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FAQ

Short answers, grouped by the part of the app they are about. Where a subject has a page of its own, the answer says which one to read next.

The app and your store

What is Carpe Messaging?

Marketing email for a Shopify store. It keeps a profile for every person your store knows, records what they do, and lets you write rules about who they are and build the email you send them. It connects to your store when you install it, which is why almost nothing in it has to be imported or maintained by hand.

Where do I work — inside Shopify, or somewhere else?

Either. You open the app from your Shopify admin and it runs there, and the app also has an address of its own, app.carpemessaging.com, with the same screens, the same data and the same store behind them. Shopify signs you in at the first door; you sign in with an email address and a password at the second. The role you hold is the same through both.

Do I need a password?

Not to work inside your Shopify admin. You are already signed in there, so opening the app is the whole of signing in and there is nothing to remember. A password is what the other door asks for, and accepting an invitation is where you set one — which is how somebody with no Shopify login of their own works in your store.

Do I have to import my customers?

No — your Shopify customers arrive by themselves. Installing the app is what brings your orders, checkouts, customer records, marketing consent and Shopify customer tags across, and they keep arriving after that.

There are two ways to import people who are not in your Shopify store. You can upload a file of your own, one person per row, under Audience → Profiles → Import. Or, if you are coming from another email tool, you can connect your account there and import your people, their consent, your email history, your lists, your segments, your templates and your automations without a file at all. One tool is supported today; Settings has a page named after it, and the help page for that tool walks the whole thing through.

If you have years of history in that tool, read its Before you import section first. Deleting there what you will never use again is quicker than sorting it out here afterwards.

Can one login cover two stores?

No. An email address belongs to one store and only one. There is nothing to pick when you sign in and nothing to switch between — the store you signed in to is the store you are in. If you run two Shopify stores, or work on more than one merchant's store, use a different address for each. The same rule is checked at install: if the Shopify account you install from uses an address that already belongs to another store here, the app says so and sets nothing up, and installing again from a different staff account completes normally.

Which time zone are the dates in?

Your store's, as set in your Shopify admin. The app reads it rather than offering a second setting that could disagree with the first, so it is shown read-only in Settings and it formats every date on every screen. Before your store is connected, dates fall back to UTC rather than guessing from whichever browser happens to be open.

Why does the address end in a number?

It is your store's own number for that segment, list, campaign, automation, form, template, library element or discount. Each one gets the next number in your store when it is made — segment 1, segment 2, and so on, counted separately for each kind — so /audience/segments/42 is your forty-second segment. A number is given once and never changes, not when you rename the thing and not when you archive it, and a deleted one's number is never handed to anything else. The number means something only inside your store: somebody else's segment 42 is theirs, and your address cannot open it.

Links you saved before the numbers arrived still work. They carry a longer code; open one and the app takes you to the same page and shortens the address to the number. The email inside a campaign or an automation still opens at the longer address, because it belongs to its campaign or automation rather than being a template of its own.

If I uninstall, do I lose everything?

No, not for 30 days. Uninstalling ends everyone's access straight away and leaves your data where it is: your profiles and what they did, your consent records, your segments and lists, your forms, your templates and your Library, your images, and the record of what you sent. Install the app again inside those 30 days and it is all there, exactly as you left it — except anything one of your customers asked to be erased in the meantime, which is never held for the window. Coming back calls the deletion off. After 30 days it is permanently deleted and cannot be brought back, and installing again then starts you from nothing. The clock runs from the day you uninstalled. If the deletion had already begun when you came back, coming back stops it where it stands but cannot undo what it had already done — usually an image that will no longer load — and you can write to us and we will tell you what was reached. If you would rather your data went now, ask us: write from an address on your team, to the privacy address on our privacy statement, and say so. The whole of it is on the Settings page, under Uninstalling the app.

I uninstalled in the middle of a send. What happened?

