Many of my patrons don’t seem to be getting notifications. Is there some way I can fix that? @mindy any suggestions?
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Hi @lutzbone, thanks for the question. As this could be related to many different issues that would take a lot of back and forth to try and figure out, it would be best to encourage your patrons to write into the Patreon support team with as much details as possible, then they’ll be able to help. Things to include would be what kind of notifications (email, website, app) for what action (new post, new reply) , if they used to get them before, and what browser or device they are using. That will be great! Thanks in advance 
Thanks for the reply @mindy! I will try messaging them via Patreon and see how it goes. If I can’t contact them either via messenger or via a post, can you recommend another way of staying in touch? It’s weird that I have a chunk of folks who are giving me money, some of them giving me a pretty healthy pledge, and not communicating at all… is that normal?!
Yes. From what I’ve heard from other creators, only a few of your members will ever speak up and the rest won’t say anything until something goes wrong. Welcome to the amazing world of “customer service.”
Yup! Totally normal. Lots of folks just like to see content but really don’t know what to say in response to them. Plenty of folks get email notifications of your posts and they don’t really visit patreon to like or comment. Some folks just aren’t the
involved type.
It’s why the best way to involve people is through things where they don’t have to comment. Ask at the top of the post that youd appreciate likes so you can see if it’s content they want to see more of. (A good number of folk will go to the post and do it when
asked, if they have time.) Polls for me, always get more interaction than anything else I post because they get to feel involved without a lot of effort.
It’s a pain sometimes but work with the tools you have to get the most out of the silent folks. They don’t have to been involved for most rewards out there, but you can always offer some extra reward incentive to get more folks to interact.
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@Th_Mole and @Temrin, thank you!! That makes me feel better. I’m just trying to make sure people are getting their money’s worth. I will start using polls more often, as they seem to get good engagement for me too.
Thanks again!
Jim
The thing that made me a bit concerned is that I chatted (in person) with a new patron who was like “so, do you have anything coming to Patreon soon” and was clearly interested in getting notifications and wasn’t getting them. I told him to check his spam filter on the email he used to sign up, but I don’t know what to do beyond that… he has not responded to DMs or posts on Patreon. Emailing him now, but am concerned that a few other patrons have also never communicated via Patreon. I suspect that at least some of them use a “junk” email to register, and then rarely check that email. I have emailed one patron directly at the email address in their profile, and never heard back. And this is a $20 patron - in total, they’ve given me hundreds of dollars - and an old friend with whom I’d love to actually catch up!
I did hear back from another patron who said that two-factor authentication makes it too much hassle to log into Patreon, so he rarely checks it. Another of my patrons has had issues logging in as well, where it does the captcha thing every single time, and he gets frustrated and gives up. So maybe there is still some work to be done on balancing security with the user experience?
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We have also sometimes had the same problems contacting some of our patrons. I agree that some seem to sign up using junk email accounts (or in some cases I suspect a fake email account) and then we can’t reach them. Occasionally there has been a problem where someone apparently made an error when entering their email address when they signed up and so the address we have is incorrect. Other times people change their addresses or some such and forget to update the info on Patreon. All in all, just wanted to let you know that you are not alone in this issue!
Thanks so much, @FutilityCloset! I hope to get this sorted out. I’ve reached out to Patreon support, who, as usual, advised me to have my patrons contact them directly. This makes sense on the surface, as @mindy noted - there are so many possible issues that a support ticket would often be the most logical starting point. In this instance, though, I don’t know if that is possible, when I can’t reach the patron in the first place! From their end, they are giving money and getting silence in return. Not good.
Also, given that some of my patrons seem to have recurring problems logging in, asking them to try and start a support ticket has in the past only caused more frustration.
Finally, I want to be proactive about this, rather than waiting to lose patrons. Patrons are already being very generous in supporting us, and I don’t think that asking them to jump through extra hoops to get what they’re paying for is very good customer service.
