Total Confusion on Why Email shows "0 of 680"

[MofDD]

I am not new to online platforms and having to take multiple steps to get things done, but trying to send the initial email to my followers is driving me insane. I really could use help. I'll try to give all of the information/details below, as well as the things I've tried or checked.

BACKGROUND

FIRST PROBLEM

My contacts are not showing on my "All customers" (or any other active list), so I'm having to create a static list in order to send emails... which in and of itself is very frustrating.

SECOND PROBLEM

My list of contacts was created from people at a convention specifically writing out their email addresses to sign up for our mailing list. Which means that a few gave us bad email addresses on purpose... people are people... But more importantly, there are LOTS of people with bad handwriting, so lots of hard bounces.

FIRST ATTEMPT INFORMATION

My first send only went out to 55 people before the system stopped it. I can accept that getting the first email to everyone and clearing out all the bad email addresses will be a process for me. I've changed the Newsletter Subscriber status to "No" on everyone that hard bounced.

FIRST STEP TAKEN

Now I'm trying to send to the remaining 680 people (who didn't receive an email and didn't hard bounce). I've created a new static list with the following filters: 

CHECK OF FIRST STEP

It does show correctly on my lists page:

SECOND STEP

But when I try to use this list to send an email, I get this:

CHECK OF SECOND STEP

You can see that I don't have anything selected in the "Don't send to" field and I don't have unegaged contacts excluded (because everyone is unengaged at this point since this is the first email I'm sending them). I haven't used up my sends for this month (you can see that I still have 1,924 remaining and I'm only trying to send 680).

CONFUSION

Why is the Estimated recipients number showing as 0? 

What else can I check or change? I am completely at a loss.

Debbie

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @MofDD,

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FIRST PROBLEM

My contacts are not showing on my "All customers" (or any other active list), so I'm having to create a static list in order to send emails... which in and of itself is very frustrating.

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Could you share a screenshot of your list criteria? If you're filtering for, for example, "Lifecycle stage is any of Customer" but these contacts were never marked as such, then that would explain an empty list. There might of course be other reasons.

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SECOND PROBLEM

My list of contacts was created from people at a convention specifically writing out their email addresses to sign up for our mailing list. Which means that a few gave us bad email addresses on purpose... people are people... But more importantly, there are LOTS of people with bad handwriting, so lots of hard bounces.

---

This is something you can mitigate by using email validation tools, such as Neverbounce, Zerobounce, EmailHippo, Verifalia etc.

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FIRST ATTEMPT INFORMATION

My first send only went out to 55 people before the system stopped it. I can accept that getting the first email to everyone and clearing out all the bad email addresses will be a process for me. I've changed the Newsletter Subscriber status to "No" on everyone that hard bounced.

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Which error message exactly are you now seeing in the email tool? Is the tool suspended? Are you seeing specific instructions? Changing the subscription status of the bounced contacts might not be what the system is expecting you to do, depending on the instructions. Please share a screenshot of the notice if you can.

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Why is the Estimated recipients number showing as 0? 

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This depends very likely entirely on the message / notice that you should be seeing on the email index page or within the editor. Generally, there are a variety of reasons why sends might be held back, which I've summarized here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Email-Marketing-Tool/recipients-is-less-than-contacts/m-p/1046178/h...

One way of finding out the reason, should you not be seeing an error message and should you not have access to HubSpot support (in-app via chat or email) to confirm, would be to send the email to one contact, then check the Recipients > Not sent section to see the reason why the email was held back.

Best regards

[MofDD]

First, it's very annoying that the community here marked this solution as accepted because I did not accept it as a solution at any point.

Moving on to what you sent...

in response to my FIRST PROBLEM:

I now see all of my contacts as customers. Thank you for that piece of advice.

In response to my SECOND PROBLEM:

This is a non-profit and I don't want to spend any more of their money. I'd rather spend my time and do this manually.

In response to my FIRST ATTEMPT INFORMATION:

This is the email that I received from HubSpot when the send from the Static List ended:

I also received an email with a notice saying that the static list I had created for this email was quarantined. Since I'm not using that list again, I won't include that email here.

I am not seeing any other notice that the tool was suspended, or any other notices on my screen when I try to send the new email (created by cloning the first email, since that one was canceled, I can't try to send from it). 

In response to Why is the Estimated recipients number showing as 0?:

Your post/answer was in regard to an email that has already been sent. I am asking before sending this email, so the instructions on that other post are irrelevant. I created a second static list previously and didn't notice the estimated number of recipients, and it went just fine to the company email I included as a test, but ONLY to that email.

When I look at details for that email, the following shows up:

but when I am sending the next email (that second one was also a clone of the email that was canceled due to too many hard bounces), there is no place to select or de-select Subscription information/type.

So I am still completely at a loss.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

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@MofDD wrote:

This is a non-profit and I don't want to spend any more of their money. I'd rather spend my time and do this manually.

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Perfectly understandable, but keep in mind that you're making a decision on assumed risk and further bounces could lead, see the HubSpot email, to a permanent suspension of the email tool.

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@MofDD wrote:

In response to Why is the Estimated recipients number showing as 0?:

Your post/answer was in regard to an email that has already been sent. I am asking before sending this email, so the instructions on that other post are irrelevant.

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They are not irrelevant, these are all things you could check and verify that they are set up correctly before sending the email.

Alternatively, as I mentioned in my previous reply:

One way of finding out the reason, should you not be seeing an error message and should you not have access to HubSpot support (in-app via chat or email) to confirm, would be to send the email to one contact, then check the Recipients > Not sent section to see the reason why the email was held back.

These are the options. Either you check all potential reasons before sending yourself (see linked thread), you reach out to HubSpot support (only possible in paid subscriptions), or you send another email to a small sample of contacts with email addresses you know to be valid to identify the exact error message in the Recipients > Not sent section.

At the moment, there simply is no feature that tells you exactly why emails will not be sent. Other users have requested this from the product team and they might be working on it but as of now, it simply does not exist.

(Don't shoot the messenger. This is a user-to-user community, I do not work for HubSpot, I write these replies in my free time.)