Test and schedule a campaign

Before a campaign goes out, check it in your own inbox and against real contact data. Then send it right away or pick a time. This page covers testing, scheduling, canceling a schedule and what happens while the campaign is sending, in the dashboard and with the API.

Send a test

Test sends go to your own addresses so you can check the email in real inboxes and email clients.

1. Open the test step. In the campaign wizard, go to Preview and test.

2. Enter addresses. Under Send test, type up to 5 addresses, separated by commas, spaces or semicolons, for example me@acme.com, colleague@acme.com.

3. Send. Select Send test. The confirmation reads “Test email is being sent.”

Test sends differ from the real campaign:

• Merge tags use placeholder data. {{email}} becomes the test address. First name, last name and custom fields are empty. To check real values, use Preview as contact.
• The unsubscribe link doesn’t unsubscribe anyone.
• Loads and clicks aren’t tracked, and tests don’t count in the campaign’s report.
• Limits: up to 5 addresses per test and 3 tests per minute. The campaign needs a From email first.
• Sandbox workspaces can only send tests to the account addresses of workspace members. See Production access.

Test emails appear under Email API›Emails like other outgoing mail.

Preview as a contact

In the same step, Preview as contact renders the campaign with one contact’s data. Search for a contact by name or email, and the preview shows the subject and content as that person will see them, with “Previewing as” and their name above it. Switch between Desktop and Mobile to check both widths.

Use it to catch empty names, wrong custom field keys and tags that weren’t replaced. See Merge tags.

Send now or schedule

In the Send step, select Send campaign and choose when:

When you schedule:

• The time is in your computer’s time zone. The field defaults to the next full hour. Emailit stores the time in UTC.
• It must be in the future. Otherwise the dialog shows “Pick a time in the future.”
• Sending starts within a minute of the time. Emailit checks for due campaigns every minute.
• Recipients are worked out when sending starts, so people who join or leave your audiences in the meantime are counted correctly.
• The campaign is locked. Only drafts can be edited. To change a scheduled campaign, cancel the schedule first.

Cancel a schedule

1. Find the campaign. On Email Marketing›Campaigns, open the Scheduled tab.

2. Cancel. In the row menu, or at the top of the campaign page, select Cancel Schedule and confirm.

The campaign goes back to Draft without a send time, so you can edit it and send or schedule it again. You can’t cancel in the last 5 minutes before the scheduled time. The dashboard then shows “Campaign cannot be canceled less than 5 minutes before scheduled time.”

While the campaign is sending

When sending starts, Emailit selects the recipients, skips unsubscribed and suppressed addresses, and creates one email per recipient in batches. Meanwhile the campaign page shows:

• An In process card: “This campaign is still sending. Counts update as messages move through delivery.”
• Send progress: the share of created emails that have left the queue, for example “1,200 of 5,000 created messages have left the unprocessed queue.”
• Live counts for Sent, Delivered, Attempted, Not processed, Bounced, Suppressed and Complained. See Campaign reports.

Once every recipient email is created, the status changes to Sent. Delivery carries on after that: emails to servers that are temporarily unavailable are retried for up to about 21 hours, and loads and clicks keep arriving. The report updates as they do.

A campaign that has started sending can’t be stopped from the dashboard, so test it before you send.

Use the API

Send a draft right away with Send or schedule a campaign:

curl https://api.emailit.com/v2/campaigns/cmp_4Tq9Xv2kLm8Rw/send \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMAILIT_API_KEY"

{
  "object": "campaign",
  "id": "cmp_4Tq9Xv2kLm8Rw",
  "name": "October newsletter",
  "status": "sending",
  "message": "Campaign send initiated"
}

To schedule it, pass scheduled_at as an ISO 8601 date-time in the future. A Unix timestamp works too. Only drafts can be scheduled:

curl https://api.emailit.com/v2/campaigns/cmp_4Tq9Xv2kLm8Rw/send \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMAILIT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "scheduled_at": "2026-10-15T09:00:00Z" }'

{
  "object": "campaign",
  "id": "cmp_4Tq9Xv2kLm8Rw",
  "name": "October newsletter",
  "status": "scheduled",
  "scheduled_at": "2026-10-15T09:00:00Z",
  "message": "Campaign is scheduled"
}

Cancel a campaign sets a draft or sending campaign to canceled. Emails that were already created for recipients still go out. To move a scheduled campaign back to draft, use Cancel Schedule in the dashboard.

Follow progress with the campaign.scheduled, campaign.queued, campaign.sending, campaign.sent and campaign.canceled webhook events.

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