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  • 1.  A number of challenges

    Posted 07-01-2021 11:05
    Hello all!
    We had our first launch with FLEX in April for our Summer conference. We experienced a number of challenges that I had not experienced in my 10 years of working in Classic. I will list a few and would be curious if any of you experienced the same and what solutions you came up with. We are getting ready to send out registration for our Fall conference and I am fearful of going through what we went through again. It was exhausting for us as a small team as well as the meeting participants trying to register. Some of the issues that were brought to our attention and we had to take on were:

     

    • Primarily registrants were not receiving the registration email at their legislation address or company. We instructed them to work with their respective IT departments to "whitelist" Cvent and sent them the instructions and most cases, this still did not work and we had to end up sending the registration to their personal email account, which, in most cases were a Gmail address;
    • Registrants who got the email but couldn't get the link to work to open CVENT;
    • Attendees who got the email, got the link to work, but couldn't pay;
    • Registrant who has been a long-time user who was continually being opted out of Cvent; and,
    • Challenges with resending attendees order/payment email for their submission for conference reimbursement.
    I have also sent an email to our Account Rep; however, if there's someone from Cvent monitoring this site and would like to jump in on this I would also be appreciative of your knowledge on these issues. I am honestly scared to hit the "send" on this event because of the flood storm of challenges.

    Thanks everyone!
    #Flex-Creating/ManagingEvents

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    Evya Richards
    Meeting Manager
    The Energy Council
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  • 2.  RE: A number of challenges

    Community MVP
    Posted 07-01-2021 15:44
    • Primarily registrants were not receiving the registration email at their legislation address or company. We instructed them to work with their respective IT departments to "whitelist" Cvent and sent them the instructions and most cases, this still did not work and we had to end up sending the registration to their personal email account, which, in most cases were a Gmail address;
    Nothing has changed with flex that I have noticed. Gmail has always been a problem blocking emails as spam. Emails are sent by cvent's mail server using your company's from address. Many companies will reject them.

    • Registrants who got the email but couldn't get the link to work to open CVENT;
    I haven't notice any problems.
    • Attendees who got the email, got the link to work, but couldn't pay;
    I forgot to include a submit button on the confirmation page.

    • Registrant who has been a long-time user who was continually being opted out of Cvent; and,
    If an email bounces, they get opted out automatically.

    • Challenges with resending attendees order/payment email for their submission for conference reimbursement.
    Email has always been an issue. I don't think any of these things are flex related.

    I sometimes look at my email report and look for emails that haven't been opened. Then email them personally to have them check their spam folder.

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    Steven Schlossman
    Jack of all trades. Master of none.
    BMW Car Club of America
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  • 3.  RE: A number of challenges

    Posted 07-01-2021 16:54

    Hi Evya,

    Thank you for sharing your feedback and I am sorry to hear about the experiences you faced through your first event. I can assure you we want our customers, and their registrants, to have the best experience possible, and I am confident you can do so when you launch your fall conference. 

    I first wanted to let you know that I passed this feedback on to your account team. Your Account Manager shared that you have a call set up next week, along with your Client Success resource, and will be able to discuss any of this in full detail.

    Additionally, I reached out to the manager of our Messaging Platforms team, who oversees all Cvent email systems and delivery. His team has shared the below information, which you can also discuss with your Account Team further as needed:

    Regarding deliverability of emails, there are a couple items to check:

    1. Check with your IT team/provider if the domain/subdomain you are using has a DMARC policy and what the policy states.
                  a) DMARC (Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is an email authentication and reporting policy built by your IT team/provider.
                  b) The DMARC policy for your domain/subdomain (if it exists) indicates to recipient mail servers what to do with emails sent from your domain/subdomain out of our platform that are unauthenticated (such as to quarantine or even reject them, if your DMARC policy states to do so).

    2. DKIM can be implemented per domain/subdomain in order to align with your DMARC policy - our customer support team can assist with these requests.
                  a) DKIM is an authentication method we offer using public/private key cryptography that checks against the 'header from' domain to determine whether that is the domain responsible for the content of an email message, as well as whether or not the headers and content of an email message have been tampered with.
                  b) Even if your domain/subdomain does not have a DMARC policy in place, DKIM would still be encouraged as some recipient mail servers may still check for it.

    This combination of DMARC and DKIM gives the receiving mail system(s) information on what domain takes responsibility for an email and its content, as well as a way to verify whether or not the headers and content of that email have been modified – and if the domain and email content don't meet the requirements, then the DMARC policy is referenced for how to proceed.