It stopped where it was, with nobody emailed twice. No campaign and no other marketing email goes out from a store that has uninstalled the app, or whose connection to Shopify has stopped working. Come back within a few minutes and it carries on by itself; longer than that and it stops for good and waits for you. You find it under Stopped, with how many people have the email and how many are still to go, and it sends nothing until you press Resume or cancel it. Resuming picks up where it left off and nobody who already has the email gets it again.

I had a campaign scheduled while the app was uninstalled. Did it go out?

Not if more than a few minutes have passed, and it does not go out late either. A campaign whose send time passed while the app was uninstalled — or while your store's connection to Shopify was broken and had to be reconnected — goes back to being a draft when you return, for you to schedule again. A send you planned for Tuesday is rarely the send you want on Friday, so the app leaves that decision with you. A near-miss is the exception: if the send time is less than about fifteen minutes past when the app next checks — which it does every minute — the campaign still goes out, a few minutes late, because that is the send you planned rather than a stale one. What decides it is how overdue the campaign is at that check, not how quickly you came back — and if you scheduled it for a time that had already passed, those minutes are counted from when you scheduled it. A campaign that was already part-way through is the other case again: that one is never returned to a draft — it waits under Stopped for you to resume it. And the app returns a campaign to a draft only when your store had no working connection during the wait — never because the app itself was slow. A send the app itself held up goes out late instead, however long the hold-up was.

Can I schedule a campaign for a time that has already passed?

Not by more than a few minutes. A send time more than about fifteen minutes in the past is refused the moment you schedule, and the campaign stays a draft — so a typo or a time-zone slip cannot schedule a send that would never go out. Pick a time in the future; a moment from now is fine.

Within those few minutes it is allowed, and the campaign goes out rather than being turned back into a draft for being late, because you picked that time knowing it had passed. The few minutes are then counted from when you scheduled it: if your store goes away before it sends and stays away, the campaign is stale like any other and comes back as a draft when you return.

I reinstalled and my team cannot get in.

That is deliberate. A reinstall brings back the store's Shopify account owner and nobody else — everyone else stays switched off until they are let back in one at a time. Otherwise an uninstall would never really have taken access away, and the person you removed would have it again the moment you came back. They are all on Settings → Team, under No longer on your team, to be put back one at a time.

Profiles

What is a profile?

Your record of one person — their email address, their name if you know it, what they have done with your store, what they have spent, and whether they have said yes to marketing email. It is a record about a person, not a promise that the person can be reached; plenty of profiles deliberately cannot be.

Why can't I sort the profiles screen?

There are no sort controls on purpose. The order is fixed to most recent activity first, because the question that screen exists to answer is "who is around now". To find one person, search by any part of their name or their email address — more than one word narrows further, in any order.

What does "Verified identity" mean? Is it consent?

It is not consent, and the two sit apart on every screen for that reason. Verified identity means the app is confident this is a real person your store knows. Consent means the person said yes or no to marketing email. Someone can have a verified identity and still not be subscribed, and that is the ordinary case.

Somebody signed up on my form and reads "Not confirmed yet". Why?

The check on their address could not confirm it — the mailbox did not answer, or the checking service was briefly unavailable. Their consent is real and is recorded, they were thanked exactly like everybody else, and the moment they place an order they are confirmed automatically. Profiles in that state are shown and marked, never hidden and never deleted on a guess; they are left out of every count and every audience, and no email you send reaches them.

Can I export or download my profiles, or a segment's people?

Yes, whenever you want, and you do not have to ask us. Press Export on the profiles screen, on a segment or on a list, or go to Audience → Exports. Every export makes two files — your audience, and everyone you must not email — and the link lasts a day. Run it again whenever you want another copy; there is no limit and no charge. The Exports help page explains why there are always two files and what each column means.

Leaving is a supported act here, not a concession.

