Start by checking the campaign's saved status and delivery results. “It didn't send” can mean the campaign is still a draft, a scheduled send has not started, some recipients were excluded, or delivery feedback is missing.
Do not duplicate or resend the campaign until you know whether the provider accepted any messages. A timeout, zero opens, or an empty delivery report does not prove that nobody received it.
Check the saved state first
- Open Email campaigns and select the exact campaign. Confirm its name, subject, audience, and sender so you are investigating the intended send.
- Note the current status and, if scheduled, the full date, time, and time zone. Refresh or reopen the campaign if a recent save or send request timed out.
- For a queued, sending, paused, completed, cancelled, or failed campaign, review Delivery status, progress, and any available delivery counts. Use Retry delivery results if the report did not fully load.
- Keep the visible error and the time you observed it. Follow the section below that matches the saved status or error, rather than repeatedly selecting a send action.
Retry delivery results reloads the report; it does not resend the email. For help interpreting the numbers, see Understanding campaign results.
The campaign is still a draft
A draft has not been authorized for audience delivery. Sending a test email, previewing the message, or saving a reusable template does not schedule the campaign.
Open the draft and check Schedule. Keep as a draft saves the campaign without sending it. To authorize a future send, select Send at a set time, choose a future date and time, review To and Sends in Preview, and save. Confirm the saved status becomes Scheduled.
The button is Schedule campaign for a new campaign, Schedule sequence for a new sequence, or Save changes when editing. Save changes can authorize delivery when a send time is selected; review the audience and content before using it.
If scheduling failed after the content was saved, the campaign may remain as a recoverable draft. Read the error and fix the named issue. Do not create a second campaign merely because the first scheduling request failed.
If the schedule option is disabled or a permission error appears, ask an administrator to check your campaign editing and sending access. Permission to edit a draft does not necessarily include permission to send it. Resuming a paused campaign requires separate access. See Checking your feature access.
The scheduled time has passed
Check the date and the time zone shown in the campaign preview, especially if you scheduled from another device or crossed a daylight-saving change. The schedule represents one send time, not that local time in every recipient's time zone.
A scheduled time is when the campaign becomes due for processing. It is not a deadline by which every email must arrive. Closing your browser does not stop a saved schedule.
If the campaign remains Scheduled after the intended time, ask your administrator or the assistant to check its current readiness, audience eligibility, recipient limits, and background processing. These conditions are checked again when Cedros tries to queue the send. A campaign can have saved successfully earlier and become unable to proceed later.
Recipient limits can block queueing even after scheduling succeeds. An error may identify a per-campaign ceiling or a limit based on sends in the preceding 24 hours. Review the intended audience and timing with your administrator. Do not split the same send into duplicates simply to bypass a limit.
If the campaign is no longer appropriate to send, change its time or return it to draft while it is still Scheduled. Save and verify that change; merely opening the builder or editing an unsaved date leaves the original schedule in place. See Scheduling or canceling a campaign.
Sending is blocked by setup or readiness
If you see Outbound sending is blocked, use the setup action shown: Open Domain Settings for managed setup or Open Email Settings for an external sending setup. Receiving inbox messages and sending campaigns are configured separately, so a working inbox does not establish that campaign sending is ready.
For Campaign is not ready to send or another readiness error, address the specific failed check:
- Provider or sender: confirm outbound sending is active and the campaign's selected provider is available. Check that its credentials are saved and its sender address is verified for that provider and domain. Changing a site default does not necessarily change a provider already selected on the campaign.
- Audience: choose an active list with eligible recipients. A list's member count is not a guarantee that any of those members are eligible for this send.
- Subject or body: save a subject and usable email content, resolve unsupported personalization tokens, and provide a plain-text body or content Cedros can convert to plain text.
- Public email links or unsubscribe setup: ask an administrator to repair the public email link settings and unsubscribe-link generation. Do not remove required unsubscribe features to make a marketing campaign pass.
- Background processing: ask an administrator to inspect the campaign scheduler and sending service if the error identifies runtime health or a stalled queue.
After a correction, recheck the saved campaign. Editing the source template alone does not necessarily update the message already copied into a campaign.
You can ask the assistant: “Check this campaign's readiness and explain the blocking issues without scheduling or sending it.” A readiness check is not a test email or a delivery authorization.
Warnings about disabled engagement tracking or missing provider feedback are different from blocking send errors. Tracking can limit open and click reporting; missing feedback can leave delivery outcomes unknown even when sending is possible. Fix the reported blocker rather than assuming every warning explains a failed send.
