Write to your readers

You can write to your readers from two places, and both open the same window:

• Studio > Conversations: New conversation, then a template or a blank conversation. See Start a conversation.
• Studio > Audience > Subscribers: tick some subscribers, then choose Write to them. The window opens with those subscribers already in the To field.

An email you send this way is a conversation. It appears in Studio > Conversations, and the replies to it arrive there.

The To field

To sits above the email. Click it and type: it offers, in one list,

• your segments, with the number of people in each, for example "Fans (42)". Three are always there first: All subscribers, Free subscribers and Paid subscribers,
• your labels, as their coloured chips, with how many people hold each,
• your subscribers, found as you type their name or address.

Pick as many as you like. Each pick keeps its look: a subscriber is a chip with their picture, a segment has its icon, a label has its colour.

Under the field, one line says how many different readers your choice makes, for example "112 readers". A reader who is in several of your picks counts once and gets one email. A segment that works by conditions is worked out at the moment you send.

Limits

• At most 500 readers per email. Past that the line says "At most 500 readers per email. Narrow the recipients.", the Send button stays off and nothing is sent. Send in several conversations, or use a smaller segment.
• A choice that makes nobody can't be sent: "None of these recipients can receive an email."
• A segment or a label that has been removed since you picked it is refused with its reason, and nothing is sent.

Default segments

All subscribers, Free subscribers and Paid subscribers are made for you when a publication is created, and the first time you list the segments for a publication that already existed. They are ordinary segments: you can rename one, change its rule or delete it, and a segment you deleted is not made again. In Studio > Audience > Segments they carry a Default badge.

What each reader gets

The email is sent to each reader on their own, from your publication. The button reads "Send to Ana", or "Send to 112 readers" once you have picked more than one.

A reader does not get it if they have unsubscribed, if they were imported and haven't confirmed yet, if they are banned, or if they have no address. These readers are left out without any message to you.

Two rules protect your readers from too many emails:

• Quiet hours. For a reader it is night between 9 pm and 8 am in their time zone, and their email goes out in the morning.
• A daily limit. A reader gets at most two emails a day and six a week from a publication, all of its emails together (automations included). An email held back by this limit waits for the next day. A publication or an automation can lower this limit, never raise it.

Emails go out gradually, so the recap tells you how many readers it was sent to, not how many have already received it.

Before you send

Next to Send you have two buttons:

• Preview shows the email as one of your subscribers will get it, in their language, with their own details in the merge fields. Pick the subscriber with the search field; with nobody picked, it is the email as you get it. Nothing is sent.
• Send me a test sends the email to your own address, marked as a test, with your details in the merge fields. You can send five tests an hour.

See Email templates and merge fields.

The recap

Once it is sent, the window says Sent! and shows:

• how many readers it was sent to,
• that it goes out gradually, and that readers for whom it is night get it in the morning,
• where replies arrive, with a button: Back to Conversations when you came from the tab, Open Conversations when you came from the Subscribers table.

Save as my template keeps the email you just sent in "My templates", with the subject offered as its name. Close ends the window.

When something goes wrong

• If the send could not be confirmed, the window says to try again. Sending the same conversation again is safe: the same readers don't get the email twice.
• A publication can send at most 20 times an hour and 100 times a day.
• Direct emails you sent before conversations existed are not listed in the tab.