# How can we help?

## Overview

Batch messages are used for one-time sends. They can be sent immediately or scheduled for a future date. You can send batch messages through any available channel: email, SMS, or mobile.

## Create a new message

When creating a new batch message, you'll give the message a name, add any message tags, and choose the sending channel.

1. From the Cordial dashboard, navigate to **Messages >** **Create New Message**.

2. In the **Create New Message** pane, complete the required fields.

- **Message name:** The name that will be referenced in the system.
- **Tags:** Tags are used for grouping related messages, searching and building audiences, and filtering message reports.
- **Channel:** The channel email, SMS, or mobile push—will affect the type of message being sent. This selection will determine the message content method as well as the transport.
- **Editor:** You can decide whether you want to create your message with our easy-to-use [Sculpt editor](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002634012), or by manually creating the HTML.
- **Classification:** **Promotional** messages are general-purpose and used in batch messaging with rare exceptions. **Transactional** messages are sent in response to a person's behavior on your site or app.

## Schedule a message

Batch messages can be sent immediately or scheduled to be sent on a future date in the **Schedule** pane. When scheduling for a future date, you have the option of scheduling the send according to the contact's time zone.

Message sending can also be throttled so messages go out in batches according to audience size or maximum number of batches. This is useful when you switch from another ESP (event stream processing system) and need to warm the new IP address for improved deliverability.

- [Learn more about IP ramping here](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001337471-The-Migration-Ramp-Up-Process-Why-We-Ramp-IPs-Domains-).

Messages will send immediately by default. To edit the schedule, click the **Edit** button under **Schedule Sending** and choose a schedule option:

- Not scheduled
- Send immediately
- Schedule for future date
- Throttled batch sending
- Optimize send time using [Send Time Optimization](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/24547194219021)

- [Learn more about message scheduling and throttling here.](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005363907)

## Build an audience

Before a message is sent, you must choose the audience by selecting **Edit** in the **Audience** pane. You have the option to either send to all contacts, or use the Audience Builder to filter your contacts according to include and exclude audience rules. Once the audience has been created, you can save the audience to reuse for a later message and/or start tracking the audience in the [Audience Trends Dashboard](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/4411738452237-Audience-Trends-dashboard).

- [Learn more about our Audience Builder here.](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005532168)

## Create message content

The type of message content you create will depend on the message channel. If choosing the email channel, you must also fill out **Message Header** info that includes the **Subject**, **From email**, **Reply email,** and **From description**.

Visit the following articles to learn about creating content for different message channels:

- [Create message content for the email channel](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001313311).
- [Create message content for the SMS channel](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037708252).
- [Create message content for the mobile push channel](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360036578792).

## Insert images into a message

Once uploaded to Cordial, you can insert images into messages by with a single click.

- [Learn about inserting images into messages](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005531428).

## Generative AI content

Cordial offers powerful generative AI solutions for email subject lines, message content in Sculpt, and message experiments. Explore the following articles to learn how your team can generate smarter content—faster.

- [Generative AI in email subject lines](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001313311#heading-4).
- [Generative AI content in the Sculpt editor](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002766031-Sculpt-blocks#h_01H8M98W0ZETT859FMRAAGJQ6N).
- [Generative AI in message experiments](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005532988#heading-4).

## Select the message transport

Transport names available for selection in the **Message Header** will depend on the designated promotional or transactional classification. **From email** domains available for selection in the dropdown menu are determined by the chosen transport.

Message transport selection only applies to the email channel.

- [Visit this article to learn more about message transports](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005365147-Account-Settings#emailSendingDefaults) and how to set message header defaults for new messages.

## Configure goals and tracking

In the **Goals and Tracking** pane, you can choose whether to enable or disable link tracking and appending for all links in the message.

- You can disable link tracking and appending for individual links using the [data-crdl-notrack](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009266788) Smarty attribute or conditionally at the message level using the [setEmailLinkTracking](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041889772#setEmailLinkTracking) Smarty utility.
- You can disable email opens tracking using the [setEmailOpensTracking](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041889772#setEmailOpensTracking) Smarty utility.

