Why was my campaign delayed? Why is there a delay before my campaign was received?

There are a number of variables that can impact the building of campaigns as well as the sending and delivery, which can cause delays in receiving campaigns in your inbox.

Rate Limiting:
Occasionally campaigns may be delayed due to the rate limiting in place at the recipients' domain(s). This means the recipients' domain(s) may have rules in place about the volume of email that can be received at any one time.

In order to abide by these rules and ensure continued delivery to the domains in question (i.e. in order to prevent getting blocked or blacklisted), we will adjust the amount of email we send to the domains at a single time in order to ensure we do not exceed the acceptable limits.

As we manage these deliverability efforts on behalf of our users, it may result in certain email being temporarily held back. The amount of time the email may be delayed will depend upon the rules in place at the recipients' domains and the amount we are trying to send to them. In most cases, the delay will last 2-24 hours.

Build Time:
Build Time is the time it takes for the system to successfully load campaign recipients into the mail server for delivery. This depends on factors such as recipient count, campaign length/complexity and system load. Build Time will typically vary between 1 and 10 minutes. However, it is possible for a build to take longer due to high load demands or unforeseen circumstances, and we constantly monitor these scenarios and address them as needed to ensure timely building of campaigns. Once the build has completed, the mail server will then queue and deliver the email.

Checking Status:
You can also monitor the delivery of your campaigns from within your account at any given time to know the number and percentage of recipients that are awaiting delivery:

  1. Click Reports in the main navigation menu.
  2. Click the blue down arrow next to the campaign name, and select More.
  3. Navigate to the Sends tab. This tab will provide all of the current information for all sends (including tests and sends to additional recipients). Refer to the awaiting delivery columns for the number and percentage of recipients awaiting delivery at that moment and refer to the build time column for the time it took to successfully load the campaign into the mail server for delivery.