Choosing and checking your campaign audience

Choose the audience for a campaign, check who can receive it, and resolve unexpected counts before scheduling. Start with a saved draft so you can review the selection without authorizing delivery.

The list count is not the send count. The campaign builder shows list membership. Cedros separately checks recipient eligibility, and delivery results can be lower again because of later exclusions or delivery failures.

Choose the list that matches your message

Open Lists and find the audience you intend to email. Check the list's name, source, and active status. A familiar name or a large member count does not establish that the list is appropriate for this message.

Choose the source with its update behavior in mind:

• People with a tag creates a dynamic list based on analytics visitor tags. Tag-derived membership is rechecked every 15 minutes. Separately added recipients may remain even when they do not match the tags.
• Everyone with an email creates Site Users from site contacts with known addresses. It is a snapshot; open the list and use Update from users when you intend to add newly available recipients. Opening the list alone does not update it.
• Upload a CSV uses the recipients processed by the import. Changes to your original file do not update the saved list. Wait for the import to finish and review row errors before relying on its audience.

See Creating an audience list for these workflows. For tag rules, see Creating audiences from visitor behavior.

A People tag, a saved People filter, or an anonymous visitor segment is not automatically an email audience. Use a saved list containing recipients with usable email addresses. Check that the people have agreed to receive the kind of message you are preparing; a purchase or contact record alone does not establish that permission.

Public and private lists can both be used for campaigns. List visibility controls how people can join through subscribe forms; it does not replace consent checks or determine whether the campaign has a public web version.

Inspect membership before selecting the audience

Open the intended list and review a few recipients you expect to find. Use Search for a name or email, and Clear search to return to the loaded recipients.

Check the membership statuses:

• Subscribed means the list membership is confirmed. Preferences, consent, suppression, and recipient status can still prevent sending.
• Pending means the membership is not confirmed and is excluded from the campaign audience.
• Unsubscribed means the recipient has opted out of that list.
• Bounced means the membership has been marked as bounced and is excluded.

Large lists can show only the first 2,000 recipients. Search and pagination in that view operate on the loaded recipients, so a missing search result does not prove an address is absent from the full list. Check any displayed limit before drawing that conclusion.

For an older or unfamiliar list, review Cleaning an email list. Cleanup can change sending eligibility, so finish the intended cleanup before checking the campaign's final audience. A cleanup review segment is for investigation, not a substitute sending audience.

Save the intended audience on the campaign

You need campaign editing access to change a draft. Managing the underlying list and scheduling a send have their own permissions. If an action is unavailable, see Why can't I see or use a feature?.

1. Open Campaigns and select New Campaign, or reopen the draft you are preparing.
2. For a new campaign, choose the prepared template under Email.
3. Under Audience, choose the intended list in Send to. If only one list is available, a new campaign shows its name without a choice. Verify it rather than assuming the automatic selection is right.
4. Under Schedule, choose Keep as a draft. The new-campaign builder defaults to Send at a set time, so change this explicitly while reviewing.
5. Check the Preview's To line and confirm Sends says Not scheduled — stays a draft. Review the list name as well as the displayed recipient count.
6. Select Save draft, or Save changes for an existing draft. Reopen the campaign and confirm its status is Draft and the intended audience was saved.

If you see No audience lists yet, use Create list, finish that setup, and return. You can save a draft without an audience, but a scheduled campaign needs a selected list with eligible recipients. Do not choose an unrelated list just to clear the field.

The Send to control selects one list. If an assistant has configured a campaign with several lists, ask it to confirm the full saved selection before editing. Saving through this builder replaces that multi-list audience with the single selected list. For an intentional multi-list campaign, have the assistant maintain and recheck the complete selection.

Check eligibility on the saved campaign

Use the Cedros assistant to inspect the saved campaign and run its preflight and launch-readiness checks. Name the exact campaign; if names are duplicated, identify the correct draft before continuing.

For example:

Review the draft campaign “October customer update.” Confirm its saved audience list names, status, and schedule. Run preflight and launch-readiness checks. Show the eligible recipient count, skipped count, and any blockers. Do not change, schedule, or send the campaign.

Review these results together:

1. Selected audience: confirm every saved list is intended and active. An archived list does not contribute eligible recipients, even if its name or old count still appears in the builder.
2. Eligible recipients: this is the current audience after membership, address, consent, preference, suppression, and recipient-status checks. Zero eligible recipients blocks scheduling or sending.
3. Skipped recipients: review the count and investigate unexpected exclusions. A nonzero skipped count is a warning and does not by itself prevent sending to the eligible recipients.
4. Other blockers: resolve sender, provider, content, public-link, and other launch-readiness problems as well. An eligible audience alone does not make the whole campaign ready.
5. Saved state: make sure the checks refer to the saved audience you just reviewed. If you change the selection in an unsaved form, save it as a draft before asking for another check.

