Send a test mail and schedule your campaign
The pre-flight checks that catch mistakes before your list sees them.
Before you send
Every campaign in Sumezi goes through the same compose screen: subject and preheader, sender, recipients, and a pre-flight checklist that checks itself as you work. Nothing here is hidden behind a separate step — the checklist updates live while you type and as soon as you change your recipient list.
The checklist isn't a gate you have to clear before the send button lights up — it's a live status report. You can still click Send with red items showing; the real hard stops (missing SMTP, an over-quota send) happen at the server and are covered further down.
Step 1 — Write your subject and preheader
The subject field accepts up to 120 characters, but the counter turns to a warning color past 62 — that's roughly where most inbox lists start truncating. The preheader (the preview snippet next to the subject in an inbox) works the same way: 160 characters allowed, warning past 130.
Both live-preview instantly in the inbox mock-up and the full email preview on the right, so you see the truncation risk before it becomes real.
Step 2 — Confirm sender, recipients, and language
Your sender name and address come straight from Settings, Deliverability — Compose just reflects it. If nothing's configured yet, you'll see a note pointing you to Settings before you can send.
Recipients are either All subscribers or a specific list — each option shows its live subscriber count so you know exactly how many people you're about to reach. Suppressed and unsubscribed addresses are excluded automatically.
Language is currently single-version: the campaign sends in one language. A per-language split option is visible in the interface but marked as not yet built — don't rely on it.
Step 3 — Run the pre-flight checklist
Sumezi checks eight things every time you touch the subject, preheader, or recipient selection. Each item is either green or not — here's exactly what each one verifies.
| Check | What it catches |
|---|---|
| Subject filled | An empty subject line — the send button won't stop you, but this is the one thing the confirm step itself refuses to skip. |
| Preheader filled | A missing preview snippet, which leaves inboxes showing raw body text instead. |
| SMTP configured | No sending server set up yet in Settings — this is a hard requirement for both test mails and real sends. |
| Sender configured | A missing from-name or from-email in your SMTP settings. |
| Recipients selected | An empty audience — the chosen list or "All subscribers" has zero eligible people. |
| Unsubscribe link present | A template whose HTML has no {{unsubscribe_url}} merge tag or /unsubscribe link — checked against the actual template you're sending. |
| Quota available | Your plan's monthly send limit already used up by this campaign's recipient count. |
| Domain verified | SPF, DKIM, or DMARC not fully verified for your sending domain — see the DNS setup guide. |
The one real UI-level stop: the confirm step blocks you if the subject is empty, and (when scheduling) if the date/time you picked isn't strictly in the future. Everything else in the checklist is advisory — you can send with a missing unsubscribe link or an unverified domain if you choose to, though neither is a good idea.
Step 4 — Send a test mail first
The Send test mail button sits right above the checklist. It sends to your own account email address — there's no field to type in a different address here. It requires SMTP to be configured and a template already attached to the campaign; without one, you'll get a clear "campaign has no template yet" error instead of a silent failure.
Two things about test mails worth knowing: they deliberately skip the domain/routing check that blocks real sends (so a broken unsubscribe link shows up in your test inbox rather than being caught only after a real send), and they still count against your monthly send quota — a batch of test mails to a few colleagues is a real, countable send.
Personalization tokens like {{first_name}} render using your account's fallback text in a test mail, not your own name — the test uses a placeholder subscriber with only an email address, so don't be surprised by a blank greeting.
Step 5 — Send now or schedule
Switch to Schedule and you get a date and time field, plus a note that the time uses your workspace's timezone. Try to pick a moment that isn't strictly after right now, and the app stops you before it even opens the confirm modal.
Either way, clicking the main button opens a confirm modal with a summary — sender, recipient count, language, and the exact moment — plus a warning line listing any checklist items that aren't green yet.
Quota is checked twice for a scheduled campaign: once when you confirm, and again right before it actually fans out. If other sends used up your remaining quota in the meantime, the scheduled campaign doesn't just vanish — it's marked quota_blocked instead of failed, and you get a direct notification email explaining why it never went out.
What happens after you hit send
An immediate send shows a progress overlay with three steps — queued, sending, sent — and polls for real counts roughly every two seconds until every recipient has been processed. A scheduled campaign skips the progress bar entirely and just confirms the date, time, and recipient count you locked in.
Troubleshooting
- "Campaign has no template yet": a test mail needs a template attached to the campaign first — pick one before testing.
- Can't schedule for the past: the confirm step checks your chosen date and time against the current moment before it lets you proceed — pick a later time and try again.
- Test and real sends both refuse to run: check Settings for SMTP first — no sending server configured is a hard stop for either kind of send.
- A scheduled campaign shows "quota blocked": your plan's monthly send limit filled up between scheduling and the actual send time — check your usage before scheduling something close to the edge.
- Red checklist items don't stop your send: only an empty subject and a past schedule time are hard stops in the compose screen itself — treat a missing unsubscribe link or unverified domain as a reason to pause anyway, not just a suggestion.