InterAction Email FAQ

Add an email address in the form editor which will email each form submission to one ore more email addresses. Enter the email addresses you want to receive this in the Form Settings tab of the Form Editor in the Email Form To field. This can be a single email or a multiple emails separated by semicolons.
If you only want to receive a notification when certain criteria are met, e.g. particular options have been selected in the form, then Form Notifications will allow you to do this. See the Form Notifications support page for more information on how to set this up

2. How do I send an email notification when someone completes certain options in a form?

Please click here to see a short video explaining how to to create email notifications for your email campaigns.

3. What is the difference between a blank form and a pre-filled form?

Pre-filled form - This will populate the user's details which will be fed through interaction or CSV file.

Blank form - This will disconnect the form from any client therefore if the user enters their details the same as InterAction for example it will just amend their current contact although if they enter it differently this will create a new contact in InterAction.

This type of form would be used as a link to click through from the pre-filled form to ensure that any recipients forwarding the email will not overwrite the original recipient's details.

4. How are email opens and links clicked tracked?

Vuture, like all email platforms, records an Email Open when the recipient either downloads images in an email or clicks on a link. It is important to understand that open rates are not 100% accurate because they are limited by these factors and since it depends on downloading images, recording an Open can only occur if the recipient’s email client is capable of displaying images in email and images are not blocked. Clicking a link will always record an Open with 100% accuracy so it is good practice to encourage your recipients to click through to content. This has the added benefit of indicating engagement to the recipient’s ISP, which can also help deliverability rates.

From a technical point of view each email sent includes a 1x1 pixel tracking image at the bottom of the email. When this image is loaded from Vuture it is requested with a unique identifier in the querystring which identifies the contact and the email being opened. Each link in a sent email is rewritten to go via Vuture's email handler page and includes both the destination URL and the same unique identifier which allows us to record the contact and the email they clicked through from in our link clicked reporting. Note that cookies are not used for tracking in the email module unless you are using our web tracking functionality.

5. Will search engines index my email campaign content?

There is a robots.txt file at the root of the URL used for your email campaigns with rules that tell search engines not to index the content. You can view this file by going to {MyFrontEndURL}/robots.txt (e.g. https://sites-mycompany.vuturevx.com/robots.txt). The default is:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Well-behaved search engines should respect these rules and not index the content.

However, since these URLs are publicly available it is possible for anyone who knows the URL to view the content.

It is possible to customise the robots.txt file so that certain containers or campaigns are accessible to search engines and help with SEO.

6. Does forward to a friend work in send test?

The system doesn't record test sends in the database so we don't have the infomation required to be able to use forward to a friend.

7.Can I use animated GIFs in my email campaign?

Animated GIFs can be used in email campaigns but many email clients will not animate them (e.g. Outlook) and will only display the first frame, so make sure the first frame of the animation is suitable to be displayed as a static image.

There is no specific spam issue with using animated GIFs but they can be larger in file size than normal images which can set off spam filters.

Animated GIFs can't be uploaded using the normal image library uploader as they will be converted to static images. You can upload them manually if you have access to the HTML Admin feature otherwise contact Support who can assist you.

8.Why should we set up the bounce folder for 3 successive bounces?

A Soft Bounce is a bounce that fails for what is considered a temporary reason. So something like a mail box being full or the server being temporarily down falls in these categories.

A Hard bounce is a permanent bounce. It happens when a domain doesn't exist or an email address has an error or the user stopped existing.

The processing works in this way: we send the email out, if it bounces, the server that bounced it (didn't take it) returns the message to us with an explanation of why it failed.

Unfortunately there are only guide lines on how each reason for a bounce should be marked, there aren't absolute rules that every server follows. So, whilst a server can mark one bounce as soft, another can mark the same bounce as a hard. This means that something like a server being temporarily down can get marked (and is often) sent back as a hard bounce. And there are several other problems that get marked usually as a hard bounce that just indicate communication problems between servers or bad configuration of the recipients' servers, that usually get well configured after some time.