See Setting up outgoing email delivery for sender and provider setup.
The campaign is queued, sending, or paused
For Queued or Sending, check whether progress changes when you return to the results. A large send can take time because of the site-wide rate, the provider's rate, or other queued work.
When a provider rate-limits delivery, Cedros can leave work queued to try later. Some temporary provider-unavailable failures are also retried automatically. This does not mean every failure will retry, or that a send is guaranteed to finish within a fixed interval.
If progress remains unchanged, collect the status, counts, error, and observation times for an administrator. They can check provider availability, sending limits, and background processing. Refreshing the page repeatedly does not make the sending service run faster.
For Paused, check whether a person paused the campaign or delivery safety stopped it after excessive hard bounces, complaints, or provider rejections. Investigate the cause before selecting Resume sending. Resuming authorizes the remaining delivery to continue; it does not create a fresh review step.
If the message or audience is wrong, use the pause or cancellation controls as appropriate. Pausing does not make an active campaign editable, and neither pause nor cancellation recalls messages already submitted to the provider.
Some recipients were skipped or did not receive it
An audience can contain more members than the campaign can send to. Check the affected address and its eligibility, rather than comparing delivery solely with the list's member count.
Common exclusion reasons include an unsubscribe, suppression, missing or withdrawn consent, an inactive contact, an ineligible imported record, or an address treated as automated. Overlapping lists can also contain the same address; deduplication prevents those copies from becoming separate intended deliveries.
Eligibility is checked when the audience is resolved and checked again before individual delivery. A recipient who becomes suppressed after queueing can therefore be skipped even though they were eligible when the campaign was prepared.
Use Choosing and checking your campaign audience to review the list and exclusions. Follow Managing unsubscribed and suppressed recipients for the appropriate handling of restrictions. Do not reactivate an unsubscribed or suppressed address simply to complete this campaign.
Where available, Export recipients helps inspect recipient processing records. The file is not a full provider-delivery history, and someone excluded before a recipient record was created may not appear. A sent record means provider handoff, not confirmed inbox arrival.
The campaign says completed, failed, or cancelled
Completed means processing finished, including unsuccessful or skipped messages. Read the delivery counts and issues before concluding that every message arrived. A zero open rate does not prove non-delivery, and a low delivered count can reflect missing provider feedback.
Failed can mean a send-error threshold was reached or one or more provider acceptances remain uncertain. Some recipients may already have received the message. Ask an administrator to reconcile uncertain outcomes with provider feedback before deciding who should receive a replacement.
Cancelled means remaining delivery was stopped. It cannot be resumed, and messages submitted before cancellation may still arrive. If a replacement is needed, prepare a new draft and review its audience against the original results.
If a recipient reports no email despite recorded delivery, confirm the exact address and ask them to check spam, filtering, and quarantine. Delivery feedback is not proof of inbox placement. If the issue affects several recipients or persists, have an administrator investigate provider feedback and sender-domain setup.
A sequence follow-up did not send
Open Sequence progress on the parent campaign. A follow-up can be waiting for its configured delay, local send time, an earlier step to finish, or an audience condition. It does not necessarily send a fixed interval after the original scheduled time.
Check the individual step status and whether anyone meets its audience condition. Engagement-based conditions depend on the activity Cedros recorded; limited tracking can affect which recipients qualify.
Manage pause, resume, and cancellation through the parent campaign. If a step failed or the parent is paused, investigate that state before expecting later steps to proceed. Resuming a sequence uses its existing timing rules, so an overdue follow-up may proceed soon after resumption.
Recover and verify once the cause is known
- Correct the specific content, audience, access, provider, or setup issue. Reopen the campaign and check that the intended changes are saved.
- If you changed the message or sender, prepare a draft and test the email before authorizing audience delivery. A successful test does not prove the full audience is eligible or that all bulk-send limits will pass.
- Confirm which recipients already received, may have received, or were excluded from the original. Choose any replacement audience deliberately; duplicating a campaign does not automatically exclude previous recipients.
- Authorize the intended schedule or resume only when ready, then verify the new status and monitor the results. If a request times out, check the saved state before repeating it.
If you need help, provide the campaign name, current status, intended send time and time zone, visible error, relevant counts, and what changed recently. Include whether it affects everyone, a few addresses, or one sequence step. Share recipient details and provider evidence privately, and do not include credentials. See Getting help with Cedros.