Broadcasts

Broadcasts are one-time mass emails sent to a targeted audience. Use them for newsletter campaigns, product announcements, promotions, or any communication that should go out to a group of contacts at once.

[SCREENSHOT PLACEHOLDER: The Broadcast composer showing the email editor and targeting settings]

Creating a Broadcast

To write and configure a new broadcast:

1. Navigate to Email → Broadcasts in the sidebar.
2. Click New Broadcast in the top right.
3. Fill in the Subject Line (required) and write your email body in the rich-text editor.
4. Select the appropriate Category (Marketing or Transactional).
5. Choose a verified Sender Identity to send from.

Draft UX & Saving Constraints

When composing or editing a broadcast, the system enforces several safety and helper features:

• Subject Requirement: You must enter a non-empty Subject Line to save a draft or to queue/schedule a send. If you attempt to save without a subject, the system will prevent it and display an error toast.
• Unsaved Changes Indicator: An amber pulsing "Unsaved changes" indicator appears next to the Save Draft button when the current composer content has been modified from the saved database state.
• Title Defaults: Drafts without a saved subject are titled "New Broadcast" in the page header and appear as an italicized New Broadcast in the dashboard list.
• Browser Exit Guard: If you attempt to close or reload the browser tab while unsaved changes exist, a browser confirmation warning (beforeunload event) prompts you to confirm you want to leave and discard changes.

Merge Field Cursor Placement

When personalizing your email, the system tracks whether your cursor was last in the Subject Line input or the Email Body rich-text editor. Clicking a merge field token in the toolbar inserts the tag exactly at the current cursor position in the tracked field, rather than appending it to the end or stealing focus. Focus issues are prevented, ensuring cursor focus is preserved.

Deliverability Settings

For Marketing broadcasts, you can toggle the "Optimize for Deliverability" setting:

• Enabled: Removes all tracking elements (open pixel and link wrapping) to present the cleanest possible signal to email providers like Gmail and Outlook. Unsubscribe headers remain active. Highly recommended when sending from a newly verified domain.
• Disabled: Standard tracking is enabled, recording opens and clicks.

For Transactional broadcasts, tracking is always disabled and cannot be toggled.

Sending a Test Email

To verify how your email looks in actual email clients before sending it to your entire audience, you can send a test email. This feature is available on all broadcast statuses (Draft, Scheduled, Sent, and Failed) so you can preview any message:

1. Click Send Test (available in the detail view action bar).
2. In the Send Test Email form:
   • Select Contact: Choose a contact from your database. The system will use this contact's details to dynamically populate any Merge Fields (like name or email) in the subject or body.
   • Recipient Email: Enter the target email address where you want to receive the test. By default, it pre-fills your logged-in user profile email.
   • Footer Options: If the selected preview contact is unsubscribed or soft-suppressed, you can toggle the option to append the transactional subscribe footer.
3. Click Send Test.

Note: For Draft broadcasts, the Send Test button is disabled if there are unsaved changes. You must save the draft first. If the subject or body is completely empty (HTML tags are stripped during verification), the system will prevent sending a test and toast an error.

The Broadcasts List

The Broadcasts dashboard displays a table of all broadcasts in your workspace.

Table Columns

• Chevron Toggle (▸/▾) — Click to expand or collapse contextual details inline.
• Broadcast Name & Subject — The title and subject line of the email.
• Category — Marketing (with marketing icon) or Transactional (with shield icon) category badges.
• Status — Displays the current dispatch state: Draft (gray), Scheduled (blue), Processing (amber), Sent (green), or Failed (red).
• Created — The creation date and time of the broadcast.
• Recipients — The number of contacts the broadcast was successfully sent to (shows — for Draft or Scheduled statuses).

Filtering

You can filter and search the broadcasts dashboard using the controls in the top filter bar:

• Status Filter — Segment broadcasts by status: Draft, Scheduled, Sent, or Any (default).

  [!NOTE] Transient or rare statuses (such as Processing and Failed) are omitted from the quick filter segments to keep the interface simple, but they remain visible when filtering by "Any" or sorting.

• Category Filter — Segment by type: Marketing, Transactional, or Any (default).
• Search — Search by subject line (includes a quick clear '×' icon).
• Clear Filters — Click the ✕ Clear filters button (appears when any filter is active) to instantly reset the filter segments and search box to their default states.

