to your video URL or to a page where it is embedded.
To make it into the inbox most providers suggest you don't go too far over 100KB in size. You can see a warning if the size of your email goes over this threshold. Also, when editing an email or template, if the size goes over 500KB (making it undeliverable in most inboxes) you will get a warning preventing your from saving the email or template. If you receive this error, take a look at the content of your email and see what might be causing the issue.
The most common cause for this error is a user attempting to add some Base 64 encoding in their template or email. While this may be valid code, it will massively ballon the size of your HTML (compare the number of lines of a template without Base 64 to one with it and you can see how much larger the HTML becomes). Removing the Base 64 encoding with drastically decrease the size of your email or template and allow you to send.
If you are not using Base 64 encoding and still get this error, check to see that you aren't using any plugins in your browser (such as grammarly and DuckDuckGo) which are notorious for injecting their own code in editors such as ours, again making the HTML far larger than necessary.
Every contact record in your emfluence Platform account is assigned an Owner. If your account has Restricted Users (i.e. users who can only view emails, groups, and contacts that they own or have been given permission to see), then they are unable to view contact records owned by another User. Check with your client admin if you believe you should have access to a contact as they have the ability to share a contact across multiple restricted users if needed. If you're an account administrator that is importing contacts on behalf of a Restricted User, be sure to select their username from the Ownership dropdown box during the Import process, and check the box to transfer ownership to this user:
A physical address is required by CAN-SPAM law to be in every marketing email. This is so that subscribers have the option to unubscribe to your mailings via mail, if they so choose. All senders in the emfluence Marketing Platform are required to be CAN-SPAM compliant, therefore the physical address cannot be removed from your email template. This can, however, be stylized or updated by an emfluence programmer. Please contact your account rep if you'd like to change the address in your email template. Note that as of 2008, PO Box addresses are acceptable.
Once an email has been sent it cannot be recalled from the recipients' inboxes. Contact your account representative for ideas on how to send an "oops" campaign, or how to target openers of the email for a resend.
Broken down by part, here are the criteria that are applied by the Platform when validating email addresses during import:
emfluence undergoes an annual HIPAA risk assessment by an independent third party which includes an annual penetration test. As part of this annual assessment, controls are tested and evaluated against the HIPAA Security rule. The most recent report can be provided upon request. Additionally, as part of this annual assessment, our third-party hosting provide AWS is also evaluated through a review of their SOC 2 report.
Here are a few simple tips to help prevent formatting issues:
Occasionally you may receive a notification that your social media message failed to post. Here are the common reasons why this might occur:
You can use a telephone number in your email. On some mobile inboxes this will allow your recipients to call the number directly when they click the link. You can add this type of link to an image, text, or a button. Rather than use a URL you will simply type 'tel': followed by the number. An example, using the emfluence phone number, would be - tel: 1-816-472-4455. NOTE: This is not supported on all devices and inboxes.
MailScanner is free open-source security software (created primarily for Linux) which, by default, shows any links that use tracking as spam. In order to provide clients with reporting metrics, our links do need to have tracking. If you have an inbox that uses MailScanner there are two options they provide: 1) They recommend turning off the phising checks which result any false positives from all email marketing platforms OR 2) You can add emfluence domains (such as emfluence.com and emailer.emfluence.com) to the MailScanner phishing safe sites list.