Troubleshooting Invalid URL Errors in Campaign Image Links

When adding links to images in your email editor, you may encounter an "Invalid URL" error. This occurs when the URL is missing the proper protocol prefix.

Quick Fix

1. Click the image with the problematic link in your Outreach

2. Add https:// to the beginning of the URL in the link field

3. Save your changes

Example:

• Incorrect: www.example.com

• Correct: https://www.example.com

Why This Happens

The campaign editor requires fully-qualified URLs with proper protocols to ensure links function correctly across all devices and maintain security standards.

Supported Link Formats

External websites:

• https://www.example.com (recommended)

• http://www.example.com (less secure)

Email links:

• mailto:contact@example.com

Fixing Giving Button Links in Emails

When Giving Buttons Don't Work in Test Emails

If you've added a giving button to your outreach email but it doesn't appear or work in test emails:

Check the button URL:

1. Click on the giving button in your email editor
2. Verify the link URL is pointing to your giving form's donation page
3. Ensure the URL includes /donations/new at the end
4. Example correct format: https://give.yourschool.org/campaigns/12345/donations/new

Common URL issues:

• Using the campaign landing page URL instead of the giving form URL
• Missing the /donations/new portion that actually opens the donation form
• Using internal preview URLs that don't work for recipients

How to find the correct giving form URL:

1. Go to your campaign or giving form in the admin area
2. Click "Preview" 
3. Copy the URL from the donation form page (not the campaign information page)
4. Use this complete URL in your outreach button

   Troubleshooting: "No href in link" validation errors

   When you see the error "No href in link: '[link text]'", it means a link element in your outreach is missing its URL. Although the text may appear linked in the editor, the href attribute is empty.

   Why this happens

   • A link was added without pasting the URL or the URL was removed, leaving href empty.
   • The validation checks for an empty href attribute (href="").
   • The error message displays the link text to help locate the issue.

   Where the validation runs

   The system checks every link in your outreach and flags any anchor missing an href value.

   How to find and fix the problem

   1. Open your outreach in the email editor and review all linked text, buttons, and images.
   2. Click the element to open its link field. If the URL field is blank, either enter the correct URL (include the protocol, e.g., https://) or remove the link.
   3. If using the editor's HTML/source view, search for <a> tags with href="" or missing the href attribute, and update or remove them as necessary.
   4. Save the outreach and run the validation again.

   Quick examples

   • Missing href: The error shows exactly: No href in link: 'Read more', indicating the link text is present but the URL is missing.
   • Malformed href: An error like "Invalid URL" occurs when the URL is present but not properly formatted (for example, omitting https://).

   If you still can’t locate the problem

   • You can copy and paste the HTML code into a LLM like chatGPT with the prompt: "Find and remove all invalid links from this code. Provide the code back to me with no other changes" 
   • Then copy and past this corrected code back to the email editor. 

   Why this matters

   Fixing empty hrefs ensures that recipients receive working links and prevents validation blocks when sending or scheduling your outreach.