What causes a "communication failure" between Salesforce and Amazon?

The email that you receive after a Soapbox Mailer campaign is successfully sent includes a count of the number of "communication errors" between Salesforce and Amazon.  Typically, you should see zero errors listed in this email.  Sometimes, however, you'll see a number greater than zero.

As Salesforce is running through all your campaign member records to fire off communications to Amazon SES, it might run into an error.  Rather than completely stop your send batch right there, Salesforce simply marks this job item as an error, and moves along processing the other campaign members.

What exactly can cause a campaign member record to be flagged as a "communication failure"?  Typically, we look at this on a case by case basis.  Sometimes it's invalid syntax in an email address.  Sometimes it's a permissions error.  Sometimes the related Contact or Lead record is unavailable.  In short, there's a number or reasons for why there can be a "communications failure" between Salesforce and Amazon, but we're happy to help you figure out why on a case by case basis.

There's still a few things you can look at for yourself.  Here's a few troubleshooting tips to start.

1) Have you included any content in the Edit HTML Body?  This is required for the email to be sent properly.

2) Have you included any content in the Edit Text Body?  This is required for the email to be sent properly.

3) Have you included the {!Campaign.EmailBodyHTML} merge field in your selected Email Template?  This is required for the email to be sent properly.

4) Are you able to login to your Amazon Web Services account?  If not, your Amazon Web Services account may be blocked, stopping Soapbox Mailer from being able to communicate with Amazon.  If you're unable to login to your Amazon Web Services account, it would be good to make sure your account is in good billing standing with Amazon, and if so, contact Amazon Web Services.

5) Have you reached your 24-hour email sending quota in Amazon SES?  You can find this by logging into your Amazon SES account directly to see both your quota as well as how many emails you've sent in the past 24 hours. If your limit has been reached, all emails you try to send until that limit is decreased will result in a "communications failure" between Salesforce and Amazon.

6) Ensure that you have the correct Amazon Settings by going to the Amazon Settings tab and then re-entering your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key, which can be re-created if you haven't stored it already at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?#security_credential.

7) Ensure that your Salesforce org is not requiring TLS 1.1.  You can check this by going to Setup > Build > Critical Updates.  Then, under the Update Name column, look for "Require TLS 1.1 or higher for HTTPS connections".  For the row that has "Require TLS 1.1 or higher for HTTPS connections", check to see if the link "Deactivate" is there.  If so, your org is requiring TLS 1.1, and that will need to be turned off to use Soapbox Mailer.  To remedy, click the "Deactivate" link.  As of January 19, 2017, Amazon SES now supports TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2.  Salesforce orgs can now use this TLS 1.1 critical update without worry and still have full functionality within Soapbox Mailer.

8) If none of the above resolve your issue, and you are finding that campaign members still have the status of "targeted" even though the campaign's status is complete, take a look at this article: Why do some Campaign Member record statuses remain as "Targeted" after sending an email?  

Happy emailing!