Exports are for owners and managers. You can also read your people on screen: the profiles screen searches by any part of a name or an address, a segment's own page shows People in this segment under its rule with Show more people to page through, and a list shows who is on it the same way.

Can I delete a profile, or everybody in a segment?

Yes, if you are the store's owner, and there is no undo. Delete one person with Delete this profile on their own page, or everybody in a segment or a list from Settings → Delete profiles — built for Suspected bots, which is offered first. You see the count and a warning and type the segment's or the list's name before anything happens. The segment stays and reads 0; a list is emptied and keeps its name. A campaign still counts what it delivered to them, but their opens and clicks are deleted with them, so a campaign's opens and clicks go down; where a deleted person's name used to show, the app shows "Redacted profile". Anybody who had unsubscribed, or whose address is in Do not email, stays that way if they ever come back. And if you tick Never let these addresses back — it is ticked for you when you delete Suspected bots — nobody you delete can ever be emailed or texted from your store again. The Deleting profiles help page has the whole of it.

Does deleting a profile delete the customer in my Shopify store?

Only when they have never placed an order. A customer with no orders is deleted from your store too; a customer with even one order stays in your store, because their orders are your store's own sales record. Nothing is deleted in your store for somebody who is not a customer there. If your store does not confirm the delete, the profile is still deleted here, and we may not be able to tell you whether the customer is still in your store — check your Shopify admin, under Customers, and delete them there yourself if you want them gone.

Do you keep a customer's address?

No. A profile keeps a country, a state or region, and a city — never a street address. Street addresses appear only inside the raw order records from Shopify, which are erased within seven days. The coarse location is what makes a rule like anyone who is in New York, United States possible.

Why don't a profile's numbers match my Shopify admin?

Total spent is gross: it includes tax and shipping, and refunds are not subtracted, so it is a total of what was ordered rather than a lifetime value. No average order value is shown at all, because the order count includes orders whose value could not be read, and an average of the two would be a smaller number than the truth presented as a precise one.

Consent

What are the four states?

Subscribed — they said yes. Unsubscribed — they said no, or asked to stop. No consent recorded — nobody has ever asked, or the answer never reached us. Do not email — this address is never emailed again, and that one is permanent.

Can I set somebody's consent myself?

Yes — from the profile, in the menu at the end of each consent row: Mark as unsubscribed and Mark as subscribed. What you are doing there is recording somebody else's answer, not deciding it, and the app is built to keep that distinction visible. Every change is saved with your name and the time, and shows on the row afterwards.

Marking somebody subscribed asks you to confirm one sentence first — that this person gave your store permission to email them — and keeps that sentence with the change, because that claim is yours to make and worth being able to point at later.

Three things it cannot do. It never puts back an address that bounced, was reported as spam, is not a real address or was erased — that state is permanent at every role. It never signs somebody up for text messages: only the person can agree to those, by replying or entering the code they were sent. And it does not confirm who somebody is, so a profile that is not confirmed yet stays out of every audience whatever its consent says.

Why can't Do not email be undone?

Every reason an address lands there is a reason that continuing to mail it damages you: mail that bounced, mail somebody reported as spam, an address that is not a real mailbox, an address your store blocked, or a person who asked to be erased. A permanent block is what keeps a handful of bad addresses from quietly wrecking whether your good mail arrives at all. Beside the state, the app names which of those it was. If what you want is a temporary stop, that is Pause, which is reversible and leaves consent untouched.

If somebody unsubscribes here, does my Shopify store find out?

Yes, straight away. An unsubscribe from one of your emails, a hard bounce and a spam report all write Unsubscribed on the customer record in your store. Your store has no equivalent of Do not email, so a bounce or a spam report lands there as an unsubscribe — the full reason stays here, and the address is still never emailed again by this app whatever your store says later. Marking somebody unsubscribed by hand on their profile travels the same way.

