Troubleshooting Classic Automations

If your classic automation isn’t sending as expected, there are a few things to look for. For example, some emails may be paused, or your store may be disconnected. You may also want to review the segment and schedule settings of your email.

In this article, you’ll learn how to check for issues with your automation.

Things to know

Here are some things to know before you troubleshoot your automation.

• Subscribed contacts will only trigger and receive the emails in a classic automation once, with the exception of date-based automations and abandoned cart emails.
• When you pause a single email in an activity-based automation, other emails in the automation continue to send as expected. We'll hold contacts in the paused email's queue. When you resume the email, those contacts will continue through the automation. To learn more about how automation works in Mailchimp, read About Classic Automations.
• Classic Automations are only available to accounts that have previously created a classic automation.

Classic automation testing tips

Testing is an important part of troubleshooting. The process for testing varies based on the trigger you use. In most cases, you can trigger an automation to send to your own inbox to see how it looks. Check out these testing tips to find out more.

• Trigger your classic automation.
  After the workflow is activated, perform the action that sets off the automation. For example, if you have a welcome automation, you’ll need to subscribe to your audience with your signup form. This will trigger the automated email.
• Be sure to test with a unique email address.
  For many classic automations in Mailchimp, a single subscriber can only go through your workflow once. This means if someone has received the automation in the past, they can’t get it again. This is true even if you delete an address from your audience and re-add it.
• Use temporary Gmail addresses for testing.
  Most people only have a couple of email addresses, so it can be difficult to test your automation more than a few times. Gmail offers a handy tool that allows you to generate unlimited temporary email aliases. All mail sent to the temporary alias will be delivered to your regular email inbox. To create a new email alias, add a plus sign (+) and additional numbers or letters to your Gmail address. Here's an example.

After you’ve triggered your classic automation, it should arrive in your inbox at the delay time specified in the automation builder. If it’s not working as expected after you test, continue through this article to review common solutions.

Review status

Next to the name of each classic automation, we'll display a label to indicate its sending status, so you can quickly tell whether things are working as expected.

Here’s a rundown of each status, and what your next steps might be.

Review segment

In some cases, a contact may not receive a classic automation email because they don't fit its segmenting conditions.

If you expected a specific contact to receive an email, review their subscriber profile page to verify they meet the right segmenting conditions.

To change the segmenting conditions for an email, pause the email and click Edit segment.

Make sure to resume the email after you've made your update.

Edit Classic Automation Emails

Review schedule

If you've made changes to the scheduling settings for your emails, you may find that people don't receive emails at the times you expected.

Date-based automations, like birthdays, can be especially tricky. Since those emails have to go out on specific days, relative to the trigger date, if you limit what days of the week your emails can be delivered, you could skip contacts whose next email should arrive on a day you've opted not to send.

This is also the case with limiting the time of day you send. If someone triggers your automation during the sending period, but the next delayed email in the series would be sent outside of the sending period, it will queue up for the next available send time.

To change the schedule for an email, pause the email and click Edit schedule.

Make sure to resume the email after you've made your update.

Edit Classic Automation Emails