Start an email
In Email Marketing app, emails are managed in the Bulk Emails section. Use this section to prepare marketing emails, set up email audiences, and analyze delivery statistics and responses. The section analytics provides detailed statistics for marketing emails.
The following marketing email functions are available:
- Bulk emails are sent to a large number of recipients manually.
- Trigger emails are sent automatically when new participants are added.
We recommend sending test emails before you start your email. This allows marketers to preview how their email will appear in recipients’ inboxes. This helps identify any formatting issues or rendering problems that could arise in different email clients or devices.
Sending emails from unverified domains is limited to 500 daily. Verify your domain to increase the sending limit. Learn more: Email domain verification.
Send a test email
You can send test emails only when your bulk email has "Draft," "Planned," or "Paused" status.
To send test email:
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Access the Bulk Emails section. Open the Bulk Emails section, for example within Email Marketing workplace.
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Open the bulk email you created.
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Click Send test email. This opens a mini-page.
Fig. 1 Send test email 
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Enter the email addresses to send the test email. Separate multiple addresses using a comma.
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Change contact, if needed. This data is used for applying macros, which allow you to personalize the email content based on contact-specific information. The current user contact is set as the default.
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Click Send.
Fig. 2 Test email parameters 
As a result, the test email will be sent to the specified addresses.
Start a bulk email
You have the flexibility to start an email manually at any time. Open the needed email and click Start sending. Confirm the action in the new window.
Creatio will start sending emails in a few seconds after you click the Start sending button. During this time, you can stop the email, if necessary. You can specify the delay time in the "Delay time before sending bulk email, seconds" ("MandrillMailingDelayInSeconds" code) system setting. The delay is 10 seconds out of the box.
Start a trigger email
Trigger emails are sent automatically, upon a specific event. For instance, whenever a new participant enters a campaign, Creatio sends a trigger email to that participant. The sending method of a trigger email is determined by the campaign in which the trigger email is included. There are three sending methods:
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Daily at a specified time with the option to specify a delay up to several days. Trigger email will be sent to the contacts who moved to the corresponding step in the campaign. For example, you can send educational content on your software product three days after the trial version order.
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After a defined time. Sent some time after an event. For example, you can send a trigger email 15 minutes after a customer that did not place an order but added products to the cart leaves your website. Such emails are sent throughout the day.
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Event-based. Sent after a certain event. For example, this can be a welcome letter after filling out the landing form.
To start sending trigger emails open the needed email and click Publish. Once published, the email status changes to "Planned," making it available for use in marketing campaigns.
Bulk email check-up
To make the email analysis more convenient and minimize the number of delivery errors, Creatio verifies the email audiences before starting the email. To ensure a comprehensive email response analysis, all contacts can be added as email recipients, including contacts who have already unsubscribed from emails or contacts with invalid or incorrect email addresses.
Use email responses on the Audience tab of the Email section page to analyze delivery errors. The responses are populated automatically after the email starts. Learn more about how to manage individual responses: Personal responses.
Contact data can be modified from the moment you add it to the audience until the email start. For example, during this period the customer might unsubscribe from your email or the customer's email box might become unavailable. To take into account such changes, an additional check is performed upon email sending.
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Subscription to your emails. The Do not use email checkbox must be cleared on the contact page. Creatio does not send any emails to the contacts who have the Do not use email checkbox selected on their page. In this case, the "Canceled (unsubscribed from all emails)" response is set in the Response column on the Audience tab.
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Email address relevance. The Valid checkbox must be selected for the email address of each contact. The address is flagged as invalid automatically, upon receiving any "Hard Bounce" response. Creatio does not send any emails to the contacts, whose email address does not have the Valid checkbox selected. These contacts have the "Canceled (invalid email)" response.
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Email address availability. The system checks whether the Email field is populated on the contact page. Creatio does not send any emails to the contacts who have no email address in their profile. In this case, the "Canceled (email not provided)" response is be set in the Response column on the Audience tab.
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Email address availability. An email is considered "incorrect" if it does not correspond to the email address format. Creatio does not send any emails to the contacts who have incorrect email address in their profile. In this case, the "Canceled (incorrect email)" response is set in the Response column on the Audience tab.
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Marketing communication limit for each recipient. You can limit the number of emails sent to contact during a set time, for example, no more than 5 emails per week. Creatio checks for this limit are based on the rules in the Email restriction rules lookup. For example, if a rule is set to send not more than two emails per day while two emails have already been sent to the contact today, then the third email is not sent. These contacts will have the "Email limit reached" response selected in the Response field of the Audience tab. Learn more: Configure restriction of the number of emails for sending.
When you add the email audience, Creatio checks the subscription to the selected email type. You can check the subscription status on the contact page: use the Email subscription detail on the Communication channels tab. Contacts with a "No" subscription status for a specific email type will not be included in the audience for that email.