Opt-ins do not travel, and that is deliberate: writing Subscribed onto a customer in your own store would be making a permission claim on your behalf. So if you record somebody as subscribed here, update them in Shopify too if you keep a list there.

Is a form signup consent on its own?

Yes. Somebody filling in one of your forms and submitting it is their consent; there is no second step and nothing to wait for, because the address is checked at the moment it is typed rather than by asking the person to prove themselves twice.

An address that had unsubscribed from you before is subscribed again when somebody types it into a form. That is the most recent thing that person has said, and it is what the app records. An address in Do not email — a permanent bounce, a spam report, an address your store marks invalid — is the one exception, and nothing in this product can bring it back.

Can a form change somebody's name or telephone number?

No. A form fills blanks and overwrites nothing. If your store has a first name for somebody, a form cannot change it — that comes from your store, where the person signs in as themselves. A telephone number is stricter still: a form never replaces one you already have, a blank one is filled at the moment we text the six-digit code, and the number only becomes textable once that code comes back.

Somebody has asked me to erase them. What do I do?

You do it in Shopify, not here. Erasing a customer in your Shopify admin is what starts it: your store passes the request to the app on its own and the app carries it out. There is no control for it here. Shopify holds a request for about ten days before sending it, and longer — up to six months — if the person has ordered recently, so a record you can still see is not a request that went missing.

What is left after somebody is erased?

One thing, on purpose: the fact that this address must never be emailed again, kept as a one-way fingerprint rather than as the address itself. Everything else the profile held about them goes. Without it, the same address arriving tomorrow in an order or a signup would be a new profile with nothing against it, and somebody who asked to be left alone would hear from you again. What is removed and what stays is set out on the Profiles page.

When is consent actually checked?

At send time, for every email you send — not when the audience was built and not when the segment was counted. Every time, for every recipient, immediately before the message goes. Marketing consent governs marketing mail only: it does not touch the email your store sends about an order somebody placed.

Pausing and resuming

What is the difference between pausing somebody and unsubscribing them?

A pause is your decision and you can undo it. Consent is the person's answer and you cannot. Pausing never writes, changes or clears anybody's consent, and paused people stay paused until you resume — there are no timers and nothing un-pauses on its own.

Do paused people leave my segments?

No. They are still counted, they still appear in a segment's members preview, and they still match its rule. Only the audience that actually gets mailed leaves them out. Being in a segment is a fact about the person; being paused is a fact about your mail.

What does resuming a segment release?

More than the segment currently holds, on purpose: everyone you paused with that segment, including people who have since left it, and anyone in it you paused for another reason. A rule's membership moves, and if a resume only reached current members, somebody paused in March would be stuck with no way back.

Who may pause and resume?

Marketers, managers and owners. Viewers do not see the actions at all. It sits with sending, because the person who decides what goes out is the person who decides it should stop going to somebody.

Segments

What is the difference between a segment and a list?

A segment is a rule: you write the rule, and who is in it follows from the rule, this minute and every minute after. A list is a container: you put people on it and they stay until somebody takes them off. Use a segment when the rule is the point and a list when the people are.

Why does my segment count differ from what a send reaches?

Because a count answers "how many people match this rule", measured at the moment shown, and everything that decides whether a person can be reached is checked again at send time — consent, a permanent block, a pause. A segment of 12,000 people is a claim about who your people are, never a claim that 12,000 emails will go out. A segment nobody has counted yet shows a dash rather than a zero, because a zero would be a measurement that was never taken.

What can a rule ask about?

What people did — orders, checkouts, product views, and anything an integration sends in; what they spent; your Shopify customer tags; what they did with the email you send; their consent; their own details, such as a name or an email address; where they are; and when this app first saw them. Several of those open onto more than one sentence, and any of the first two can be narrowed to which product or which page.

How do conditions combine?

Inside a group they combine as OR — anyone matching any one of them counts. Between groups it is AND — people must match every group. Anything under Exclude anyone who matches is left out even if a group above includes them.