I wish I had a better solution than asking them to try to start a ticket. I am afraid that many people use junk accounts to sign up, and to be honest, I would probably do the same if I’d never heard of Patreon. Maybe during the onboarding process there needs to be an obvious warning “Please use an email address that you check regularly” combined with “We won’t spam you - this is how you get the benefits you’re paying for!” Or if that warning already exists, perhaps it needs to be more prominent?
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Yeah, I wonder about that. Your idea is a really good one, maybe combined with Patreon checking to be sure the email address they use is a working one. I don’t know what message they get when they sign up . . .
I just heard back after directly emailing the patron who wasn’t getting any notifications. He said he got my messages when he went to the site, but apparently didn’t get any email notifications. I sent him the link to his notification settings so he can make changes as needed. His Patreon email is the same one I emailed directly. I wonder if he has notifications completely disabled (if that’s even an option) or if Patreon’s messages are getting caught in a spam/junk filter?
This is another item that might benefit from clarification during (and perhaps even after) the signup process.
Also, to your point @FutilityCloset, I thought I remembered having to verify my email when I signed up (by clicking a link in an email) but it’s been a while so I could be mistaken.
That’s possible. Some of our patrons have been with our campaign for several years now, so I don’t know what verification was in place when they signed up, but it could have changed over the years.
You may want to send this link to your patrons: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002984566-How-do-I-manage-my-email-notifications-
They may have unselected the box to receive emails from you! Plus, ask them to check their spam filters too.
Hey @mindy - has the Patreon team looked into email authentication for its notifications? I use Mailchimp which employs authentication, and I have at least one patron who gets my Mailchimp messages but never gets anything that I send him (at the same email address) via Patreon, even though he has verified that his settings are correct in Patreon. Perhaps something like what Mailchimp uses would make the Patreon system more effective. Here is how Mailchimp recommends setting up authentication.
Adding my patrons to Mailchimp via Zapier seems to help people get my messages, but it would be nice if the Patreon notification system just worked so we didn’t need this workaround.
On a somewhat related note, I never get notifications from the Patreon iPhone app, even though I have all push notifications turned on in the app, and Patreon app notifications enabled in my iPhone settings. Any recommendations?
Thanks again for all you do!
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Hi @lutzbone! I asked our Customer Happiness folks about your emails failing to reaching patrons and they confirmed this should not be happening. Do you mind writing a support ticket (here) so a team member can dive deeper into this for you?
As for app notifications, we haven’t sent any notifications out in a while so that’s why you’re not getting any!
Hope this helps! Let me know if anything else comes up 
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Thanks Reyna,
I’ll do a ticket, thanks!
When I say I’m not getting notifications, I mean when someone comments, messages me, likes a post, I get a new patron, etc… I get the emails but no push notifications. I have all push notifications enabled in the app, and notifications are also enabled for Patreon in my system settings.
Thanks again!
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Hi Reyna,
I clicked the link you provided, but it took me to a “Dropbox Paper” form which said I didn’t have access. I clicked on the link to request access and Dropbox said access had been requested, but I never heard anything back.
I just spoke on the phone with one of my patrons who confirmed that he never receives Patreon emails despite properly enabling the notifications in his Patreon settings. He gets direct emails from me, as well as my Mailchimp messages, with no problems at the same address. But he never sees anything from Patreon unless he goes to the website. I am confident that he is not the only one.
I’ll ask again - does Patreon use email authentication as I mentioned in my earlier post? If not, please consider it. The Mailchimp messages I send seem to get delivered with a much higher success rate than my Patreon messages. It is frustrating to try and give my patrons what they’re paying for, build a community and engage with them only to find out that they aren’t seeing anything I send them. Not being able to get though to support doesn’t help.
Anything you can do to help me get this resolved would be amazing. Thanks so much for all you do!
Jim
Hey @lutzbone,
Terribly sorry about that, I pasted the wrong link. Big fail on my part! Updated the link in my original response, but you can also find it here.
Patreon does have an email authentication, but there’s a number of reasons why this may be failing. After writing a support ticket (again, so sorry about that!) a team member will be able to dive into this and try to find a solution for you.
Let me know if you run into any other issues!
No worries, Reyna! Thanks for the quick response!
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