All event activity is stored in Cordial for 18 months. Message open and link click events are tracked for 30 days from the time the message is sent. Links will continue to work after 30 days, but tracking will be disabled. [Attribution](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018594252) is not tracked for purchases made using links after the 30-day period.

## Send a test message

You can send a test message to check rendering in the inbox. Before a test message can be sent, the message headers and content must be provided. Once you've created headers and content for your message, the **Send Test** button will appear in the left sidebar.

- [You can learn more about sending test messages and creating test groups here](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/24971200437645).

**1).** All test email addresses must exist as valid and subscribed contacts in your account. **2).** Test message links will expire after 24 hours if link tracking is enabled for the message. **3).** If you receive the error "Internal Render Error" when trying to send test messages, it may be a result of badly formed links in your HTML. Make sure to check all links for any unnecessary spaces or characters in your URLs. The Internal Render Error can also be the result of a missing HTML Include. Ensure that all HTML Includes that are referenced in a message do in fact exist in the account.

> **Tip**  
> When sending multiple message tests, it's sometimes useful to have a unique subject line per send since some email clients will group all messages with the same subject line within a message thread. (Gmail, for example, does this.) You can use the following getNow Smarty utility to generate a unique subject line per test send:
> 
> ```auto
>  {$utils->getNow('America/Los_Angeles', "Y-m-d H:i:s")} This is a subject line
> ```

- [Learn more about date and timestamp variables here](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005855648).

## Send the message

Once all required content has been completed, you can send the message to the specified audience by clicking the **Send Message** button.

Once a message has been sent, you can [pause, resume, or cancel sending the message](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003935571).

## Campaign alerting

You can to set up custom alerting for batch messages across channels that fall below or exceed a specified threshold. Once you've configured the alert, an email is automatically sent to the designated email address(es) and logged in the Account Monitor dashboard. This increases awareness of potential issues for you and your team to resolve more quickly.

1. When creating a new message or editing an existing one, click **Edit** in the **Alerting** pane to configure your campaign alert.

2. Set the **Status** to **Enabled**.

3. Configure your alert settings under **Condition**. By default, the **When** condition for the alert is total sent messages.

> **Use case**  
> You could set an alert when the total messages sent falls below 2,000. You can also use greater than as a condition metric for triggering an alert.

4. Enter a destination email for the alert under **Notify**.

5. View details for your alert in the alert email or on the **Account Monitoring** page.

6. To view alert details on the **Account Monitor** page, select **Batch messages** in the **categories** dropdown, then select **Alerts** from the **levels** dropdown.

## View and change email sending status

Once you've built and scheduled an email, you can view or change its status by navigating to **Messages > Email Sent**. By default, messages are sorted by **Send Time**.

1. The badge under the **Status** column tells you the sending state. Click the badge to go directly to the message.

2. Click the **i** button to access **Sending details** for the message.

3. If there's an issue with the message, it will display in the **Sending details** window. Visit the [Account Monitor](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/5695365532941) page to find more information about a given issue.

4. Also within **Sending details**, you can choose to **Cancel** or **Pause** a scheduled message.

- Learn more about [pausing, resuming, or canceling a message](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003935571).

## Search sent messages

Quickly search messages by name using the search field at the top of the page. Click the **Advanced Search** button for additional search and filter options.

- **Send time:** Filter messages that were sent **On**, **Before**, or **After** a specified date.
- **Tags:** Search for messages that contain specified tags. Tags are case sensitive. To search multiple tags, use a comma to separate each tag.
- **Status:** Search for messages by status— **Sent**, **Canceled**, **Paused**, or **Sending**.
- **Priority:** Search for messages by priority, with **1** being the lowest and **4** the highest.
- **Filters:** Select the checkboxes to filter sent messages that have an **Inbox Placement Test** or **Experiment**.
- **Schedule method:** Search for messages that were scheduled by **Contact timezone** or use a **Throttled** or **Optimized** ( [Send Time Optimization](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/24547194219021)) scheduling method.