Can I just describe the segment I want in words?

Yes. With the rule still empty, type what you want into Describe your segment and press Draft it, and Talaria drafts the conditions for you. They land in the builder as ordinary rows: editable, counted before you decide anything, and never saved and never emailing anyone until you name the segment and save it. If your description needs something your store has no record of, you get a sentence saying so rather than a draft — a wrong guess would look right and mail the wrong people.

Why does "Lapsed 365d" not mean "we have heard nothing"?

It means you mailed them and they went quiet: everyone who received one of your marketing emails in the last 365 days and, in that time, did not open it, did not click it, and did not place an order either. Anyone who bought from you is never called lapsed.

Why do the built-in segments ask about orders at all?

Because "did this person open or click" and "is this person still a customer" are two different questions that most tools give one name to. Plenty of good customers never open a marketing email — they see the subject line, come to the store directly, and buy. Reading only the mailbox signal stops mail to people who are still spending money, so the built-in segments read both.

How is "never bought it" different from "bought something else"?

Never bought it is exactly 0 times narrowed to that product, and it catches everyone with no purchase of it — including everyone who has never bought anything at all. Bought something else is at least 1 time narrowed with is not that product, so it requires a real purchase of something else. Which you want depends on the email.

Are labels the same as Shopify tags?

No. Labels are your own organizing words for your segments — "hygiene", "Q4" — and nobody outside your team ever sees them. Shopify's customer tags are data about a person that arrives with your customer records, and they are something a rule can ask about.

If I delete a segment, do I lose the people in it?

No. Only the segment is deleted: the people stay in your audience and emails you have already sent are not affected. Draft campaigns that name it are listed in the confirmation, because they will need a new audience. Built-in segments cannot be deleted, and their rule and name cannot be edited, because campaigns depend on what they mean. To delete the people themselves, use Settings → Delete profiles.

Lists

Does adding a segment's people to a list keep the two in step?

No — it is a copy, and the dialog says so before you confirm. Somebody who starts matching the segment tomorrow is not added; somebody who stops matching it stays on the list; and editing, renaming or deleting the segment moves nobody. Add the segment's people again whenever you want the list to catch up.

Why does a list show two numbers?

People is everyone currently on the list, whatever their consent. Eligible for marketing is how many of them could be reached — they have an address, they said yes, their identity is confirmed, and they are not paused. The second is the best count available at the moment it was taken, which is why the clock time rides with it, and it is never a promise about a send.

Does putting somebody on a list subscribe them?

No, and taking them off does not unsubscribe them. Nothing on those screens writes consent. A person you can never email can sit on a list perfectly legitimately — the list organizes, and the consent rules decide what may be sent. Deleting a list archives it rather than destroying it: nobody is unsubscribed, nobody comes off any other list, and Restore brings it back.

Forms

I published my form and nothing appears on my storefront.

Publishing is not the last step. Your theme has to be told to run Carpe Messaging forms at all, and that is a switch in Shopify's theme editor rather than in this app. On Content → Forms, press Turn on in the theme editor and then click Save in the theme editor. You only do it once per theme.

What is the difference between the app embed and an embedded form?

The app embed is Shopify's — one theme switch that makes popups, corner cards, bars and full-screen panels appear at all. An embedded form is ours — a block you place inside a page. They are different things in different parts of the theme editor, and one does not turn the other on.

Does publishing a paused form start it again?

No. If you paused a form and then publish an edit, you are saying "when this runs again, this is what it shows". Resume it when you are ready.

Can I put an earlier version of a form back?

Yes, any version you have published, not just the last one — Make this live puts it back exactly as it was, and your working copy is left alone. You can name your versions too, so Holiday 2025 is findable in March.

What is a catch-all address, and what is the setting about it?

