Who Receives Your Campaign
Last updated September 29, 2026
The Estimated Audience in the builder is how many people match your filters. The number who actually receive the email is usually lower. This page explains how an audience becomes a recipient list, and why some people are left out.
The audience is re-checked at send time
When you submit, Dash records how big the audience is. When the campaign sends, though, Dash runs your filters again and sends to whoever matches at that moment. So:
- Someone who parks for the first time between approval and sending is included, if they match.
- Someone who unsubscribes in the meantime is left out.
- The final recipient count can differ a little from the number you saw at submission.
Nobody receives the same campaign twice, even if a send has to be retried.
Who is left out
| Reason | What it means |
|---|---|
| Opted out | The person unsubscribed from marketing email. Promotional campaigns skip them; Operational campaigns still reach them. |
| Bounced or retired address | Their address hard-bounced in the past, or is no longer valid. Nobody is sent to these addresses, whatever the message type. |
| No email address | The customer or lead has no usable email |
| Missing required value | A variable set to Skip recipient if empty had no value for them. So did a booking link or promo code, which always skip. |
| Reachable through more than one vendor | See vendor routing below |
| Vendor excluded | You clicked the ban icon for their vendor in the recipients panel |
| Over the recipient limit | A single campaign sends to at most 100,000 recipients. Split larger audiences into more than one campaign. |
The Recipients by vendor card on the Review step and the "Receive it: N of M in the audience" line show how many will actually receive it.
Which email address is used
If a customer has more than one email address, Dash uses the one it captured directly (for example from a Dash Form). If there isn't one, it uses the most recently seen address. Email domain filters are checked against the address that's actually used.
For leads, duplicates with the same email address are merged into one recipient. In an audience that includes both parkers and leads, a lead who is already a customer receives the email once, as a customer.
Vendor routing
Each recipient is matched to the parking vendor they came from, such as SpotHero, ParkMobile or your own PARCS. This matters because booking links, and often promo codes, are different for each vendor. A customer who books through one vendor shouldn't get another vendor's link.
| Where the person came from | Which version of the email they get |
|---|---|
| One vendor only | That vendor's version |
| Captured by Dash (forms, leads) | The vendor you pick under Choose who they route to in the recipients panel |
| More than one vendor, and not captured by Dash | Not sent, because Dash can't tell which vendor's link or code is right for them. The recipients panel notes how many people this affects. |
Leads are always treated as captured by Dash.
To check each version, use the eye icon beside a vendor in the recipients panel, or the Vendor preview switcher in Preview. That shows exactly what each vendor's recipients will see.
Unsubscribes and consent
Dash keeps each person's email consent in one place, shared by Campaign Builder, Triggers and everything else that sends email.
- Every promotional email includes a personal unsubscribe link, plus one-click unsubscribe headers for Gmail, Apple Mail and other mail apps. If your template contains
{{{unsubscribe}}}or{{{unsubscribe_preferences}}}, the link goes there. Otherwise Dash adds it to the footer. - When someone unsubscribes, marks the email as spam or hard-bounces, Dash opts them out automatically and future promotional campaigns skip them.
- Operational emails don't include an unsubscribe link and reach opted-out people. Only use them for real service messages.
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