[SOLVED] Strange mailer behavior

Hello,

I have set up several mailers to remind users to renew their membership. All the mailers are set up to send to the user, with a CC to the website administrator. They should receive reminders at these times:

• 1 month before expiration
• 1 week before expiration
• on the expiration date
• 30 days after expiration
• 60 days after expiration
• and 90 days after expiration.

However, the mailers have been acting inconsistently. The reminder on the day of expiration does not work - it shows 0 uses when I look in the Uses column at Paid Subscriptions > Mailer. The reminder at 60 days after expiration also does not work - it shows 0 uses as well. But all the others have been sent successfully many times.

Also, a very strange thing has been happening lately with some users. I have a user whose membership expired on September 1, 2017. CB Subs did not send them any automated mailers at all, either before or after the expiration date. However, on November 30 (which is 90 days after expiration), the website administrator received an email referencing that user and saying "Your membership expired today, September 1."

Even stranger: there is no record in the mailer log that shows that any message was sent on November 30 - neither to the user, nor to the administrator.

This same occurrence has happened several other times. The administrator receives an email on the wrong date (e.g., the "Your membership expired today" email arrives 90 days after expiration, or the "Your membership expired 30 days ago" email arrives 90 days after expiration). In some cases, the message is sent only to the administrator and not to the user. And in many cases, the administrator receives the email, but it is not in the mailer log at all.

Would you be willing to log into the back end of the site and see if you can see what the issue is?

Thanks very much -
Anne Campbell

Do you have a CRON setup to trigger your mailers regularly? Ideally you need to be processing the queue and sending the queue at least once a day. How many emails send from the queue execution can also be configured in CBSubs > Settings > Mailer. As for the URLs to trigger the mailer you can find them within CBSubs Mailer > Automated Settings.

Regarding the mailers that are not working are all of the mailers set to send after expiration not working or is it strictly the on expiration, 60 days, and 90 days not working? Sounds like there maybe some sort of configuration issue going on. Examples as follows.

on the expiration date
Automatically send message at following date: at
Relative to this date of the plans below: Subscription's Expiry Date
To which plans this date condition applies: SELECT_PLAN_HERE
Must be in state: --- Not relevant ---
But do not send message if it's later than: 30 days after

30 days after expiration
Automatically send message at following date: 30 days after
Relative to this date of the plans below: Subscription's Expiry Date
To which plans this date condition applies: SELECT_PLAN_HERE
Must be in state: --- Not relevant ---
But do not send message if it's later than: 60 days after

60 days after expiration
Automatically send message at following date: 60 days after
Relative to this date of the plans below: Subscription's Expiry Date
To which plans this date condition applies: SELECT_PLAN_HERE
Must be in state: --- Not relevant ---
But do not send message if it's later than: 90 days after

90 days after expiration
Automatically send message at following date: 90 days after
Relative to this date of the plans below: Subscription's Expiry Date
To which plans this date condition applies: SELECT_PLAN_HERE
Must be in state: --- Not relevant ---
But do not send message if it's later than: 120 days after

You can set "Must be in state" to "Expired", but if you have a grace period the plan will still be "Active" causing the check to fail and never send. So setting it to "--- Not relevant ---" can help avoid that.

Kyle,

Thank you for responding so quickly. I do have a CRON job set up, and I think it's working correctly. But you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the grace period! All the membership plans have a 90-day grace period before the real expiration. I had set up the mailers to send the messages if the membership was in the "expired" state, but if they were within the 90-day grace period, they weren't really expired.

I've now changed the mailer settings from "Must be in state: Expired" to "Must be in state: --- Not relevant ---", and I hope that does the trick.

I'm still confused by one thing, though. Why does the mailer log have no record of the emails it sent to the administrator recently? The administrator has received two of those "Your membership expired today" messages yesterday and today (November 30 and December 1), but the mailer log shows that no emails have been sent since November 1. Why would the log not show those recent messages? And why were the messages sent only to the administrator and not to the user?

Thanks again -
Anne

I'm still confused by one thing, though. Why does the mailer log have no record of the emails it sent to the administrator recently? The administrator has received two of those "Your membership expired today" messages yesterday and today (November 30 and December 1), but the mailer log shows that no emails have been sent since November 1. Why would the log not show those recent messages? And why were the messages sent only to the administrator and not to the user?

If using CC/BCC it won't log a mailer sent row for those recipients. It only logs a row in respect to the queued message being sent.

OK, that makes sense. Thank you so much again for your help!

-Anne