A clearer example is when a mail fails the send and gets returned, we keep trying to send it for a period of time in certain intervals. After that time finishes, we mark the email as hard bounced with a "delivery attempts exceeded" error. This means that during this time the recipient's server didn't answer, but it might be a problem that lasted more than 3 or 4 days and that will later be fixed.

The adding to the bounce list is a "fail safe" security mechanism that will allow you to try to send to an email address 3 times, even if the first results were hard bounces, just to assure that it isn't a "false positive" on marking it as "do not send again".

9. Why are my emails not being tracked?

No opens will be tracked if the email has no body tag as we add the tracking image to closing </body> tag of our emails.

If you have created your own email templates please check that they contain <body> tags.

10. Do recipients receive plain text emails?

We send emails by default as multi-part with both the HTML version and a plain text version that is automatically generated from the HTML. If the recipient's email client only supports plain text then they will see the plain text version. You can see the plain text version of the email by clicking on email options then plain-text (if this is not visible contact your administrator or Vuture support since you may not have access).

11. How do I whitelist my Vuture server so that internal emails are not blocked?

To avoid emails from Vuture getting blocked or marked as spam by your internal mail systems you should whitelist your sending return-path/bounceback address and optionally your sending IP address (although sending IP address may change).

You can get your sending domain from the "Admin.Settings.Emails.Bounceback Address" configuration setting - it is the domain to the right of the "@".

You can usually get your Vuture sending IP by clicking on the "External DNS" button against the "Admin.Settings.Emails.HELO" configuration setting. However we recommend this is confirmed by using the process in FAQ 14 since some clients' email is routed via alternative mail servers.

Please contact Vuture Support or your Account Manager for help with getting this information.

You can provide this information to your IT department so they can add this exception to your internal mail systems.

12. Does the type of From address affect spam checkers?

Some spam checkers do look at the from email address and apply a small weighting if it looks likes a generic address rather than a personal address. In our experience this is a low rating compared to other factors such as the content of the email. A recipient may also be more likely to whitelist what looks like a personal From address but again this much more likely to be driven by whether they opted in to the email or it has valuable content that they want to engage with.

13. How do we record the open rates of our sent emails?

When we display totals of email opens in a campaign and/or monthly stats or when we display an open time, we are always considering just the first open.

We do record multiple opens on each email, but we only display that information in the compound view report.

14. How do I lookup my sending IP address?

To find your sending IP address send yourself a test or real email from the system. The sending IP address can be found in the message headers.

To find the message headers use the information in this link https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22454?hl=en . For Outlook 2013 open the email, click on File, Properties and you can see the headers in the box called "internet headers".

To make the headers easier to read you can paste them into this tool: https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/ - select the "Message Analyzer" tab and paste in the message headers. Look for the submitting host for the first hop and this will give you the sending IP address.

15. Why can my forms can be submitted without required fields?

If your forms are not being validated correctly (e.g. they can be submitted without required fields or email validation is not being checked) it is likely the validation script has been applied incorrectly or has not been added to the form at all.

There is an automated way to ensure that form validation scripts are always applied. This can be enabled in "Admin.System.Forms.Force Validation". This will automatically load a centralised JavaScript file called bootstrap.js into all your forms which will check for validation before a form can be submitted.

16. How can I rename my campaign?

If you go into your campaign, website or brochure and select "options" from the top left icons then select "properties" you can rename your existing title.

17. My form is not writing back to InterAction?

If your form is not writing back to InterAction this could be caused by any of the below. Please ensure you check these:.

The email you are testing was sent by using the "Send test" button - if so this will not write back to your InterAction.

Ensure that the field names within your form are referring to InterAction fields and not standard fields. For example: IA_FirstName or IA_LastName

If you are viewing the form online through the platform you will not see any of your prefilled values although if submitted it will either try to match a existing contact or create a new contact within your InterAction or create a ticket.

18. Am I able to recall an email that has been sent?

If you have already sent an email to your distribution list there is no way to recall that email. (There is now a Pause Email Send button available. Contact your Account Manager to discuss.)

