About mchristo

In addition to what Nichelle said, you might not want to remove "Other Bounce Type" either.  If you take a good look at some of those contact's Engagement records, you'll see that after registering an Other Bounce, they also registered an Open.  That's always driven me nuts, but it's the truth.   Michael ... View more

Oh, you don't enjoy clicking TAB 16 times?   Michael ... View more

I'm confused.  Were you EVER able to search for campaigns?   Michael ... View more

Is Constant Contact expanding into banking?   Michael ... View more

Yeah.  Are all these things actually stored in separate tables?  I wouldn't think so.  Even if they are, write us a select query with whatever multiple joins or appends are needed to give us an exportable file and a screen view that would show, for example,   [Email Address] [Response Date/Time] [Response Category] [Response Data Primary] [Response Data Secondary] example1@whatever.com, 10/24/2016 5:53 AM, Bounce, Non-Existent [ ] example2@whatever.com, 10/24/2016 5:53 AM, Open, [name of newsletter] [ ] example2@whatever.com, 10/24/2016 5:55 AM, Click, [link that was clicked on] [ ] example2@whatever.com, 10/24/2016 6:03 AM, Click, [link that was clicked on] [ ] example3@whatever.com, 10/24/2016 6:36 AM, Open, [name of newsletters] [ ] example3@whatever.com, 10/24/2016 6:38 AM, Unsubscribe [name of newsletter] [Unsubscribe Reason]   You can be creative with this, but I'd also at least want to see the Sents in such a file, which would allow me to figure out the Did Not Opens on my own.  Users who don't have a need for data compiled this way wouldn't have to use it.  For others who can work with it, it would save the time of handling and manipulating the separate files as we often must do for keeping data in another system in sync, and doing external reporting.   Michael ... View more

What if you type it in, save it, go back in and edit it, and then set it to Unsubscribe?   Michael ... View more

In reply to your actual question, which isn't necessarily a rhetorical one (and this is just a guess from another user): if I am recalling the timing of things with any accuracy, I believe this latest generation editor was already well into development when the ability to change a campaign name was added to the previous-generation editor.  So, the idea and capability of renaming campaigns didn't even exist in the plans for this latest version was it was mapped out.  But why it wasn't worked in while programming was in progress?  I don't know.   Over the years I have seen other useful existing features and capabilities dropped upon upgrade, and maybe this could be one reason.   Michael ... View more

Ah yes, what KanetteG mentions is a better way to get at your bounces and other performance lists if you need to work with more than one campaign at a time.  Thank you for that.   And yes, since the Reports page limits you to the last 50 emails, if you need to get at something ealier, you will find yourself in that Sisyphean world of hurt known as "View more campaigns."  Sorry about that.   Michael ... View more

Although I expect more, I understand if there is no other route for my statement than the usual feedback channel.  However, something that might benefit Constant Contact is to recognize and distinguish in the feedback process between what users truly suggest as feature requests, and what we complain about as feature or programmatic failures.  These are two different phenomena, and your recognizing that might help you better prioritize design changes to the system.   And maybe you already do that, but you're not transparent about it.  But you should be, because you see the frustration and impatience of users who ask what's up with a fix for something like "View more campaigns," yet you offer no public information about what plans or programming are in progress to ameliorate a problem that is wasting--collectively--thousands of hours of user time and, therefore, tens of millions of dollars in user wages that could be spent more productively.   Michael     ... View more

Shouldn't this one be a Closed - Implemented? The newest system allows a basic comparison between emails of our selection, pretty much just how she described in this post.   Michael ... View more

I don't know anything about the old IE 10 issue, but the rest of the problems and inconveniences discussed under this post still stand today.  Just for the record.   Michael ... View more

Darn.  That idea was worth following through on.   Michael ... View more

I'll vote to delete some of those! ... View more

If you click on a campaign title, the next screen has the clickable numbers to open the Opened, Sent, Clicks, Bounces, and so on.   On the Campaigns list screen, there's enough room (at least as I view it on my system now) to hold a quick link for Bounces, right next to the already existing Open Rate and Click Rate.  Would be nice to have such a Bounces link there.   Michael ... View more

I used to struggle with this matter, too.  I understand it now, I think; therefore:   We need to receive confirmation when an email address goes from Temporary Hold to Indefinite Hold.  Something like a change in status from Suspended to Non-Existent.  Because according to the logic, we could see 10 Suspended bounces in a row and still not be sure if it's truly suspended forever, or just under a more recently instituted, new 15-day suspension (which it could be if there is an intermittent problem such that email to that address was delivered successfully by another client on the first attempt following the prior 15-day suspension, before bouncing as Non-Existent once again a day or two after that).   Communication with our customers, our clients and vendors, our donors and volunteers--this is how we do our business.  Apparently you know when our avenue of contact has been closed down, but you don't provide a programmed solution to let us know as well.  All the thousands of your clients shouldn't individually have to check with the special deliverability team about such instances.  The data should be available in the interface we all use.   This is not something that needs to be voted on, and it's not feedback that should be passed to the appropriate teams.  It is literally the name of this company and its product.  So I am not saying we want to receive a confirmation.  I'm saying we need it, and I believe we deserve it.   Michael ... View more

Can you work around the back-and-forth by copying all the links you need to a Notepad file first? ... View more

