Square Marketing replies not being received, undeliverable

[GMRepo]

Our company tried using Square Marketing for newsletters to customers, but Square assigned a complex email address as the reply-to address and we do not have a way to change this reply-to address.

Even worse, we tested this internally by adding some staff to the newsletter distribution list, and when one of them replied to the newsletter, we never received their reply, and they received a "Delivery incomplete" error.

"The recipient server did not accept our requests to connect."

Oddly, when another employee replied using Microsoft Outlook, we received their reply as an email with the subject "A customer replied to a marketing campaign" however it doesn't provide any detail in the message saying who it is.

Even more oddly, when that same employee replies using Gmail in the browser (instead of Google Workspace backend through Outlook) we receive a message with a different subject "Reply received for feedback conversation from a marketing campaign"

The only difference is they used Outlook to send one reply, and Gmail in Chrome to send the other reply. In both cases, Square doesn't tell us who it is that emailed us! We need to hit "Respond" which brings us to the customer record in our Square account.

So...

1 - why can't we change the reply-to address?

2 - why can some people successfully respond to the long complex reply-to address but others cannot?

3 - why does Square use different email subjects when informing sellers of replies to their newsletter based upon the client/browser being used by the recipient?

4 - why hasn't this been fixed yet?

Number 2 is a serious issue, so after this first test campaign, we had to cancel our newsletter service.

I found discussion in SellerCommunity going back to 2017 which mentions this issue, and 4-5 years later still has not been resolved... that is amazing.

Newsletter is unreliable and we can't trust it, but I would love for this to be addressed quickly as it would play very nicely with the rest of our Square services. In the meanwhile we need to find another service just for newsletters unless someone can advise what we can do about this.

[GMRepo]

Are there any employees who can respond to this?

[JJ_]

This sounds like a good question for our Marketing team, @GMRepo

They can take a look at your account with you to help shine a light here, as they can look at your account alongside you to pinpoint what's going on here. Please reach out by phone or email when you have a moment by logging into your Square account and heading here.

[GMRepo]

JJ, I've called and spoke with Square Marketing (the Appointments team handles marketing) and was told it's a feature request or bug. There are threads going back 5 years on this topic so someone is asleep at the wheel! Are you a Square employee and can you kick this up the food chain?

[JJ_]

If that's the case then the best way to point this in the right direction would be to submit a formal feature request here @GMRepo. This will help our product team get visibility and track other Sellers with similar interest in your request. 

Important: When submitting a request, make sure to include the desired feature, and provide the details of how this feature will help your business succeed (how would you use it and what you expect from it).

[GMRepo]

I'm blown away the only way to potentially resolve a 5+ year outstanding issue (according to other forum posts) is to submit a feature request. They clearly aren't paying attention. We're going to use a different service for our email marketing. A very unfortunate and disappointing thing, especially as a SQ shareholder myself.

[KelseyRWC]

Has anyone gotten any response to this issue besides making a feature request? I don't see something working properly as a request for something new but instead a problem within the system. I am getting some replies and not others which is leading to lost business. Thank you in advance.

[GMRepo]

Nope! We've given up trying to use it. Very unfortunate.