GD Ratings & Reviews - Mail After settings

[Ron Frigon]

The customer follow-up email, EMAIL_GD_FOLLOWUP, does not appear to be sending.

It's not mentioned in the docs, but does this template need to be a "Template Based email"? Currently it's just a "Page". Since the module has it's own "Send After x Days" setting I'm assuming we don't need a scheduled task to trigger it?

What should I be looking for?

[MGWben]

Hey Ron,

Correct, this module does not utilize a scheduled task to send and it does use the EMAIL_GD_FOLLOWUP page as the template for the email.

I assume that within your GD Ratings & Reviews Settings that EMAIL_GD_FOLLOWUP is set for the Follow Up Email Page Code value?

One thing I trialed-and-errored with this module was how it determines when to send. I do believe the module sends emails like this:
1) When an order is placed, it creates a record in the GD Review's database with the order number and timestamp of when it was placed
2) Depending on your Mail After Settings in the module, one of two things
- Send X Days After Order Date (self explanatory)
- Send X Days After Shipment Date (when an order is marked as shipped in Miva, a new timestamp is added in the GD Review's database)
3) The module determine if to send the email or not:

Since the GD Review module works on its own internal logic and is not governed by Scheduled Tasks, this is what I have come to find out about the module:
1. The module fires its check of pending orders in the s01_GD_Ratings_Pending_Orders table when the review module is activated on the site. i.e. the product page is loaded which has the review snippet incorporated.
2. When the check fires, I believe it sees the last time it sent emails (via the most recent last_emailed_at timestamp value). The module only seems to progress if its been over 30 minutes or an hour since the last send. Now this return after checking may be due to page caching, but testing with a flushed cache seems to still not send out emails shortly after previous ones have sent.
3. When the module has met it's conditions to send review emails, it only sends 50 at a time - the first 50 that qualify for emails to be sent.


So,
Assuming that your module settings are correct and that the EMAIL_GD_FOLLOWUP does not have any errors on it, an email should send (or at least initiate a send check) when the PROD page is loaded thus initiating the module.

Do you have a lot of orders that are expected to have had this Review Email sent to?
Have you included UTM's in the links of the email so that when users click in the email and get to the site, your Analytics picks of the event? (a good way to see how effective these emails can be)


-Benjamin
-MGW

[Ron Frigon]

Thank you for the great followup Benjamin.

I should be getting a BCC of the email when it sends. I'm not receiving any at all. It's a high traffic site which processes a lot of orders daily so it should be sending many emails daily.

I have the correct page code value. Mail after is set to 21 days after shipped. We use Shipstation, orders in Miva do get marked as shipped.

This may be the root of the issue. The s01_GD_Ratings_Pending_Orders table is empty. The gd_ratings item is assigned to INVC.

[MGWben]

Well, that certainly is the issue of why emails are not being sent, that database table should have data in to correspond with the placed orders.

Did you also initiate the GD Ratings tracking item at the bottom of the INVC template before the closing body tag?
Looking at the install doc, I don't see it mentioning this... but I believe this is how the module initializes the tracking of the order in the SQL database.
Perhaps when Miva took over this mod, this was left out of the install docs? Nick is this accurate?


The Miva expression that follows has been placed around the item to ensure that if you view the INVC page via the View All Tokens from the admin-side of Miva that the GD Review module does not alter that order's GD Review record.

<mvt:if expr="NOT( g.Module_Function EQ 'TokenList_ViewAll_Page')">
<mvt:item name="gd_ratings" param="track" />
</mvt:if>


-Benjamin
-MGW

[Ron Frigon]

Well, that could certainly be the problem. No, that is not in the docs.

Thank you for the missing item, and the expression. I wouldn't have thought of that. I'll add this now and check the table again later.

TY!

[MGWben]

Absolutely Ron!

I do hope that works.

Also, if you every use a dev site on a webstore that is using this module you'll have to truncate that s01_GD_Ratings_Pending_Orders table in the dev store's database.
Otherwise, the module will be sending review emails from the dev store domain as well! Aside from dupe emails being sent, depending on the way you structure your email template, dev site urls would also be included which we of course never want sent to end-users.

[Ron Frigon]

Thanks for the Pro tip on the Dev issue. I don't believe I have it installed there but will double check.

[Ron Frigon]

It looks like the fix is in. There's data going into the s01_GD_Ratings_Pending_Orders table now.

Thank you Benjamin!

Miva, please update the docs...

[MGWben]

Awesome to hear Ron!

I hope that in 21 days those emails go out, hit their mark and give some good conversion!

[MGWben]

Hey Ron,
It's been a bit since your changes, have review emails gone out accordingly for you?

[Ron Frigon]

Hey Benjamin,
Well, according to the DB it appears to be working correctly and emails have been sent. Email Error is all null... But I'm not getting the bcc copy, so I don't know. Shipped Date and Last Emailed At are populated. I do know that we haven't received any new reviews.

[MGWben]

It looks like the DB is acting correctly.
If you have a test order that is included in that database, you can change the timestamp of the shipped_date value of that order to a date older than your 21 day setting and have the last_emailed_at value to null.
This should force the review system to send another email for that order. Of course do this on a test order. If you have a test order that is not marked as shipped, I believe you can add the timestamp in the shipped_date column for that order to make the review system think that it has shipped.

Do you use UTM's in the email links so that you can track user activity via your analytics?

Not sure of your order volume, but conversion rates for these emails are typically on the low side but I would think that there would be some that leave a review.

[Ron Frigon]

Hey Benjamin,

Circling back to this... I haven't had a chance to do much testing... I like your idea so I might try that.

I don't see any UTM links in this email, so I've added them.

I removed the bcc email address on Monday and we've suddenly started receiving reviews. Maybe that field is buggy?

They ship 100+ orders a day so even if the conversion was really bad we would have gotten at least one review...

I'll do some testing with email bcc and without and let you know the results.

[Ron Frigon]

I was able to confirm with some testing that the review email is getting sent. The bcc email is not. I used a couple different email addresses for bcc and neither of them received the email in my testing.

[MGWben]

Hey Ron,

I'm glad the emails are confirmed sending and that reviews are coming in. I have not used the BCC field so your assertion that the field may be buggy certainly holds water!

I don't think there would be anything additional to setup for BCC to work. One could assume that it just also adds that email into the header when the module creates and pushes the email.

Fortunately, having a BCC is not crucial in most cases and may only serve as company spam once it is established that review emails are sending good and bringing folks back to the site.