After you click Print, does your print dialogue box open, or does it just print straight away? A dialogue box opens for me, where on any print job I can select a different printer than the default, or save as a file.  I use Foxit PhantomPDF, and in the dialogue box I choose that program instead of running the job to an actual printer.  The file opens as a PDF.   Michael ... View more

Oh man, this could be a problem with serious consequences.  And it already looks like one step forward, two steps back. Usually I'd advise not tinkering with an interface or the import tools until the database has been properly redesigned.  In this particular case, I'd advise at about 120 db. But I guess I'm a little too late with that.   Michael   ... View more

...with use of wildcards in the search string. ... View more

I also have some experience with databases, and with some other web-based products that have half a million users; yet they allow us to modify the default views and run custom SQL all day long.  Want a sort by Sent Date?  My choice.  Want Modified or Created or Scheduled Date instead?  My pleasure.  Want Alpha order with the exclusion of anything starting with the letter "S" that also happened to have a Sent Date before June 2015?  A little tinkering to create the necessary filter, but ultimately no problem.   The limitation isn't in what a product with a back-end database can do, but in what the design and programming of THIS product can do.   Michael ... View more

If the back end has a healthy relational database as I understand it must, the necessary SQL could probably be dashed out before a cup of coffee got too cold.  But I imagine the difficulty would be programming those results into the rest of the product in a way that users could have at them.  I have no idea about that kind of programming and how dicey it can get when little tweaks wreak havoc across the entire system.  For example, users have overwhelmingly requested a Campaigns search feature for years, but apparently it's too difficult or dangerous to implement.  But I think your idea would be a satisfying project to improve the reporting.  If I were asked by my boss to do it, I might even be heard to utter the words, "Hey, this could be fun."   Such an enhancement would also keep me from having to do 20 hours of my own work with a custom database to get those numbers.   Michael ... View more

Which pipeline is it in?  I know they most frequently use that one that goes out to Neptune and back.  Hopefully they're using the one that only goes to Mars.   Michael ... View more

It is only the most-voted feature suggestion in the history of the Community forums.  It makes me doubt how faithfully Constant Contact prioritizes system designs/enhancements based on Community input, as they say.   Michael ... View more

Ok, so no technical details then.  But how about this: We have a dozen or so deleted draft campaign emails in the Deleted folder that were created prior to 2013, although I can see they've all been given an erroneous Creation Date of October 31, 2013.  That fake date was probably assigned by you--I'm guessing--to keep them in our system after the pre-March 2013 purge.  I'm tempted (like a compulsive gambler), and am considering clicking "Restore" on one of them, just to see what I can do with it in design mode, and what happens in the system.  Is this a bad idea?  Will there be consequences?   Michael ... View more

I'm interested in the details of the incompatibility between pre-March 2013 campaigns and those after.  What technical information can you share about that?  A detailed explanation could go a long way to making it understandable and possibly acceptable to many clients.   Unfortunately (or perhaps rather fortunately) I'm not a good prospect for participating in user studies right now: someone else in my organization does all the campaign design--I haven't created one of my own in three or four years--I'm just the guy who works with the Contacts data.  But maybe the next time you overhaul that area of the system, I could certainly provide feedback.  How are users notified of the opportunities to participate?   Michael ... View more

It does tab elsewhere at first, but if you tab three times out of the password field and then hit enter or spacebar, you'll be activating that orange Log In bar.   Michael ... View more

Bounce count is subtracted from Send count before Opens is divided by Sends.  So you had either 3 or 4 bounces.  Correct?   Michael ... View more

Terri, the tactic of saving past campaigns as drafts won't also save the results associated with each email.  You can probably see that yourself, but I don't know why Constant Contact doesn't point that out, because some customers will make their copies and then only when it's too late notice that they've lost all the counts on Sents, Opens, Clicks.  No one wants hundreds of drafts cluttering up the system, so I just went back through all the emails one by one to save the performance numbers of each, so I can continue to do some sort of historical analysis that goes back further than 2013 and/or 50 emails.  Of course now that that data will be in two different places, it'll be a little less convenient to work with.  But I don't think convenience has been very important around here for a few years.   It's unfortunate, but here in the forums most questions about the whys and wherefores are treated as rhetorical.  I've been asking for months about who (if anyone) provides the functional input and testing on their new designs during planning, programming, and before rollout, and I haven't heard a thing.  That's the area that needs the most improvement, along with better (read "any") transparency and user feedback concerning changes being planned or already in development.  A beta team of miscreants and cavemen could have prevented the Load More Campaigns design, for example.  And, still being on the older generation editor, I haven't even seen it for myself yet!  Just been reading the forums so that I can anticipate what's coming.   There is a question you brought up that I hadn't considered: are there going to be rolling deletions now?  Or is this pre-2013 purge all we have to be concerned about?  I've done what I had to do to save performance data on everything that's going to be deleted from our account.  But I'd certainly like to know about future deletions now, before our account is "upgraded."   Michael ... View more

But after we've run a search on the Contact Management screen, when we're looking at a list of 30 people with the last name "Miller," for instance, that's when we could use what Barbara is talking about.   Or will you never see this comment now that the idea is Closed?   Michael ... View more

What are we voting on? Was this change put into production or not?   Michael ... View more