# Sending Campaigns

What happens when you hit send.

When you are happy with your campaign — content is polished, merge tags are in place, and the
right audience is selected — it's time to send. SendBeam hands your messages to
its **managed delivery**, which signs them for your domain and routes them through
its mail infrastructure to maximise inbox placement.

## Before You Send

Take a few minutes to run through this checklist before confirming a send. Mistakes in email
campaigns can't be undone once delivery begins.

- **Preview the email** — Use the desktop and mobile preview on the Email step
  to confirm layout, images, and text all look correct at both screen sizes.
- **Send a test email** — Click **Send test** on the Email step, on
  the Review step, or on the campaign's own page. It goes to your own address by default, or to a
  list of addresses — a colleague, a client — up to 5 on Free and 20 on paid plans, with an hourly allowance per workspace. Choose
  *Render as* to fill the merge tags with a real contact's name, email and custom fields;
  the copy still goes to the addresses you entered, and its unsubscribe link cannot unsubscribe
  anyone. Test copies carry a working view-in-browser link, are not counted against your plan and
  do not appear in the stats. Check the copy on a desktop email client and on a phone: merge tags,
  images, links.
- **Check the subject line** — Re-read it for typos and think about how any merge
  tag reads when the contact has no value for it.
- **Verify the from address** — Make sure the domain is verified under Email &
  Domains and the display name looks professional. SendBeam re-checks the workspace's sender
  address on every send and only sends as its own shared address or a domain it has verified.
- **Check the audience** — Confirm the right list or segment is selected, and
  look at the **recipients right now** figure under Audience on the campaign page.
  It is computed by the same rules as the send itself, so it is the number that will be queued
  (the list's contact count and a segment's preview count also include unconfirmed and
  unsubscribed contacts, so they can be higher). If the campaign cannot be sent — no one to
  send to, or the audience would take you past your monthly allowance — the reason is shown in
  the same place. The API equivalent is `GET /api/v1/campaigns/{id}/audience`.
- **Check the unsubscribe link** — Put the
  `{'{{unsubscribe_url}}'}` merge tag where you want it. If it is missing, SendBeam
  adds a plain unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.
- **Check your allowance** — The send is refused if the audience would take the
  account past its monthly email limit. Usage is shown under Account settings → Billing & Plans. Each
  plan also has an hourly ceiling, shown under Billing; a campaign that reaches it simply
  continues in the next hour.

> Open your test email on a mobile device, not just on desktop. More than half of all emails
> are read on mobile, and layout problems often only appear at narrow screen widths.
> 

## The Send Now Flow

To send a campaign immediately:

1. On the **Review & Send** step of the builder, check the summary of campaign
  name, subject, from address and audience.
2. Click **Send Now**.
3. The campaign is saved, its status changes to **Sending** as recipients are queued,
  and you are taken to the campaign page. Within seconds to a few minutes (depending on audience
  size), it transitions to **Sent**.

You can also send a saved draft from its own page: open it from the Campaigns list, click
**Send**, and confirm the dialog.

> There is no recall or undo once the send starts. Treat **Send Now** as final and
> use the checklist above first.
> 

## How Sending Works

Once you confirm a send, SendBeam processes your campaign in the background. Here's what happens
under the hood:

- **Audience resolution** — SendBeam fetches the contacts matching your chosen
  audience (all contacts, list members, or segment). Only contacts whose status is
  **Subscribed** are included; on a double opt-in list, only confirmed members. On
  the Free plan only contacts who have confirmed a subscription are included, whatever the
  audience.
- **Allowance check** — The whole audience must fit within what is left of the
  account's monthly email allowance, or the send is refused with a "Monthly email limit reached"
  message. For a scheduled campaign the check happens at send time; if it fails, the campaign is
  cancelled with the reason recorded on its page and workspace admins are emailed.
- **Queuing** — One send record is created per recipient and the campaign moves to
  **Sending**. A background job drains the queue in batches,
  sharing each pass fairly between every campaign that is sending so a large campaign does not
  hold up a small one. Within the plan's hourly ceiling, what does not fit waits for the next
  hour. A recipient whose email cannot be sent is recorded as failed, with the reason.
- **Merge tag substitution** — For each recipient, merge tags in the subject line
  and email body are replaced with that contact's data.
- **Tracking** — Each email gets a unique tracking pixel for open detection and
  every link is rewritten through SendBeam's click redirect so that opens and clicks are recorded
  in your campaign statistics. A click-tracking link only redirects for an email SendBeam
  actually sent. Unsubscribe links are signed per recipient, and one-click unsubscribe headers
  are added.
- **Delivery** — Messages are signed for your domain and handed to the receiving
  mail servers. Bounces and complaints flow back automatically and update the contact. If the
  workspace's bounce or complaint rate climbs, admins are emailed a warning, and past the
  safety line sending is paused — see [Delivery](https://sendbeam.io/docs/admin/settings#delivery).

> For large campaigns (thousands of contacts), the **Sending** status may persist
> for several minutes while the queue drains. Refresh the campaign page to see progress in the
> recipients table.
> 

## Sent Status is Final

Once a campaign reaches **Sent** status, it cannot be modified, resent, or recalled.
The emails are already in transit and many will have been
received by recipients within seconds of the send starting.

If you discover a mistake in a sent campaign — a broken link, a typo, an incorrect merge tag —
your options are limited to:

- **Sending a follow-up campaign** — Create a new campaign acknowledging the
  error and providing the correct information.
- **Duplicating and resending** — Use the [Duplicate](https://sendbeam.io/docs/campaigns/duplicating)
  feature to clone the campaign, fix the issue, and send a corrected version to the same
  audience.

This is why the pre-send checklist and test emails are so important. A small investment of time
before sending prevents the need for damage-control afterwards.

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Source: https://sendbeam.io/docs/campaigns/sending