Some email domains accept mail sent to any name at all — most work addresses — so nobody outside that company can tell which mailboxes really exist. In Settings → Store there is one switch, on when you start:

Accept catch-all addresses from people who browsed your store

On, somebody who browsed your store and then signed up is accepted and you can email them. Off, they wait until an order confirms them. Either way their consent is recorded and they are thanked like everybody else. Under the switch are two numbers — how many profiles the rule has accepted, and how many of those have bounced since — to be read as a pair.

Can I collect mobile numbers?

Yes, once text messages are on. The switch is in Settings → Text messages; with it on, a form carrying a mobile-number field publishes like any other, and the people who give you a number are recorded with what they agreed to. With it off the form will not publish, and the editor says which panel is asking and names the switch. Nothing is ever texted to anybody until a carrier has approved a number of your own — see the Text messages help page.

Campaigns

Where do I send a campaign?

Under Campaigns. Create campaign opens one screen holding the name, the audience, the email and the timing; Review is its own screen, where you read it once more and schedule it. A marketer, a manager or your owner can do all of that.

An automation is the other half of this answer: it sends by itself once you have published it and turned it on. Either way, sending is your store's own act. A marketer builds, schedules, publishes and turns an automation on; a viewer reads; nobody at Carpe Messaging can make your store send. We can help you shape what would go out, and we can pause something for you — that is where it stops.

Email templates

Which email does a campaign send?

Its own. When you create a campaign you give it an email, and from then on that email is the campaign's — editing it changes that campaign and nothing else. So you can never break last month's newsletter by tidying up this month's. There is no Save button in the editor either: a second after you stop typing your working copy is written, and the mark beside the template's name says when.

What must every email carry?

An unsubscribe link and your store's postal address. That is the law wherever you are sending, and an email without them will not go out. Every starting point opens with the sentence already written:

You are getting this because you signed up for our emails. If you no longer want them, unsubscribe here.

Only the words unsubscribe here are the link. The rest is ordinary text you can rewrite in your own voice.

What stops an email from going out?

No unsubscribe link that anybody can see; no store address in the email, or none on file for the store; a Library element it links that is not there; an image it uses that is no longer available; a discount block with no discount chosen, or a discount code in the words with no discount block, because either way the code would arrive blank; a link pointing at a collection, a page or a product your store no longer has; and an email over 250 KB. Everything else — a size warning, a price that could not be shown — is told to you and does not stop the send.

How do I put products in an email?

With a product block, and everything about it is set in the template editor, on the block's own panel. You either choose the products yourself from your catalog — by name, by variant or by product code, never by typing an identifier — or you give the block a rule: your best sellers, your new arrivals, one of your collections, or something about the person reading it. The Products in an email page walks through all nine and the picker behind them.

Where can a button or a link point?

One field answers it. Paste a link and it stays that link; type anything else and it searches your store — your products, your collections, your pages, and the Home page and All products beside them. You never look up a URL, and what is stored is which thing you chose rather than its address, so renaming it in Shopify never breaks the link. The Where a link goes page has the rest, including why your pages can be a day behind.

Why didn't my customer get my email?

Open Analytics → Refusals. Every email you sent that was stopped before it reached somebody is written down there with the reason: no consent, an address marked Do not email, a profile not confirmed yet, somebody you paused, an email over the size limit, and the rest. Narrow it by reason or by campaign, and read Refusals for what each reason means and which of them are yours to act on. Most are not, and that is by design.

Why is my email cut off in Gmail?

Gmail stops showing an email past about 102 KB and puts a "View entire message" link at the bottom, under your unsubscribe link where a lot of people never look. You are told at around 90 KB that it is getting large and again at around 102 KB, and over 250 KB it cannot be sent at all. Images do not count toward this — it is the words and the markup around them.

What is the Library for?

Pieces you reuse — a header, a footer, a section. An email links to a Library element rather than holding a copy of it, so fixing your address once fixes it everywhere. A campaign you have already scheduled will not change: the exact version of every element it uses is written down when you schedule it.

