Broadcasts

A broadcast sends one message to a segment. It is the highest-consequence action in the automation suite, and the one to be most careful with.

Composing

Pick the segment, write the message, and review. The message is written by you: as everywhere else in the suite, nothing composes outbound text at send time.

Always dry-run it first

A dry run reports how many people the broadcast would reach, without reaching them. For anything beyond a handful of contacts, do this every time. It is the step that catches a segment definition that is wider than you thought.

Who actually receives it

Not everyone in the segment. At send time each recipient is checked against the platform's messaging rules, and anyone outside the permitted window is skipped rather than messaged. A broadcast to a segment of 400 may deliver to far fewer, and that is the system working correctly.

The skipped count appears in automation analytics.

Send sparingly

A broadcast reaches people in a private inbox they did not open for marketing. The tolerance for that is low and the penalty is opt-outs, reports and (with enough of both) messaging restrictions on your account.

A useful test before sending: would this specific person be glad to receive this, specifically? If the honest answer is "it's relevant to some of them", narrow the segment.

It is not email

There is no unsubscribe footer, no open rate and no newsletter. If you want to send something to everyone who has ever been interested, that is email, and the plan's email tab is written for exactly that.