On the third create page, you can preview your mobile message and schedule or send it.
The preview page shows the mobile message you've written. We choose a random activist from your universe to display in the preview. Their information will be used to fill in your clips and add parameters like source code to your links.
Below you'll see an overview of your targeting, including what list you're sending to and any includes and excludes you chose.
At the bottom you'll see a count of how many activists your message will target, as well as the random limit you chose. Your count will never be larger than your random limit, but it may be smaller if your limit is larger than your entire universe.
When you first load the preview create page, you may not see a count. Rather, you may see "[calculating...]" where the count should be. After you save your targeting, we calculate the number of activists targeted by your mobile message. Usually that process is very quick. Sometimes for more complex targeting, it can take a few seconds or even a minute. The preview page will automatically refresh when targeting is finished, replacing "[calculating..."] with a number of activists that this mobile message targets, but we'll also send you an email when your targeting has finished calculating, so you'll know when we're ready for you to come back to the preview page. You can refresh targeting as well by clicking the "Refresh Targeting" link to generate a new count.
Once calculating is finished, you'll be able to send your mobile message. You can save your mobile message as a draft by clicking "Save Draft" in the toolbar below, or you can continue on and send or schedule it.
After you've done all of your spell-checking and previewing and you're ready to send your mobile message, click either the "Schedule Message" or "Send Message" buttons.
If you choose to schedule a mobile message, you'll have two options — send at a specific time or send by time zone. Sending at a specific time will allow you to choose a date and time in the future and confirm your scheduling. All times are U.S. Eastern.
If you choose to send by time zone, you can select someone's local time to send a mobile message. For example, everyone will receive the message at 4:00pm their local time. Local time is determined by someone's zip/postal code. If a zip/postal code is not on their activist record, the message will be sent in the "first" time zone. For example, if the email is scheduled to go to everyone at 4pm and I schedule the message at 3pm ET, people without a zip/postal code will receive the message at 4pm ET. This means that your mobile message will be sending for a full 24 hours, as the local time you set works its way around the world.
NOTE: Sending by time zone is separate from ordering by timezone (which can be done in the targeting page). Sending by timezone sends messages out over a 24 hour period. Ordering by time zone sends your messages out all at once, but prioritizes activists based on their time zone going east to west. Click here to read more.
By default, when you schedule an email it will only be sent to people who were included in the initial targeting. This means if someone meets the targeting parameters after the email has been scheduled, they would not receive the email. You can tick off the 'Refresh targeting before send' checkbox below the scheduling section to have the system automatically refresh the targeting so your email is sent to the most up to date audience. Note that if you choose this option, there will be a slight delay in the email send as our system refreshes your targeting.
If you choose to send immediately, click Confirm and Send to start the sending process. If you want to throttle this message, click Set Throttle. You'll be able to choose a certain number of messages to go out each hour. Every hour, we'll send out a batch of messages until the entire audience has been reached. We'll give you an estimate on how long it will take to send to your audience. This is useful if you want to slow down traffic for certain actions or API calls.
On the mobile message manage page, you'll be able to see what time the mobile message is sent and done sending.
Below the calculation, you'll see a place to start a discussion. This is the email discussion board, where you can comment on the email and leave notes. The creator of the email will receive email notifications when a comment is made. Other administrators will not receive notifications by default unless they comment. Commenters will receive all future notifications.
Note: Mobile messages are checked for unsubscribed users and users without a mobile number before they are sent, whether they're sent immediately or scheduled, so activists who unsubscribe after you targeted your mobile message but before you send it won't receive the message.