Email Send Error - Skip bad sends only or Have Email alert sent on error

Question

I had a small error in my email sends recently that stopped over 50K emails from going out because there was a crazy unlikely Ampscript error on 2 of the messages. I completely understand that this is the way they set up their system and it is more secure to do it that way.

What I want to know is if there is any way that we can use something like RaiseError() to skip emails that have invalid AMPScript or otherwise error at send time. I would even be good if we can have something that would trigger an email to alert my team about the error so we can immediately address the issue.

I have talked to support and so far no one there has been able to provide a solution or work-around for this.

I think my main question would be if there is some sort of flag that I can trigger a script to go on for when a send fails.

For example (completely fabricated):

%%[ IF _messagecontext == "ERROR" THEN

RaiseError("Invalid Function", True)

ENDIF]%%

or if there is some way I can create an automation to check send logs against scheduled sends and provide an alert if a send was supposed to go out, but did not actually send at the appropriate time. Please note I do not have Journey Builder, only Automation Studio.

Answer 1

A few things off the top of my head:

• First and foremost, code defensively. Don't use raw personalization strings. Use the AttributeValue() function and check them with empty(). Check the rowcount() on every function that returns a row-set. Check the length of strings before doing a substring(), etc.

• If it's a real obscure/fluke error that's hard to detect, you can use a SSJS try/catch block and use write a row to a DE and then raiserror() in the catch. This will keep the email from blowing up the send and give you a record of what happened. It's not a good long term solution.

• Clean your sending data with a prep/verification Query Activity.