What the page shows first

The panel at the top says where things stand:

• Sign-up is off, Sign-up on, emails scheduled, or Sign-up on, no emails scheduled.
• Sending now: N waiting while a mailing is going out, and N to retry for emails that failed once and will be tried again on the next hourly batch.
• Your schedule in one sentence, for example “Every Thursday from 1:00 PM, in hourly batches of up to 500 emails.”
• Four figures: Subscribers, Topic sign-ups, New, last 30 days and Topics open for sign-up.
• When the last mailing started and when the next one is due.

The buttons below lead on: See who signed up, Choose the categories, Email report and Sign-up page on your site.

Sign-up

• Let customers sign up on your website shows the sign-up on your site. Turning it off hides the sign-up; existing subscribers and their choices are kept. What customers see is in How can customers sign up for new arrival notifications?
• Subscribe every new account to every open category signs up anyone who creates an account to all topics at once; they have to opt out. Off is the safer choice, and most shops let customers pick.
• Offer an “other interests” box on the sign-up form adds a free-text field for interests your categories do not cover, with its own label (Label for that box). What customers type is kept with their sign-up for you to read. It is not matched to anything automatically.

Setting the schedule

1. In the Schedule card, pick Send never, every week, every two weeks or once a month.
2. Choose the day and the starting at time (your server's time zone is shown beside it).
3. Click Save Settings.

Each subscriber gets one email per mailing, covering every topic they follow that has something new. Only items added since the previous mailing are included, so a subscriber whose topics have nothing new gets no email that time. Emails go out in hourly batches from the start time until everyone has theirs, so the exact minute varies.

Last mailing shows when the last one started. Next mailing is set automatically from the schedule after each mailing; change it to bring the next one forward or hold it back, or clear it and the schedule takes over again.

Writing the email

The email card holds what subscribers receive. The new items are listed by topic between the intro and the closing.

• Subject line: %COMPANY_NAME% becomes your shop name.
• From address: leave blank to send from your shop's inquiry address.
• Intro: opens the email. %TOPIC_NOTIFICATION_EDIT_LINK% links to the page where a subscriber manages their choices.
• Closing and Footer. Put the unsubscribe link in the footer: %UNSUBSCRIBE_LINK% removes the subscriber from every topic in one click.
• Items per topic (10 to 100, or No limit) and Description length (25 to 200 words, or Full description).
• Text shown for a topic the subscriber has left, for example “(opted out)”.
• Campaign tag (UTM): added to every link so your analytics can tell these visits apart. Leave blank for none.

Fonts and colours come from Email Design, which styles every email your shop sends.

Previewing and sending a test

The See it before it sends card builds a sample notification with your text as it stands right now (saved or not), two example books and your site's email design. Preview opens it, with Desktop and Phone widths. Email me a test sends it to the address in the box when you click Send; the subject starts with [Test]. No subscriber receives anything, and the manage and unsubscribe links point at the plain page. Only administrators can preview or send a test.

Checking a send in Email Reports

Open Reports › Customers › Email Reports (or Email report on the settings page). Two cards answer the usual questions.

Recent Sends

One row per mailing: Emails built, Sent, Still waiting and Failed. A note above the table tells you if notifications are switched off, or how many subscribers are waiting on an email that has been built but not sent yet (sending is paced hourly). Rows older than a month are cleared overnight, so the table covers roughly the last four sends.

Did someone get it?

1. Type the subscriber's email address and click Check.
2. Read the answer at the top, for example “They should receive the next send.”, “They have not confirmed their subscription.”, “None of their categories is switched on for notifications.” or “Their address is suppressed, so nothing can be delivered.”
3. Below it, each step is checked in turn: on file, confirmed, their categories, what is waiting for them, the emails built for them, and whether the address is suppressed. Open Their categories, Emails built for them (with the reason any one failed) and What Postmark says (delivery history for the last 45 days) for detail.
4. Click Start again to check another address.

If an email to them failed twice and was given up on, administrators see Clear the failed emails. Clearing tidies their queue and re-checks. It does not resend anything: they are simply included in the next send as usual.

A suppressed address can be reactivated from the Suppressed Emails list on the same page, unless the person marked a message as spam. See Mailing lists and email deliverability.

Common questions

Why did a subscriber get nothing this week?

Usually because nothing new arrived in the categories they follow. Use Did someone get it? to be sure.

Can I send a mailing now instead of waiting?

Set Next mailing to the time you want and save.

I turned sign-up off. Did I lose my subscribers?

No. Their choices are kept for when you turn it back on.

What does “to retry” mean on the settings page?

Those emails failed once and will be tried again on the next hourly batch. An email that fails twice shows as failed in Recent Sends.

A subscriber says they never confirmed. What do they do?

Notifications only go to confirmed subscribers. They confirm by following the link in the email they were sent when they signed up.