Group Conditions need to have AND/OR not just AND

Giulia Guerrero

I'm really disappointed that OntraPort has not listened to their customers and implemented this. This was first discussed in 2015 by Brian Knoderer. Neither has a representative from OntraPort replied to his request or even considered this.

The simple fact that you market the software at such a high price point and in competition with InfusionSoft yet you don't have this simple feature to create complex segmentations apart from campaigns is ridiculous. How much longer would it have taken to add the feature to group conditions when you already have the coding in place in campaigns? Shouldn't take that long.

Complex segmentation is a must. This means that within the group conditions, not just campaigns, there should be an option for AND/OR such that if I wanted to segment with two different fields I can.

For example, FIELD 1 OR contact tags.

The only option for OR right now is within the same field which is extremely limiting. Support's suggestion is to create another group for those other fields, which is time consuming and depending on how many things you want to segment with, it will clutter the groups.

Their other suggestion is to use campaigns, but who the heck wants to create a campaign for every single broadcast? That's ignorant of the company to have implemented the feature there but not in the other areas of that support conditions.

July 11, 2018 14:38

Official comment

Sorry you're disappointed Giulia.

We carefully prioritize investing in features and functionality that we believe - based on many years of experience working with many thousands of clients in all industries, as well as interest demonstrated here by votes (3) - is going to make the biggest difference for our clients.

While I see that you are passionate about this feature, it is a very uncommon request. Coupling that fact with our knowledge that further complicating groups will actually confuse, and not serve, most clients, this has been an easy request to deprioritize.

Meanwhile, in the last 9 months, we have launched all-new Pages v3, autosave and version history, and about 30 other features, along with twice-weekly releases per our normal process.

I suspect that your search for a more powerful email marketing system is very likely to leave you frustrated. Ontraport is unquestionably the industry leader in the small business space when it comes to power and flexibility of automation, CRM, landing pages and campaign reporting. Of course there are parts of the app that could be improved, but we're constantly at work doing just that.

Perhaps if you asked the Facebook group how to accomplish your specific use case, you'll get ideas. Or, maybe you'll spawn a revolution that makes us rethink the prioritization of this functionality.

Landon Ray March 27, 2019 15:05

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5 comments

9 months later, I come back to check and see if they already answered this and yet it hasn't, and it's not being planned. I'm going to talk to my client because there are too many limitations with OntraPort. It's driving me nuts.

As a marketer, this is the worst email marketing system I've used to date.

Giulia Guerrero March 27, 2019 14:39 1 vote

This is really important for a lot of my batch processes, especially as there's no 'search and filter' interface - you have to go back and edit the group.

I have a workflow (well, a client does) where they need to go in to a group result set and manually inspect the results, then do automated and manual actions based on discretion. In this case it's to offer waitlist appointments to people on the waitlist - the rules for which involve some discretion and human logic. As it applies across multiple contacts, it's not something for a single task linked to a contact. I am unable to do this properly - the workflow needs to be broken up into multiple 'parses' across multiple groups because of this limitation, which is far less efficient.

I also have multiple criteria for manual batch updates - e.g. around LinkedIn, or data enrichment, or manual sales reachout, where I need proper conditional logic.

Also, this feature request system is so bad and currently broken (since the website nav changes ~early 2019), that saying something only has 3 (now 4) votes is pretty meaningless. Aside from fixing the searchability, and login redirection bug, new feature suggestions should be periodically promoted to the email list and social challenges. You're making projections based on minimal engagement with this system and calling them valid, when they're not even remotely representative or statistically significant.

David Kellam April 14, 2019 13:10 1 vote

The current group criteria are also currently confusing, which I've previously reported to Landon, because when you have a condition in the negative, the right-hand side "and"s function without brackets, whereas the visual and common sense assumption is they function with them.

e.g. Contact does not have tag x

Would visually and by normal convention imply "Contact does not have tag (x OR y)"

but actually means "Contact does not have tag x" OR "Contact does not have tag y"

which is almost never what someone means and typically only works with AND logic.

To do the proper bracketed logic, you need to write this over two conditions, not in the same condition.

David Kellam April 14, 2019 13:13 1 vote

11 votes now. this is basic functionality, and i disagree wholeheartedly that it will 'actually confuse, and not serve, most clients.' please add basic dropdown AND/OR logic functionality between main conditions.

Apteros Trading October 21, 2024 15:21 0 votes