List & Custom Fields with Filter

[jourdan]

Hi,

I'm having issues with applying a filter for a newsletter and it is delivering to fewer subscribers than it should based upon the filter criteria I configure.

Here's my system setup...
- 2 List Types: active; inactive
- 2 Custom Fields (each has 2 values): Parent Student (parent, student); Lesson Type (weekly, drop-in)

Here's my targeting config...
- Lists:
- - Match at least one of: <b>Active</b>
- - must not in one of: blank (no restriction)
- Status: <b>confirmed</b>
- Only to subscribers linked to WP users: <b>no</b>
- Profile fields:
- - Parent Student is one of: blank (I want it to go to all)
- - Lesson Type is one of: <b>weekly</b>

I reviewed my subscribers list and verified numerous users to make sure they had the correct list type and custom field types. With my targeting config, it should be going to ~20 recipients and instead, it's only being sent to 9.

Any suggestions on what might be going wrong?

Thanks for your help!

[Michael]

Hello Jourdan,

it's hard to tell if everything you set is correct only by reading it, cause every filter combination is potentially "correct", it really depends on what you'd like to obtain. You say that based on your count, this should result in more or less 20 recipients: did you carefully double check this number? Are you certain it's correct? Do you press save after setting your filters? The count number on the right should update every time.

Michael

[jourdan]

Michael,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Right now I have 29 subscribers confirmed and they are all active and have the correct custom field data. I did some more testing based upon what you shared and here's what I've determined.

Many of the subscribers although they had what appeared to be the correct custom field variables selected when looking at them individually, however, the variables were not in fact "committed/applied" so that the filter wouldn't select them when using the newsletter filtering page.

THE FIX: go to each subscriber's custom field page and hit save which applies the variables to the subscriber.

I don't recall if I added some of the custom variables after I had already added a few subscribers so I can't say for certain if that is why the problem arose in the first place. I'll need to keep an eye out as I add new users to make sure the filter count looks correct.

My concern for the future is, if I decide to add more custom fields, will I have to go through the same individual subscriber saving process to apply the new variables? Not a hug deal for 29 subscribers right now but this will grow significantly as I have more to import. Furthermore, will the new imports need the current custom fields applied?

Any follow-up thoughts here?

Thanks again for your help!

[Michael]

Hello,

if the subscribers come from an import, it might be a problem related to the original source file. Try the following: create a new csv with only one subscriber, along with the custom fields, import it and check if those fields are correctly mapped.

Michael

[jourdan]

Will do.

For the record, I only added subscribers manually for the original 29.

Thanks again!

[Michael]

No worries @jourdan, let me know your findings.

Michael

[Author]

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