Unapproved Email Program sent the email anyway! :0

[Anonymous]

On Friday, we created an Email Program with an A/B test specified and the email scheduled for Monday at 8:00 AM EST.  Then before 8:00 AM Monday morning, we unapproved it because we wanted to change the send time to 10:00 AM, but the Control Panel view only offered View A/B test, View Smart List and Approve Program. When I clicked the View A/B test button, the Subject Line Test Summary dialog box was displayed. However, when I clicked the View Smart List button, I was able to edit the smart list filters.  I re-approved the program and then unapproved it in hopes that would allow me to edit the A/B test, but nothing changed.

Then at 8:00 AM today, the email was sent, which was not expected or desired!  

We've experienced similar unpredictable behavior with the few Email Programs that we've created in the last week. We either couldn't make changes or changes we made didn't seem to be saved.

I opened a case and will update everyone on why tech support thinks this happened.  In the mean time, be careful about unapproved email programs that have a scheduled send as it just might go out despite the statements in the help articles to the contrary. 

[Anonymous]

We had the exact same problem, back when the Email program first came out.  They aren't telling anyone it is broken, which is not a good thing.

[Josh_Hill13]

Just to clarify for everyone, you mean the Email Send program, not the old Email Blast channel.

[Anonymous]

Elliott - thanks for raising this as a ticket, as I am not aware of any current issues with the Email Program.  I'll also discuss with Engineering.

@Angela - when you ran into this, did you raise a support ticket?

Thanks,
Cheryl

[Anonymous]

Cheryl,
Absolutely.  We were on the phone for hours with support.  The case was submitted by one of our EMEA builders, Karen O'Sullivan, in Ireland.  Brandon Fong is our premier support person, and he is very well aware of the issue and told us that he would get back to us when there was a fix.  (said it was escalated to Engineering) All we heard back was that there was a patch in place, it was a bug.However, we have not dared to touch another email program until we know this has been resolved.  Unfortunately, for us, this caused 40 THOUSAND leads to get an email they were not supposed to receive. 

We definitely felt the issue was pushed to the back burner and we never knew if truly resolved and we feel very bad for Elliot that he and his team had a similar experience. 

Brandon told us that the campaign just came alive one night and sent itself. Like night at the Museum, I guess. 
The support engineer wotking on this case was Cathal Moran.

Our support case number is: 00217842


In all honesty, this should be mentioned somewhere on the community or fixed ASAP, so that others do not have to experience this catastrophic error.