Best Practice: Check Your Target Groups

To prevent failed and delayed mailings, you should always verify that your target groups are receiving accurate counts before a mailing is sent. In this article, you'll learn how to perform this critical check, learn a few best practices, and troubleshoot common errors.

When creating or editing a mailing in the Mailing Designer, you'll need to select a target group in the To Information section of the Set-Up tab.

After doing so, check the subscriber count to make sure Informz is connected and synced to your iMIS database. Click View Details to see the count and other information for the subscribers in the target group.

If there is no subscriber count, there could be a connection issue; see Bridge Connection.

Best Practice: View Intended Recipient Information

When you're ready to publish a mailing via Mailing Designer, navigate to the Send tab and click View subscribers receiving this mailing. The resulting pop-up provides a count of subscribers in the target group and lists numbers for those who won’t be getting the mailing due to opt-outs and other reasons. This can be useful when using compound target groups, multiple target groups, and multiple opt-out lists.

Troubleshooting: Bridge Connection

To determine whether there is a problem with the Informz bridge to your integration database, navigate to Admin > Check Bridge Status. This page will display the current connection status.

Successful Connection

Unsuccessful Connection

Troubleshooting: Error Messages

NOTE: Higher Logic recommends that clients who are not using an IPSec tunnel for their Informz connection start to do so. If there has been a change to your IP address and you're not on an IPSec tunnel, now is the ideal time to make the change.

If you see error messages, check your settings in your iMIS database. Before opening a support case with Higher Logic, first follow any instructions on the page.

• IPSec - If an IPSec tunnel is being used, the Check Bridge Status page will not be able to diagnose the problem; in this case, please create a case.
• IQA Queries - There are other considerations when using IQA queries (see iMIS IQA Troubleshooting in iMIS_IQA).
• In any bridge repair situation, Higher Logic support will ask about the following settings.
• IP address - Informz won’t be able to connect if the IP address that is used to access the database has been changed. This can happen after changing Internet Service Providers, for example. Higher Logic support will need to know the new IP address. If you're uncertain of what settings Informz is using, create a case.
• Firewall settings - Ensure that the firewall is open on your iMIS database server to accept Informz traffic using TCP connections from IP 205.201.40.0 /29 (255.255.255.248). The standard port is 1433, but this can be any port, so be sure to know what the port is.
  Customers that are hosted in the Canadian data center should use IP 205.201.45.0 /29 (255.255.255.248).
• Database name and password - If the name of the database or the password has been changed, Informz will not be able to connect and sync. Make sure that you know the database name and password.

Best Practice: Sync your Database

Once the iMIS bridge is back up, check your target group counts prior to publishing a mailing. If errors are encountered or subscribers are missing, sync your database with Informz. From the Informz dashboard go to Subscribers > Upload > Sync Informz with iMIS. The following pop-up appears:

Best Practice: Rebuild Target Groups

After a sync, you should also rebuild your Target Groups to make sure they include all subscriber changes. To do so, navigate to Subscribers > Groups > Target Groups and click Rebuild all iMIS Target Groups. The rebuilding process may take a few minutes.

In addition, there is a button to Refresh Available IQA Target Groups (see iMIS IQA Troubleshooting in iMIS_IQA) if that's enabled in your account.

Higher Logic Support

Higher Logic support has access to additional settings that may need to be changed. They can help you determine the cause of the iMIS bridge being inoperative or generating errors.