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Templates Not Displaying in Custom Objects Messages BUG

Marketing Team

Our organisation has hit a major issue with the core functionality of Ontraport to deliver designed messages and campaigns to different contact groups besides the default contact group.

We have multiple Contact Groups (aka Custom Objects, for example: Parent contacts, Child contacts etc). They have separate campaigns, and separate messages etc.

Currently, only the default Contact Object can load templates from our template database, shared templates, and template marketplace. 

When we try and create a message in a different contact group that isn't the default, these templates do not load, and you can only "build from scratch", which to us says: You can only create good looking emails from templates to some of your contacts, not all of them. This seems contrary to the entire functionality of Ontramail.

What this also means is, if we want to keep a consistent brand feel accross our organisations, we must recreate from scratch the hundreds of templates we've already created in the default list. This is not something that we want to do, for obvious reasons, especially when they seem 'to be right there, but not accessable'.

We should be able to share and load template designs (and even campaign desgns) accross custom objects. In terms of the development, the ontramail builder infrastructure is the same, so it should be an easy dev fix to load/populate the ontrmail builder in all objects with all templates available in the default object.

I've been told this is a 'feature request' because the majority of users aren't established enough to be using Ontraport like this (at it's greatest capacity) therefore it's not worth addressing instantly, but in my eyes its a product shortcumming/bug because it's not allowing us to use Ontraport as it's designed to be used (like in the default object).

We'd appreciate someone to look at this, as it's inhibiting our use of Ontraport regularly.


Default Ontramail Builder.

 

Custom Object, with messages/campaigns etc.

 

Ontrail Builder not displaying templates...

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Unfortunately, your support rep was half-correct, and not the half you're going to like.

It's not true that 'we aren't fixing this bug because most users aren't using custom objects'. 

What's true is that we can't fix this, because it's not a bug. The problem lies with the fact that emails have merge fields and merge fields are related to an Object (contacts, deals, companies, etc), and 'sharing' one email between objects would only serve to break your email. 

This isn't a shortcoming of Ontraport, but a fact of life when you are storing different object types. They all have their own campaigns, messages, etc for this reason.

The solution to your problem will be to either rebuild your emails (SimpleMail or HTML emails are easy to copy/paste!) or to move your Contacts to the Contacts object and organize your database differently. Option 2 is a longer conversation, but you can create relationships between Contacts and Contacts that will almost certainly handle your use case. 

Most people using Custom Objects are using them for things other than 'people' (Deals, Companies, Events, etc) and keep the people in Contacts.. for the reason you shared and for others (non-Contacts can't buy things, etc).

Sorry this is frustrating! It's not our intention to make your life hard! :(

Landon Ray
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Sure, I understand merge fields cannot be reproduced across different objects - that's fine, I can work around this by creating a template in Marketplace, and using that to recreate my message in the other contact object , the way I want it to look.

But right now you can't access ANY templates to make good looking emails, which is like giving you 0% functionality for one object group, and 100% template functionality for the default group. That is a short cumming or bug in my eyes. What you're essentially saying is, only the default contact group gets access to a good mail builder with templates.... and for your other groups, well, just do a completely different and exhausting method of coding emails...

Marketing Team 1 vote
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Why do I feel like the issue of this is not understood? I want to make available templates for all contact objects...how hard is that?

Marketing Team 1 vote
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I understand your frustration. 

Again, most users don't send a lot of emails from Custom Objects and instead keep "people" in the Contacts object.

The reason we don't have a marketplace (the thing with all the templates) in Custom Objects is that one of the primary features of the marketplace is the ability to share assets. For reasons that are a bit complicated, sharing doesn't work well with custom objects (where every field is a custom field) and so we have not yet created a new version of the marketplace to replace the one in Contacts.

I'll consider this feature request to be something like 'Make a marketplace and email templates for custom objects'. That's a big project, but not impossible.

In Ontraport's defense, I'm not aware of any SMB marketing automation system that offers Custom Objects at all, and I'm aware of no system - SMB to Enterprise - that offers a template library for custom objects. Maybe one exists, but this would not be a typical feature of customizable databases like this.

Again, very sorry for your frustration. SimpleMail and HTML emails are quite easy to copy/paste, if that's any consolation. Sounds like it's not. :( 

Landon Ray 0 votes
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Your issue is understood.

To answer your question, it's not easy but not impossible. Big project, as we'd have to rebuild the marketplace functionality to address your concern.

Landon Ray 0 votes
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Perhaps my understanding of 'custom object' is skewed, and we are not using it properly. I didn't know it was some special feat to be heralded. For our use, it's just replication of a the default object, with the same features (almost like a another database of contacts you want to separate, because it's easier to organise contacts, campaigns etc, when you have a different customer segements, requirements, etc). 

Regardless of what it is my eyes, and how it's developed, I thought because it was another iteration of your customer contact list so theoretically it could have the same features. I guess that isn't the case, and perhaps we may start to reconfigure hundreds of thousands of contacts differently. Sigh.

Marketing Team 0 votes
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May I suggest posting a request on our Facebook group for a brief consultation with one of our Certified Experts who specializes in Custom Object implementations? I can't give you good advice without taking some time to understand your whole plan, but I bet in a couple hours some of our Experts could really help.

Landon Ray 0 votes
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I'll just give my marketing colleague a lesson on how to sift complicated html code to update email copy when a new campaign is made....so easy! Really...come one. You have a WYSIWYG mail builder for a reason. Don't worry, I'll recreate the clunky templates from scratch.

Marketing Team 0 votes
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Landon! This could be really helpful and save a lot of time. Let me try this afternoon and get back to you!

Marketing Team 0 votes
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It works for me- obviously not as ideal as just duplicating a whole message, but at least it's easier than building from scratch. Thank you.

Marketing Team 0 votes
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FYI It won't copy over the message font styling, or block colours, but it does bring the 'bones' of the emails across, as well as the in-situ colours used in the original message.

Marketing Team 0 votes
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