Can one part of an email go only to some people?

Yes. Open the block or the section and use the Show this only when … card at the foot of its panel: up to five rules over your profiles' own properties and their Shopify tags, all of them true or any of them. Everybody else gets the same email without that part. To check it, press Preview and choose somebody — the email is drawn for them, and a line says how many blocks their rules left out. The Show a block to some people page has the rest.

Does the app turn my email dark by itself?

No. A template can carry its own dark colors — a text color, a background and an accent — and when it does, those are the colors that draw. When it does not, your email stays light. Colors chosen by a machine land on your logo and your product images as readily as on your words, and a design you did not make is not one you can check.

My image is set to full width and still is not edge to edge.

The space you are seeing belongs to the section, not the image. An image fills its column, and the column sits inside the section's padding. Set the image's padding and margin to zero and the section's padding to zero.

Can I send myself a test email?

Yes. Open Preview in the editor, then Send a test, and pick yourself out of Your team. A test goes to as many as three people at once, and each one is either somebody with access to this store, at the address they sign in with, or a profile who has given you permission to email them.

There is nowhere to type an address, so a test can never reach a stranger by typo. If the mailbox you want to test with is a shared inbox or an address of your own somewhere else, put it on your list the way any of your customers would — make it a Shopify customer with email marketing turned on, or place an order with it — and the picker offers it from then on.

Does a test to my own team behave like a real send?

Almost, and the differences are the ones worth knowing. Your teammate's copy is not marketing email, so its unsubscribe link does not work and nothing about that copy is tracked. Consent is not asked about either, so a team member whose own profile on your list is unsubscribed still gets their test. To check your opt-out path end to end, send the test to a profile — that copy carries the real, signed link.

One thing still stops a test to a teammate: Do not email. An address that bounced, or that somebody reported one of your emails from as spam, is refused whoever holds it.

Whose information fills a test email?

The person you are previewing as — for every recipient, not just for one. That is what the two controls are for: Preview as chooses whose information fills the email, Send a test chooses whose inbox it lands in. Choose nobody and all three copies carry the sample values.

Why was my test refused?

Because the test is gated exactly as a real send is, and the sentence you get back is a true one about that person: they have not given you permission, the address is on Do not email, you have not confirmed the profile is a real person yet, they are paused, or there is no address on the profile at all. A different sentence — This template is not ready to send yet. — is about the email rather than the person, and the findings under it name what is missing. Every recipient gets its own line, so one copy can go while another is refused.

Why does the unsubscribe link not work in the preview?

Because on screen it carries a sample address, not a real customer's. An unsubscribe link is a permanent opt-out credential, and one minted to draw a screen would sit in your browser and in any screenshot you shared. The link in an emailed test is the real, signed one — check your unsubscribe page there.

Who is the preview drawn as?

Nobody, until you choose. The default is a set of sample values, and the sample first name is long on purpose so that the size measured under the preview matches what a send would check. Choose a profile searches everyone on your list — no filter, because previewing is not sending, and seeing an unsubscribed customer's copy is a fair thing to want. The test-send picker is the narrower one: your team, and the people on your list who have given you permission.

Discounts

Where do I make a discount?

In Shopify. There is no discount editor in this app and there will not be one — your pricing rules belong where the rest of your store's pricing lives. This app mirrors the code discounts you have made there, and keeps that copy current as you edit them. Which discount an email gives away is chosen in the email itself, in its discount block; a form's is on the form's own page. The Discounts help page has the rest.

Can I use my own discount codes?

Yes. A discount you made in Shopify has a code of its own — SPRING20 — and you can send that instead of giving everybody a code of their own. It is short, it is yours, and every limit you set on the discount applies exactly as you set it.

What a shared code cannot do is tell you who used it. One string that everybody has is one string, so an order that used it belongs to the discount rather than to a person. A code minted for one person is matched back to them, stops working once it is used, and can carry a deadline of its own.