If you have scheduled an email to send at a certain time you can cancel the mailing by pressing "cancel email" this will put a copy of the email back into the compose email folder for you.

19. How can I add calendar invites to my email?

See this helpdesk page for details.

20. What other personalisation fields can be used in the text editor?

The following personalisation fields can be used in the text editor and are visible by default:

{Email} {First Name} {Last Name} {Goes By} {Company} {Job Title} {From Name} {From Email} {From Job Title} {Title} {Date}

The following fields can be enabled by contacting support (who can enable them in "Admin.Settings.Edit Options"):

{Salutation} {Middle Name} {Suffix} {IA:ContactId}

The following fields can be manually typed into the text editor but are not currently available in the dropdown:

{Address 1} {Telephone} or {Phone} {Mobile}

21. What are international spam laws?

Please see the link below for detailed information regarding international data laws including spam compliance:

http://uk.practicallaw.com/resources/multi-jurisdictional-guides/dataprotection-mjg

Section 19 for each country explains the requirements which are imposed on the sending of unsolicited electronic commercial communications (spam) by each country.

22. How can I advise recipients to whitelist my emails so they don't get caught in spam filters?

There are usually two places where emails get blocked or caught in spam filters:

Firstly the recipient's email client (e.g. Outlook) can mark email as junk, which can happen automatically or by the recipient choosing to block specific senders. If your problem is with individuals at a given organisation (rather than everyone at the organisation) you can ask recipients to add you to their Safe Senders list.

Secondly the organisation you are sending to will have mail gateways that scan incoming email and use rules to decide whether to block or allow mail through. To avoid being blocked, which can happen inadvertently, the organisation's email administrators can add a rule to allow your mail through.

In both cases you should provide both the "Display From" address - which is the from email address you choose when sending the email - and the "Bounce Address" which is the underlying email address that the email is sent from and to which bouncebacks are sent back - this is unique to your instance of the platform and Vuture support or your account manager can provide you with this information. Ask your recipients and/or the organisation's email administrator to whitelist the domains for both of those "From" emails addresses.

23. How can I show only certain type of InterAction folders when selecting which one to send an email to?

By default all InterAction folders that the user has access to are displayed when getting the list of folders on the email send screen.

There are two option for filtering the folder list that is displayed in Vuture.

1. Only show folders with the Folder Class of Marketing List

2. Create a more complex filter on the folders to be displayed using an XPath expression.

See this article for more information on both of these options

24. What happens if Vuture loses connection to InterAction?

Vuture Users

Vuture users would be unable to load InterAction lists or edit forms linked to InterAction until InterAction becomes available again.
Any email sends that were in progress would continue if all the required data has been downloaded from InterAction but email send activities would be queued until InterAction comes back up again.
Any email sends that were in the middle of downloading from InterAction will retry the send 5 times before failing. Vuture support will contact you if there is a failed send that cannot be restarted.

Email Recipients

Email recipients can open emails normally and email open activities will be queued and written back to InterAction when it comes back up.
Links in email can be clicked normally and the recipient will be taken through to the relevant page. Link clicked activities will be queued and written back to InterAction when it comes back up.
Recipients will be able to access forms, however whilst connectivity is lost only the core contact information of name(s) and email address would populate in the form, and this would be the only indication to recipient that there was an issue.
Recipients can submit forms as normal. The information they submit will be queued and written back to InterAction once connectivity is restored. This form submission data can be accessed from Vx through the page form statistics if you need access to it before InterAction is back up. (Find the icon called View Stats on the RSVP form).
Note that Vuture monitors InterAction connectivity using a monitoring system called Nagios which is located independently to the core Vuture servers. We are notified when a firm’s InterAction is down and when it recovers again. Our team reaches out to clients when we receive these messages. Please contact us if you wish to subscribe to these messages.

25. What are the consequences if we need to take our InterAction down for a period of time?

If your InterAction is being taken down for maintenance then be aware that users will not be able to send mailings during this this time from the platform. Please read this article about pausing your InterAction queue if the downtime is likely to be more than 1 hour.

