Send Failed errors on Act eMarketing - one reason and solution

There is a toolset that can help fix the emails in your database quickly without having to do a tedious one by one search.  The tool set contains  a spreadsheet that will find bad emails and also a plugin that lives inside ACT that will build a group of bad emails.

The downloads for the tools are at the end of this article.  Here's how you use them.

• Save the Act! Emarketing Special Character Email Scanner.xlsm file and open in Excel
• Export email addresses from Act! to Excel - do a lookup for any contact with an email, make sure the email column is on the list view and click on Tools - Export to Excel
• Copy email addresses from the exported list and paste in to the first column in the Email Scanner spreadsheet
• In Excel run the macro checkEmails (View - Macros)
• Use sort/filter - custom sort - Press ok to apply the font color rule

All of the invalid email addresses will either appear at the top of the list or the bottom in red depending on the sort/filter options.  Now you just need to go back into ACT and fix the ones found in the spreadsheet. Or set your duplicate checking to emails only, use that as the duplicate check and reimport the contacts - having a column with the emails fixed - import it into a different temporary user field and then copy over to the bad email address.  You would, of course, need to save a lookup of what you just imported.  This would be the way to manage a lot of bad email addresses versus fixing them one at a time.

A plugin has also been provided that once installed is run from within ACT.  It will find bad emails and add the contacts to a group.

• Copy the EmailValidator.dll plugin in to the plugins folder for Act! (C:\Program Files (x86)\Act\Act for Windows\Plugins)
• Open Act!
• Lookup all contacts in Act! or in a specific group
• Click Tools - Check Email Addresses

• Select relevant options and press ok
• A list of contacts with invalid email addresses will be shown in Act!

Work through the list of email addresses and correct them.

File Attachments - note you may have to open Windows Explorer and "unblock" the file using the properties on right click.  Some Windows will "protect" you by blocking the file.