Send a broadcast email to a customer segment
By the end of this article you will be able to send one email to exactly the customers you mean, and know what the law requires that the app already handles.
A broadcast is a marketing email — a promotion, a seasonal reminder, news — sent to a set of your customers you choose. It is email only: text messages go out for appointments and jobs, never for marketing. Marketing › Emails is where broadcasts live, on the Business plan; on Starter or Pro the page shows Broadcast email is a Business plan feature with Upgrade to Business.
Before your first broadcast
Two things have to be true, and the app checks both:
- Your business address is on file. Every marketing email must carry the sender’s postal address, so the send is refused until Settings › Company › Company Info has a Billing Address. The message says so: “Add your business address in Settings before sending marketing email — the law requires it in every message.”
- You are on the Business plan, which includes 5,000 marketing emails a month.
Write it
- Click New broadcast.
- If you have email templates, Start from a template copies one into this broadcast — the template itself is never changed by what you edit here. Templates are built under Settings › Branding › Email.
- Type the Subject and the Message. Write the message only: as the field says, an unsubscribe link and your business address are added automatically, as the law requires. They are added at send time, in each customer’s language.
Choose the audience
Everything under Audience narrows who receives it; leave a field empty and it does not filter. The count under the fields updates as you go — N customers match with the first names listed — and it is worked out by the same rule the send uses, so the number you see is the number addressed.
- Tags — customers carrying any of the tags you pick. Only existing tags are offered; this field never creates one.
- Services received — customers who have had any of these services on a completed job.
- Vehicle types — customers who own at least one vehicle of any of these types.
- Not seen for (days) — includes customers who have never had a completed job, which makes it the win-back filter.
- Seen within (days) — customers whose last completed job is this recent.
- Minimum lifetime spend and Maximum lifetime spend — the total value of their completed jobs, in dollars.
Some customers are left out whatever you choose: anyone without an email address, anyone who unsubscribed from your marketing, anyone deactivated, and any address that previously bounced or complained.
Reuse an audience. Type a Segment name and click Save as segment; next time, pick it from Load a saved segment and the fields fill in. Loading a segment is a starting point — you can still adjust the fields before saving the broadcast.
Check the allowance and save
The line above Save draft reads N recipients · M of 5,000 sends left this month. If the audience is larger than what is left, the line turns red and the send is refused until you narrow the audience or the month resets. Click Save draft; nothing has gone out yet.
Send now or schedule
Each Draft row has four controls:
- Send now — the broadcast is queued and its Status moves to Sending. Sending happens in the background, so a large broadcast finishes over several minutes; Sent and Failed fill in as each email completes, and the row ends Sent.
- Schedule — pick a date and time in your own time zone and click Schedule. The row shows Scheduled and goes out shortly after that moment. A scheduled broadcast can still be edited; to change the time, use Cancel scheduled send and schedule it again.
- Edit — reopens the composer for a draft or a scheduled broadcast.
- Delete — removes a draft or a scheduled broadcast; the dialog reminds you nothing has been sent from it.
Good to know
- Your first month. For the first 30 days after your email sending is set up, at most 500 marketing emails go out per day. A broadcast bigger than that finishes with the rest counted as Failed, so keep early broadcasts small.
- Where the results are. The row keeps the Recipients, Sent and Failed counts. Opens, clicks, bounces and complaints for all your email are under Reports › Deliverability.
- Who. Composing, sending and scheduling need the Admin role. Accounting and Viewer can read the list.
- What a customer sees. Your message, then a footer with your business name and address and an Unsubscribe link. One click on it and they are out of every future broadcast — see Unsubscribes and opt-outs.