Deliver mailings can be sent as one time campaigns or on an ongoing basis. Once you've completed the following checklist and are satisfied with the content and presentation of your message, navigate to the mailing overview page and click Send Mailing. This article lists and describes each of the configurations that appear in the Send Mailing pop-up.

🔔 Important!

Before sending any mailing:

• Check the logic of your recipient list queries

• Preview the message as it will appear on desktop and mobile

• Preview any links

• Send a test message

Pre-flight checks

Any errors or warnings that identify any common mistakes in the mailing setup will appear at the top of the mailing next to Pre-Flight Checks.

📝 Pre-flight check errors prevent the activation of a mailing, but warnings will still allow the mailing to be sent.

For example:

• If the Recipient field is missing an email address, an error message will appear.

• If a merge field exists in the message body, but it is missing from the recipient list exports, a warning will appear, but the message will still send.

📖 All possible pre-flight check errors

Estimated recipients

Shows a summary of the expected delivery report before sending.

Recipient lists

Review the recipient and suppression Lists.

Batch Size (optional)

A batch size can be included when limiting the number of recipients for a message. For example, if 10 is entered as the batch size, the mailing will stop after sending to 10 random records from recipient lists.

Setting a batch size is also useful if a mailing should only be sent to a certain number of recipients in each delivery window. Slate limits the number of rows pulled in each delivery window by the recipient list query to the number entered in the batch size field. The mailing will maintain its Scheduled/Running status. When the next delivery window occurs, the mailing will send the next batch of messages. 

Review

Selecting this option indicates that the message is ready for review.

Outbox

Send to Outbox and do not deliver automatically.

Frequency

Select one of two options:

• Send mailing once

• Send mailing on recurring basis

If sending a recurring mailing, additional options appear:

• Date Range: Select the start and end date (exclusive) for the email campaign. Leave the end date empty to run the campaign until you deactivate it.

• Weekdays: Select the weekdays the mailing will be sent

Notes on recurring mailings

• Start date is inclusive, end date is exclusive: The “until” date is excluded from the range in which your mailing is sent. For example, if you select 5/24/2023 as a start date and 6/30/2023 as an end date, the mailing starts on May 24th, 2023 and concludes on June 29th, 2023. No mailings will be sent on June 30th.

• Recurring mailings can’t have a date range less than 24 hours in length; send these messages with frequency set to Send mailing once.

• Running a mailing indefinitely is not compatible with uploaded spreadsheet recipient lists. If you want an ongoing, indefinite mailing, you must build a recipient list through a query.

Timing

Choose when your mailing should be delivered, and Slate handles the scheduling.

Slate has options to send a mailing once or send a mailing on a recurring basis. Mailings sent once can be sent immediately (“send now”) or sent at a future date/time. Mailings sent on a recurring basis can be at a specific time each day, or during a set of 2-hour time windows each day.

⚠️ Critical note on scheduling

Once Slate generates a recipient list and schedules messages for delivery, you can’t cancel or alter the mailing, or change its recipients.

Send mailing once

Send now

Slate generates the recipient list immediately and sends messages right away.

Send at a future date/time

Choose a delivery date and time, then select a time zone option:

• Eastern Time: Slate generates the recipient list at (or shortly after) your scheduled time and sends messages immediately to all recipients.

• Recipient’s time zone: Slate generates the recipient list early on the scheduled sending day — as early as midnight Eastern Time if you schedule the mailing 24+ hours in advance — then delivers each message at your specified time in the recipient's local time zone.

📝 Additional notes on scheduling

• If your scheduled time has already passed in a recipient's time zone, their message may be delayed up to 24 hours.

• Slate calculates recipient time zones using the geographic data from their rank 1 address.

• Recipients without an address (or with an address with an unknown time zone) will receive messages in Eastern Time.

• For best results, use recipient time zone scheduling only when your recipients have a rank 1 address.

Send mailing on a recurring basis

Send at a specific time

📝 Important note on future date/time scheduling

When using the send at a specific time option, Slate generates the message’s recipient list as early as possible on the scheduled delivery date. Messages are immediately scheduled for sending after the recipient list is generated.

• For mailings scheduled 24+ hours in advance, Slate generates the recipient list early in the morning (as early as midnight US Eastern Time).

• For mailings scheduled for delivery less than 24 hours after activation, Slate generates the recipient list immediately.

After the recipient list has been generated, it is not possible to cancel or alter the mailing, or to change its recipients.

Choose a delivery time and select a time zone option. The mailing will repeat daily until you stop it or it reaches the stop date.

• Eastern Time: Slate generates a fresh recipient list each day and sends all messages at your chosen time.

• Recipient’s time zone: Slate generates a fresh recipient list each day and delivers each message at your chosen time in the recipient's local time zone.

Send throughout the day

Choose at least two delivery windows. Slate will generate the recipient list and send the mailing during the selected delivery windows.

• Overnight: 2:00AM - 4:00AM

• Morning: 10:00AM -12:00PM

• Midday: 12:00PM - 2:00PM

• Afternoon: 2:00PM - 4:00PM

• Evening: 8:00PM - 10:00PM

Deduping

Used to denote whether a mailing should be sent multiple times per recipient, or only once. Deduping occurs based on the recipient's email address.

The three deduping options are:

• Do not dedupe messages

• Send only one message/recipient

• Allow recurring delivery of this message to the same recipient

Consider the following when deciding on an option:

Do not dedupe messages

The mailing will send to a record if:

• The record satisfies the filter criteria

• The record does not already exist in a query run for the mailing

Even if the email address for a record already exists as the recipient of the same mailing, the record with that email address will receive the message again.

If multiple records included in the same query run contain the same email address, all records satisfying the filter criteria will still be considered for sending.

Note: For mailings that use an uploaded spreadsheet for the recipient list, the original spreadsheet must be re-uploaded to re-send to the original recipients.

Send only one message/recipient

The mailing will send to a record if:

• The record satisfies the filter criteria.

• The record does not already exist in a query run for the mailing.

• The email address of the record was not already used as the recipient for the mailing.

If multiple records exist with the same email address in a query run, only one message will be sent per email address. Other records with that email address will be skipped when the mailing is sent.

If a record that contains the same email address as a separate record that has already received the mailing is included in a query run, this recipient will be skipped and the mailing will not be delivered a second time to that email address.

Allow recurring delivery

Selecting this option will allow the message to be sent to a record multiple times. When this setting is selected, previous query runs in the mailing will automatically be removed from the mailing each time the mailing runs. A frequency must be selected, defining how often this message should send to the same record (such as 1 day, 2 days, or 30 days).

The mailing will continue to send to a record if:

• The record satisfies the filter criteria.

• Either the mailing has not been sent to the record, or the previous message was sent to the record at least x days ago, where x is the specified frequency.

Send Mailing

Click to activate the mailing.

Emails and texts are never sent or delivered to recipients when messages are "sent" in Test, Clean Slate, or Time Warp environments, though they will appear on records' Timelines as if they were delivered.

However, scheduled ongoing mailings do not automatically run in these environments, so they will not appear as if they were sent. Test ongoing mailings in a Production environment with test records to ensure that these mailings send as expected.

📖 Further Reading: Learn more about the differences in Slate feature behavior between test and production environments.

Save Settings

Click to save the settings without sending the message.