    NOTE: DKIM is not an enforcement method – rather, it's a type of authentication that allows the recipient mail system to decide whether it can treat an email coming from the responsible sending domain as valid and secure. It is also more useful as a solution if the sender has enough email volume to have grown their own email reputation.

     

    Regarding the registrant payment concern, here is a great Knowledge Base article that walks you through troubleshooting steps.

    If you have any questions or additional feedback, please let me know - I'm happy to pass anything on to your Account Team or discuss with our product teams. Steven's experiences shared below are also extremely helpful as another Cvent user! 

    Best,

    Danni  



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    Danni Czark
    Senior Associate, Online Community Marketing
    Cvent
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  • 4.  RE: A number of challenges

    Community MVP
    Posted 07-01-2021 18:03

    I just ran my email confirmation report.

    211 confirmations sent, 83.41% opened
    There are various reasons an email is tagged as not opened but...
    Of all the various domains, most are 1 or 2 not opened. Gmail, 16 gmail out of 33 not opened.

    Another email I sent to 202 people. 30 of the 48 that weren't opened are to gmail.
    At least half of my unopened emails are gmail.

    That said. Many gmail emails are also opened.
    Of the 175 opened, 77 where gmail.

    What does this mean?  Not really sure. :)
    1/2 have are being opened, and the other 1/2 maybe not.
    Why? Who knows?

    I would definitely email those that an email was sent and not opened to check their spam folder.
    In all my emails I say, email is our only form of communication.



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    Steven Schlossman
    Jack of all trades. Master of none.
    BMW Car Club of America
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  • 5.  RE: A number of challenges

    Posted 07-02-2021 08:44
    I can vouch for this method! We used to have a huge problem with trying to get emails to anyone outside of our company, especially legislators, but now we have no issues.

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    Lauren Becker
    Web Content Coordinator
    Aflac
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  • 6.  RE: A number of challenges

    Posted 07-02-2021 09:41
    Lauren, please confirm which method you are using to insure delivery of email. We too, have a huge problem with emails being opened and/or delivered. Majority of our emails go to the attendees work email. Thank you for sharing what is now working for you, anxious to implement on our side as well

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    Sherry Mountford
    Sr Director Tradeshow Events
    Asembia
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  • 7.  RE: A number of challenges

    Posted 07-02-2021 10:16
    Hi Sherry,

    We had our IT global security department implement a DKIM key in accordance with our DMARC policy as Danni laid out above. It was a bit of an effort, but it has paid off!

    Our account service rep helped us hook our IT folks with the right people at Cvent, and they were able to implement the solution. I was CCed on the back-and-forth emails, but there was very little I understood!

    As it's been explained to me, DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is an email authentication technique that allows the receiver of an email to check that an email was indeed sent and authorized by the owner of that domain. In easier to understand terms, it helps prevent marketing emails, invitation emails, event emails, etc.; from being sent to spam or deleted altogether. Because Cvent's servers aren't on our DNS, we have to "authorize" the emails to be sent on our behalf.

    ------------------------------
    Lauren Becker
    Web Content Coordinator
    Aflac
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  • 8.  RE: A number of challenges

    Posted 07-02-2021 10:54
    Thank you so very much for taking the time to respond! As I shared, our invitations are trying to get to the respective legislative addresses since our attendees are mostly state-appointed legislators. I knew I could not be the only person experiencing this! however, when I would call Cvent Customer Service they would continually tell me to tell the registrants to "whitelist" Cvent and this simply was not working and frustrations were happening all around. I too do not understand the technology aspects so I do have a call set up soon with our Account Rep.

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    Evya Richards, CMP
    Meeting Manager
    The Energy Council
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  • 9.  RE: A number of challenges

    Posted 07-02-2021 11:55

    Hi Evya,
    We used Cvent for the first time since 2016 for our virtual annual conference in April too and I experienced issue # 1 and #5 on your list.  I ended up doing those the tasks manually because the solutions offered by customer service did not work.  My biggest issue was registrants not getting the emails.  I worked with over 70 public utility IT departments to "whitelist" same as you did and it still did not help.  While I am not certain that the burden of this issue falls entirely on the backs of Cvent, I do think it is an issue that needs to be addressed.  With so much cyber hacking occurring these days, businesses, include government and state agencies, are tightening their network security and putting up more layers of prevention, including making it harder to get past the firewalls.  That being said, this is a fact of doing business now and if Cvent would work with their clients to resolve this,  it would be helpful  I would be willing to participate in a work group to talk about solutions.

    ​​

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    Christine Chapman
    Director of Events & Membership
    California Municipal Utilities Association
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