If you want to use the advanced launch options, such as testing different versions of your email on a small percentage of recipients before sending the final mailing, click Advanced Scheduling.
Important:
- Advanced scheduling is not supported for email campaigns with audiences over 5 million contacts.
- A pre-launch delay period is started 25 minutes before the scheduled launch of a campaign to start any required preparation for the campaign in time. Any changes done during this period, might not have time to be properly processed, and be fully reflected in the sent-out campaign. Changes to the campaign close to the launch, especially during the pre-launch delay is not recommended.
When you schedule multiple campaign versions (e.g. Test1, Test2 and Final), then the prelaunch delay only applies to the first launch (e.g. Test 1) and there will be no such delay for the other versions (e.g. for Test2 and Final).
Steps before launching your campaign
The Launch Now button is not active unless you Generate launch list and Check personalization.
Generate launch list
Before you can take advantage any of the advanced scheduling features, complete the following:
1. Generate the launch list manually.
You can view the following information:
- Original target: How many contacts the recipient source contains.
- Opted out: Number of the contacts have a false opt-in.
- Invalid address: Number of the contacts have invalid email addresses. Click the Invalid address column to open your Bounce Management page.
- Estimated recipients: The total number of contacts the email campaign will be sent to.
Once you have switched to Advanced Scheduling and performed any actions there (such as generating the launch list), you will not be able to switch back to Simple Scheduling.
Check personalization
2. Click Check Personalization button to review the availability of the personalization variables used in the email campaign, such as: title, first name, last name.
The system checks whether the contacts in the selected recipient source have the corresponding entries in their individual profiles. The results are presented in the Check personalization window.
If the availability of a variable is below 100%, you can decide to insert an Alternative text or to Omit recipients who do not have a corresponding entry.
Select launch type
You can send different versions of your email to see which one performs better. You can repeat the process to test as many as you want to launch. For more information, see Launch the test versions.
Use Send Time Optimization for final mailing
You can turn on the Send Time Optimization to calculate the best time of the day to send the email to each recipient.
Select version to send
When you have launched all your versions, select the criteria for the Final mailing. You can set the toggle to Manually and decide which version to send yourself, or set it to Automatically and let Emarsys choose the version based on the possible criteria. For more information on the Select launch type and Select version to send options, see Launch the test versions.
On-event scheduling for recipient sources generated through an event
If your email campaign is set to be triggered by an event, the Scheduling page simply lets you decide whether to send the emails exactly on the event or a certain time before or after.
In this way, you can send an email one day before an anniversary event, for example, or a day after a registration.
After you have set the schedule, click Activate to enable the campaign. From this moment, it will send an email every time the trigger event occurs.
On-date (including on-birthday) emails are sent each day at the same time in the account default time zone. This setting is not affected by changes to the time zone on the profile page of the logged-in user.
Scheduling
Set the launch date. You can choose to Launch Now or Launch later at a specified date. You can launch on selected day/time, if launch is not right now.
- Launch now: To send it now.
- Launch later: Set the launch date.
If you select the Account default time zone for scheduling and the admin's time zone is different from the account default time zone, then the campaign will be sent according to the admin's time zone.
Recurring scheduling
We recommend using the Recurring filter entry point in the Automation Center when sending recurring campaigns instead of the Recurring scheduling feature.
You can set up recurring campaigns in the Email Campaign module, but you need to contact Emarsys Support to set the actual launch time.
If you have set up such a recurring campaign, the scheduling page is replaced by controls asking you to define when the child campaign is created and who should receive an alert. This is designed to give you time to check the child campaign and correct any errors in time for the launch.
Pausing and resuming launches
While your email campaign is being prepared and being sent out to all the recipients, you can still halt the email sending process by clicking Pause. To continue with the launch, click Resume.
Important: Please note that when you reactivate a paused campaign, all emails will be sent out immediately if their launch date has passed.
If you pause a campaign after some emails have been sent out, these contacts will still be listed in the Analysis pages. Once all the email have been sent, you can no longer stop or recall any of them.
To pause an on-event campaign, open the Scheduling page and click Deactivate at any time.
Time-based limitation of campaign launch
When a campaign is created, a lot of processes are started in our databases that can put a heavy load on them. To manage the load, we are disabling all campaigns which are not launched and remain in In Design status within 60 days of their creation.
If you want to launch such a campaign, you will need to copy it and then launch the copy.