Approval, Sending & Results

Once you click Submit campaign for approval, the campaign moves through review, sending and measurement. This page covers each stage, what you can do at each one, and what can stop a campaign from sending.

The Review step shows the same stages under What happens next?:

1. Dash reviews it: the Dash team checks the campaign before anything is sent. You'll see the decision on the campaign and in the campaign list.
2. Audience re-evaluated at send: your filters run again at send time, and whoever matches then receives it (see Who Receives Your Campaign).
3. Emails delivered by vendor: each vendor's recipients get their own version of the email.
4. Results tracked: opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes are recorded, and conversions are counted for the conversion window you set.

Awaiting review

The Dash team reviews every campaign: the audience, template, variable mappings, sender and timing. Include a clear Campaign Description so the reviewer knows what the campaign is for.

What can happen next:

Rejected

A rejected campaign shows a red banner with the reason: either "Rejected by the Dash team", or "Rejected automatically before sending" when something broke (see What can stop a campaign).

Click Reopen and edit to return it to Draft, fix the problem, then submit it again. You'll need to tick the compliance confirmation on the Content step again.

Scheduled

The campaign is approved and waiting to send.

• Send on approval campaigns send within a few minutes of approval.
• Scheduled campaigns send at the time you chose, in the time zone you chose.

You can still stop it:

• Withdraw from schedule returns it to Draft. Edit it and resubmit; it has to be approved again.
• Cancel campaign stops it permanently. Canceling can't be undone. The campaign stays in the list, marked Canceled.

Sending

Dash rebuilds the recipient list from your filters, fills in each recipient's variables, and hands the emails to SendGrid for each vendor group.

• Send directly: emails go out in batches through your SendGrid account.
• SendGrid Marketing Campaign: Dash creates a contact list and a Single Send for each vendor group in your SendGrid Marketing account. If you chose Delete the contacts from SendGrid after the send, they're removed afterwards.

If a send fails partway through because of a temporary error, Dash retries it automatically. People who were already sent the email are never sent it again.

What can stop a campaign

Just before sending, Dash checks the campaign again. If something has changed since it was reviewed, the campaign is rejected automatically and the reason is shown, so nothing goes out that the reviewer didn't see.

After sending: Measuring and Complete

When the emails have gone out:

• Promotional campaigns that track conversions move to Measuring. Dash watches for conversions (a visit, a visit during your event window, a new monthly subscription, or a promo code redemption) for the conversion window you set on the Define step.
• Operational campaigns, and campaigns set to Don't track conversions, move straight to Complete.

For every recipient Dash records whether the email was delivered, opened (and how often), clicked (and how often), bounced, marked as spam or used to unsubscribe. Unsubscribes, spam reports and hard bounces opt the person out of future promotional email automatically.

Quick reference: what you can do in each status