26. If the activity for an RSVP is writing back correctly however the additional field from the mailing list itself is blank what should I check?

Please ensure that the InterAction Vuture Account has full access to your InterAction list with permissions that allow it to write back additional field values.

27. If a contact has been sent an invite and then makes changes to their details, Vuture Administrator is automatically added as a sponsor in IA

When we call the InterAction “addToList” method the Vuture account is added as a sponsor.

This happens automatically and we do not yet have a workaround from Lexis Nexis.

28. How do I find out where Vuture is sourcing our new contacts?

If you contact a member of the support team they can give you the folder ID and name of the location all new contacts are being sourced into if you cannot locate it within your IA.

29. How do I get notified if the connection to InterAction is down?

Click here for instructions on how to get this set up

30. How do I clear test form submissions?

Click here for instructions on how to delete form submission data

31. Which versions of InterAction are supported?

Our integration works with InterAction from version 5.1 to the current version. Click here for more information.

32. Sorting an list of InterAction contacts by email address from the email send screen is only sorting them per page

If your system is configured to download your InterAction list in pages then Vuture can only sort them on per page basis. This setting is controlled from "Admin.System.InterAction.Enable list paging" and is usually enabled to speed up the the display of contacts on the send email screen by not downloading them all at once. If this setting is disabled then the whole list is loaded and it is then possible to sort the full list.

33. What is the best of way of shortening links to my landing page and emails?

Vuture has a built in link shortener that provides a Short URL for every email and page. See this helpdesk article for more details on how to get the Short URL

Be careful if you choose to use other link shortening services in email links as they can be particularly sensitive to email reported as spam which then causes the link to be disabled by the link shortener. Goo.gl (Google's URL shortener) is particularly bad for this.

34. What order are emails sent in?

Emails to InterAction lists are sent alphabetically by surname. This has the advantage of randomising the send across recipient domains which can help with sending too much email to a single recipient server in a short space of time.

Throttling which restricts the number of emails sent to a particular domain in a given time period can vary this order.

35. What should I do if I am planning on upgrading my InterAction Application Server?

Please see the following helpdesk article

36. What domains are used in an email?

Each email can contain three different domains:

From Address - This is the address the humans will see and reply to, unless you specify a different Reply-to Address. It will typically be the address of someone in your own mail system that the person receiving the email will recognise as "friendly" such as someone they know e.g. John.D.Attorney@example.com or a generic marketing address such as communications@example.com
Return Path (Bounce) Address - This address is normally only seen and replied-to by the recipients' mail server which will return (bounce) the email to this address if it doesn't recognise the recipient, believes the email to be spam or blocks the mail for some other reason, e.g. the email is too large or it is seeing too many emails from the sender in a short period of time. By default this will be from a domain unique to your Vuture instance, such as @999.vx-email.com where 999 is the id of your Vuture instance. The part to the left of the @ sign is usually varied uniquely per email sent so that each bounce can be correctly matched up to the original email.
Link URLs - the third domain is the URL used for links and by default is in the format: sites-example.vuturevx.com (where example is the name of your organisation). This URL is used as a source for the images in the emails and as the web server URL if the recipient clicks on a link.

If you or your IT department would like to increase the "friendliness" of your emails, all of the domain names can customised using addresses more recognisably part of your brand, for example the Link URL could become "comms.example.com" and the Return Path domain "@marketing.example.com". Please contact your account manager if you are interested in using URLs like this.

37.What causes the activity time stamp of an InterAction activity created by Vuture to be before its creation date?

Most InterAction activities are written back asynchronously through a queue which allows us to throttle the number of requests being sent to your InterAction thus reducing the load. When creating an activity we always write the timestamp as the time the event (e.g. Email Sent) happened and because it can take time for all the activities to write back through the queue this timestamp will often be earlier than the creation time of the activity.

38. Why are my client records being disassociated from their companies?

See this helpdesk article

InterAction Email FAQ

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