Accordion Expansion UX

Expanding a row displays contextual details depending on the broadcast's status:

• Draft & Scheduled — Shows a summary of the inclusion/exclusion filters (target tags or events) and lazy-loads a real-time audience size estimate.
• Sent (Tracking Enabled) — Displays delivery performance metrics: open rate, click rate, bounce count, and spam complaint count.
• Sent (Tracking Disabled or Transactional) — Displays "Tracking disabled" or "Transactional — no tracking" status message.
• Failed — Displays the specific error message detailing what caused the failure alongside any partial send tracking metrics.
• Action Button — Renders Edit Broadcast for Draft broadcasts, and View for Scheduled, Sent, Failed, or Sending broadcasts. (The dashboard list options menu (three dots) also dynamically updates from "Edit" to "View" for scheduled and sending broadcasts).

Audience Targeting

Audience configuration is managed via the Audience Builder component, located below the email editor. The Audience Builder provides an interactive, full-width interface to include and exclude contacts:

Target Selection (Includes)

You can target contacts using the following options:

• Target Tags: Select tags to include contacts. The selector is a searchable multi-select list featuring inline pattern matching. Selected tags appear as dismissible chips.
• Target Events: Select Eventbrite or manual events to include registered attendees. Includes the same searchable multi-select list behavior.
• Target All Contacts: Toggle to target every contact in the workspace. When active, individual tag and event selections are disabled.

Exclude Filters

Expand the Exclude Section (which shows a count badge of selected exclusions) to refine your list:

• Exclude Tags: Prevent contacts with any of these tags from receiving the broadcast.
• Exclude Events: Prevent contacts registered for any of these events from receiving the broadcast.

Display Modes

• Composer Mode: Displays full searchable menus and responsive columns (side-by-side on desktop, stacked on mobile) to configure the audience.
• Summary Mode: Displays a compact, read-only list of included and excluded tags and events once the broadcast status is Scheduled, Sent, Failed, or Sending.

How the Audience is Resolved

Before the email is dispatched, the system calculates the final list of recipients:

1. It gathers all contacts matching your Include filters.
2. It removes anyone matching your Exclude filters.
3. It removes contacts who have unsubscribed or have active email suppressions (e.g., past bounces, spam complaints, or manual blocks).
4. For Marketing categories, it removes contacts who are marked as unsubscribed. (Transactional bypasses this check).

Scheduling and Sending

Once your content and audience are configured, you can queue or schedule the dispatch:

Send Now Validation

When you click Send Now:

• Always Clickable: The button remains clickable even if requirements (like subject line, content, or audience selection) are not yet met, but it appears visually muted (shaded).
• Click-to-Explain Feedback: If requirements are missing, clicking the button displays a specific toast alert detailing the exact blocker (e.g., "Add a subject line", "Add email content", or "Select an audience").
• Ready State: When all requirements are satisfied, the button displays in full emerald styling.

Undo Send

To prevent accidental bulk sends, you can cancel a queued send:

• Undo Timer: Immediately after clicking Send Now, a notification message with an Undo action button appears and remains visible for 15 seconds.
• Halt Action: Clicking the Undo button in the message, or clicking Undo Send (in the detail page header or the dashboard list options menu (three dots)) halts the background sending process.
• Reversion: The broadcast status reverts to Draft, and the email send logs are cleared. The system checks the status atomically; if the system has already begun delivery, the undo action is blocked to ensure data consistency.

Scheduling for Later

Check the Schedule toggle, select a date and time, and click Schedule. The status changes to Scheduled. You can edit the broadcast, revert it to a draft, or modify its schedule at any time before the scheduled time.

Tracking Progress

After sending, you can monitor the broadcast's performance directly from its detail page (/broadcasts/[id]):

• Sent Count / Recipients — The total number of emails successfully sent.
• Delivery Rates — Percentage of delivered, opened, and clicked emails (if tracking was enabled).
• Diagnostics for Failed Broadcasts — If a broadcast fails, a diagnostic info card is displayed at the top of the detail page showing the specific error message and the count of any partial sends completed before the failure.
• Recipients Table — Both Sent and Failed broadcasts render a detailed list of all targeted contacts and their individual delivery statuses (delivered, bounced, opened, clicked, complained, or failed).
• Recipients CSV Export: Export the full delivery audit details by clicking the Export CSV action. The export includes dual-timestamp output columns (each timestamp has a raw UTC format column alongside a localized format column using your workspace timezone), as well as explicit columns for the broadcast Subject, Category, and Export Timezone.

Permissions

All workspace members can write, configure, and send broadcasts. Deleting a historical record is restricted.

Related

• Sender Identities — Configure the domain you send from
• Merge Fields — Personalize your broadcast subject and body
• Subscriptions & Consent — Understand consent compliance rules
• Technical Reference: Email — Database schemas, background sweeper details, and status values