With a Tempo Pro subscription, you can email your contacts from your site: a one-off message, a message on a date you choose, a message that repeats, or a message that goes to each contact on their birthday or home anniversary. Open Email in your site's dashboard.
Scheduling is being rolled out gradually. If you don't see a Schedule button in the email editor, it hasn't been turned on for your account yet. Email support@ontempo.io to ask for it.
Contacts and lists
Email → Contacts holds everyone you can email. Each contact has a name, an email address, a phone number, a birthday, a home anniversary, and notes.
- Birthdays and anniversaries take a month and a day. The year is optional, so you can record a birthday without knowing the year. February 29 is fine; in a non-leap year it's observed on February 28.
- Notes are private to you. They never appear in an email.
- Click Edit on a contact to change any of these. Use the Missing birthday and Missing anniversary buttons above the table to find contacts you still need dates for.
Email → Lists groups contacts so you can send to a group. A contact can be on several lists.
Importing contacts from a CSV
On the Contacts page, choose Import and upload a CSV. Download template gives you a file with every column: email, firstName, lastName, phone, birthday, homeAnniversary, notes. Only email is required.
Dates can be written as 1985-03-14, 03/14/1985, March 14 or 3/14. When a date has two numbers, the month comes first. The preview shows how each date was read; one that can't be read shows in red, and the import tells you afterwards which ones they were. The rest of that row still imports.
Importing a contact who already exists fills in only what's empty. It never overwrites a name, a date or a note you've already entered, so you can import the same file twice without harm.
Rows with an address at example.com (like the template's sample row) are never imported.
Writing an email
Choose Email → Send Email, then Create Broadcast Email (to a list) or Create Direct Email (to one contact). Write it in the editor, send yourself a test, then either Send it now or Schedule it.
Merge fields
Type a merge field into the subject or body and it's filled in for each recipient. Open the merge fields picker in the editor to copy one. Among them:
| Field | Example | When the contact has no value |
|---|---|---|
{{first_name}} | Jane | "there" |
{{years_in_home}} | 3 | blank |
{{home_anniversary_ordinal}} | 3rd | blank |
The two anniversary fields need a year on the contact's home anniversary and are blank until the first anniversary has passed. Write {{years_in_home|many}} to use your own word when the value is blank.
A test email uses your own contact's details when the address you send it to is one of your contacts, otherwise sample values.
Scheduling an email
Click Schedule in the editor. You'll see four ways to send:
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| On a date | Sends once, on the date and time you pick |
| On a repeat | Sends every so many days, weeks, months or years from a start date, for example every month, or every year on the date someone moved in |
| On a holiday | Sends every year on a holiday you pick: New Year's Day and Eve, Lunar New Year, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Victoria Day, Memorial Day, Father's Day, Canada Day, Independence Day, Labour Day, Canadian and US Thanksgiving, Halloween, Diwali, Remembrance Day and Christmas. If you want a date that isn't a holiday, choose Another date… and it becomes a yearly repeat |
| On each contact's birthday or home anniversary | Sends to each contact on their own date, every year |
A few things apply to every option:
- Times are on the quarter hour and emails go out within about a minute of the time shown.
- Dates up to five years ahead. A date that has already passed can't be chosen.
- Your timezone. The first time you schedule, your site's timezone is set from your browser. Change it under Email → Settings. Every scheduled email uses the site's timezone.
- Remind me before each send. For a repeat that's at least four weeks apart, you can be emailed before each send: seven days before for repeats six months or more apart, two days before otherwise. Birthday and anniversary emails don't send reminders.
While an email is scheduled or repeating, its Send button is hidden so a repeat can't go out by hand by accident. If you want a copy to go now, Duplicate the email and send the copy.
Birthday and anniversary emails
A birthday or anniversary email checks every day, at the time you choose, who has that date, and sends to them. Pick On each contact's, then Birthday or Home anniversary.
- With a list chosen, it goes to the contacts on that list. Choose All contacts in the email's Settings and it goes to every contact on your site, including contacts you add later.
- It only goes to contacts who have given express consent: people who signed up or ticked an opt-in box. Anyone else is skipped, and the email's page tells you who.
- The dialog tells you how many of your contacts have a birthday on file, with a link to the ones who don't.
- An email to one contact on their birthday replaces the general one for them, so nobody gets two birthday emails from you. (A contact whose birthday and home anniversary fall on the same day gets one of each, if you've scheduled both.)
- A birthday added after that morning's send goes out next year.
- The email's page shows Upcoming: everyone with a date in the next 30 days.
Pause, resume and cancel
Repeating emails show as Repeating, Birthdays or Anniversaries in the email list, under the Repeating filter. From the list or the editor you can:
- Pause — nothing more sends until you resume. If a send is in progress, the contacts not yet emailed are skipped, and the message tells you how many.
- Resume — picks up from the next date.
- Cancel schedule — returns the email to a draft.
- Update schedule — changes the date, repeat or time. On a paused email this also resumes it.
Deleting a list that a birthday or anniversary email uses returns that email to a draft, so it can't quietly start going to everyone.
What happens after a send
Each email's page lists every send: the date, whether it went out, and how many were sent, skipped or couldn't be delivered. Expand a send to see each recipient. Birthday and anniversary emails group their sends by month.
The email list shows each email's state at a glance: Scheduled, Repeating, Sent, Partly sent, Not sent, Paused, Ended (a repeat with no further date), or Missed with the reason.
When something goes wrong
If a scheduled send is missed or couldn't be delivered to anyone, you get one email about it with the reason and what to do:
| Reason | What it means |
|---|---|
| Over daily limit | Scheduled emails are limited to 2,000 a day per site. A send that would go past the limit is held back entirely rather than sent to some people. Choose a smaller list or spread sends across days |
| No plan | Scheduling needs a Pro plan. Renew to start sending again; the email stays in place |
| No audience | The list or contact no longer exists |
| Too late to send | Sending was unavailable for more than 24 hours. The next one sends on time |
After three misses in a row you stop getting these emails; the list keeps showing the state.
Capacity and fair use
- Up to 2,000 scheduled emails a day per site. Emails you send by hand with Send don't count toward it.
- Sends are shared fairly between sites, so a large list elsewhere doesn't hold up yours.
- Per-recipient details of a send are kept for 30 days; the summary is kept.