The preflight labels include Audience selected, Selected list count, and Audience has eligible recipients. Launch readiness also reports Eligible recipients available and Skipped recipients reviewed. These checks report the current state; they do not mean someone has manually approved the audience.

For example, a list may display 500 members while the saved campaign reports 460 eligible recipients. Investigate the difference before scheduling. Do not assume the remaining 40 all have the same issue, or that the 460 messages will all be delivered.

A rendered email preview checks the message and personalization. A successful test send checks delivery to its test address. Neither proves the campaign's full audience is correct or eligible.

Understand exclusions and overlapping lists

Recipients can be excluded for several reasons: an invalid or automated address, unconfirmed or bounced membership, an opt-out or paused email preference, an active suppression, missing or withdrawn consent, or a disabled recipient record.

Marketing campaigns require granted marketing consent as well as a confirmed membership. Subscribed in a list is therefore not a complete eligibility result. If the list looks correct but the eligible count is unexpectedly low, ask the assistant or your email administrator to investigate the affected recipient's current membership, consent, preferences, and suppression state.

Use Managing unsubscribed and suppressed recipients to understand those restrictions. Correct inaccurate data when you have evidence, and preserve genuine opt-outs. Do not reimport excluded addresses, change the campaign's purpose, or remove a suppression simply to increase the count.

For a campaign deliberately targeting several lists, Cedros combines candidates and deduplicates normalized email addresses. Someone present in two selected lists is not intended to receive two copies of that campaign. Adding list counts together overstates the unique audience, and skipped candidates can include duplicates rather than separate people with a delivery problem.

Deduplication is within a campaign. Two separate campaigns can each email the same person, and follow-up steps are additional messages. Review overlapping campaigns and follow-ups when deciding how often the audience should hear from you.

Recheck near the send time

Scheduling checks readiness, but it does not freeze the audience at the number shown during your review. Cedros resolves the current audience again when the send is queued. New memberships, completed imports, dynamic-list updates, opt-outs, and other recipient changes can alter the eligible count before then.

Before authorizing delivery:

1. Finish intended imports and list updates, and allow dynamic membership changes to settle.
2. Reopen the saved campaign and confirm its selected list or lists, status, and intended schedule.
3. Run the saved campaign's readiness checks again after any audience change or substantial delay since the last review.
4. Review the email itself and send a test to an address you control before scheduling the audience send. Follow Sending your first email campaign for the complete process.

A sequence evaluates its audience for each step and then applies that step's condition. The first email's eligible count is not a fixed recipient count for every follow-up.

Once delivery is queued, changing a list is not a reliable way to stop that campaign. Use the campaign's pause or cancellation controls if you need to stop remaining work. Delivery also checks current recipient restrictions, but pausing or cancelling cannot recall messages already handed to a provider.

Resolve unexpected audience results

The wrong list was selected automatically. The new-campaign builder uses the only available list when there is no choice. Keep the campaign as a draft, prepare the correct list, then return and select it. Check the saved result before scheduling.

A list is missing, archived, or out of date. Check Lists, its search and source filters, and Archived. Restore an archived list only if you intend to use it again. After creating or updating a list, save any draft work and reopen Campaigns to reload the catalog and counts.

The list has members but the campaign has no eligible recipients. Confirm the list is active, then check confirmed memberships, usable addresses, consent, preferences, and suppressions. If those appear correct, ask your administrator to investigate the recipient records rather than recreating or reimporting the audience.

The count changed after saving or scheduling. Compare the saved list selection and recent membership changes. Also check for import completion, dynamic updates, cleanup, and opt-outs. Use a fresh campaign check rather than an older screenshot or the builder's member count.

Readiness could not load. Read the error and retry after resolving it. A failed check is not a zero count or an approval to send. Keep the draft until you can verify the saved audience.

Save changes unexpectedly scheduled the campaign. The outcome follows the Schedule selection. Send at a set time can schedule delivery when you save, without a separate review dialog. Check the actual campaign status immediately and cancel the scheduled send if it was unintended.

For help, provide the campaign name, selected list names, campaign status, member and eligible counts, time of the check, and exact error. Avoid sharing a full recipient export. See Getting help with your Cedros site.