Troubleshooting marketing emails on MVC sites

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This page summarizes common problems that you may encounter when using the Kentico email marketing features with a website that is presented by a separate MVC application.

For general information on marketing email troubleshooting, not specifically related to MVC sites, see: Troubleshooting marketing emails

Unavailable MVC website

Before you send out marketing emails, verify that your MVC website is:

  • Running
  • Accessible publicly and from the Kentico application that you use to manage your email feeds (make sure the connection is not blocked by a firewall, etc.)

Otherwise, email content and functionality that interacts with the site will not be available, for example, unsubscription links or email tracking features.

If the site is not accessible, please contact your system’s administrator.

Incorrect email feed URLs

Some of the email marketing features need to interact with your MVC site to work. Problems can occur if the required features are not implemented or registered correctly on your MVC site, or if the related URLs are not configured correctly in Kentico.

To ensure that email feed links for MVC sites are correct overall, make sure that your site in Kentico is configured to use extensionless URLs by default:

  1. Open the Settings application.
  2. Choose your site in the Site selector.
  3. Navigate to the URLs and SEO settings category.
  4. Set Friendly URL extensions to an empty value.
  5. Click Save.

When running a “content only” site (i.e. a site created using the MVC Blank Site template), the Email marketing application in the Kentico administration interface automatically displays a warning if the related URLs are not accessible for an email feed (on the Emails tab of the email feed and the Send tab of individual emails).

To allow the warning to work correctly in scenarios where your MVC site and Kentico administration application run on different domains, make sure that your MVC application has the resource sharing feature enabled.

Unsubscription page URL

Verify that your MVC site has an email feed unsubscription page implemented according to the instructions in Setting up unsubscription.

Then make sure the unsubscription URL of your email feeds is correctly configured:

  1. Open the Email marketing application in Kentico.

  2. Edit your email feed and switch to the Configuration tab.

  3. Set the following properties:

    • Base URL – must match the Presentation URL of your MVC site. For example: http://www.SiteDomain.com

    • Unsubscription page URL – must match the route of the action that handles unsubscription requests in your MVC application. For example: /NewsletterSubscription/Unsubscribe

      If the Unsubscription page URL value is empty for an email feed, the system uses the URL assigned in the Settings -> On-line marketing -> Email marketing -> Unsubscription page URL setting.

  4. Save the email feed.

Double opt-in approval page URL

If double opt-in is enabled for your newsletters, your MVC site must have a subscription confirmation page implemented according to the instructions in Handling confirmations for double opt-in subscription.

Also, verify that the approval page URL of your newsletters is correctly configured:

  1. Open the Email marketing application in Kentico.

  2. Edit your newsletter and switch to the Configuration tab.

  3. Set the following properties:

    • Base URL – must match the Presentation URL of your MVC site. For example: http://www.SiteDomain.com

    • Approval page URL – must match the route of the action that handles subscription confirmation requests in your MVC application. For example: /NewsletterSubscription/ConfirmSubscription

      If the Approval page URL value is empty for a newsletter, the system uses the URL assigned in the Settings -> On-line marketing -> Email marketing -> Double opt-in approval page URL setting.

  4. Save the newsletter.

Email tracking URLs

If you have tracking features enabled for your email feed (opened emails and clicked links), verify the following:

  • The Presentation URL of your site in the Sites application matches the domain name of the running MVC website.
  • Your MVC site has the email tracking routes registered according to the instructions in Tracking marketing emails on MVC sites.