Why do I see extra discounts in Shopify?

Because that is how a printed deadline is kept. When your codes are good until a particular day, the app creates a discount in your Shopify dashboard — a copy of yours, named after it with the day on the end, Spring Sale · use by September 8 — that ends at the end of that day in your store's time, and the codes for that day live under it. Shopify is then the thing that stops the code on the date your email printed.

They clean themselves up. Once a day has passed, its discount is deleted and your list settles back to the discounts you made.

Can someone use a code twice?

Each person gets their own code, and a code stops working once it is used. Shopify tells us about an order a few moments after it happens, so there is a short window right after someone checks out where the same code could be used a second time. The discount's own "one use per customer" setting is a second guard, and we turn it on for you.

Will I run out of codes?

No. Codes are made ahead of the people who will need them and the supply grows with your store's own activity, so a busy signup form keeps up with itself without anybody setting a number. If more people arrive at once than there are codes ready, a code is made on the spot for the person in front of it. A campaign makes one code for every person in its audience before it sends the first email, so a big send cannot run short halfway through. The words you wrote on your form's discount code block — the ones under If no code can be given — are never shown because the supply ran out. They are shown when there is no code to give at all: a block naming no discount, a discount that has ended, been deleted or has not started yet, a chosen code that has been deleted in your store, or a store that cannot be reached at that moment.

Does my discount's usage limit apply to the codes I email?

No, and you are told so where you set the offer up. A total usage limit belongs to the discount's own code. The codes you email are one per person, so the number of people you send to is the real limit.

Images and media

Where do images live, and do I paste a web address?

Under Content → Images & media, and there is nowhere to paste one. A form or an email points at the image itself, which is what makes an image you are using impossible to delete by accident and an image you fix stay fixed everywhere.

Why does every image need a description?

It is what somebody hears if they cannot see the image, and what a search looks through when you are trying to find an image six months later. Talaria writes the first draft as soon as an image is up, and yours wins if you type one first. An image that is purely decoration is marked as such instead and passed over silently.

I deleted images and my storage did not drop.

Deleting is reversible for 30 days, so a deleted image is still yours to bring back and still takes a place and its space. Both come back when the image is cleared for good. Archive is usually what people actually mean: it takes an image out of the way, is never refused, and never changes anything on your storefront.

Metrics

What is a metric, and do I have to register one?

A metric is a kind of thing that happens — Placed Order, Viewed Product, Opened Email. Nothing has to be registered or declared: a metric appears in the catalog the first time an event with that name arrives, whether it came from your store, from an integration, from your forms, or from the email you send.

Why does a chart show less than "Last activity" suggests?

Last activity reflects every event the app holds. The charts count profiles with a verified identity only — the same profiles your segments are built from. That is the reason for the difference, not a fault.

Are open rates accurate?

Treat opens as directional. Apple Mail's privacy protection fetches images before anyone reads the message, which overstates opens. Delivery outcomes can also move after the fact — mail marked as spam counts on the day it was reported — so a day you already read can go down.

Can I remove a metric, and what does it cost?

You can remove a metric you brought here: one your own integration or the events API posts, and one that arrived on an import of another tool's history. You cannot remove your store's own record — orders and page views as they happen, your forms, the order history we read back from Shopify, and the app's own record of what it sent. Removing works by name, so if the same name arrived both ways you brought here, removing it removes both; your store's own rows of that name keep counting. It is the owner's decision, confirmed by typing the metric's exact name, and the screen tells you what it will cost first. The part that surprises people: a removed metric behaves as if it never existed, so a segment that used it to leave people out stops leaving them out, and those audiences can grow. Events are kept for at least 30 days, and Restore during that window brings back the history you already had. Events turned away while it was removed are not offered again by a later import. The Metrics page has the whole of it.

Your team, and your email settings

What are the roles?

Viewer sees the app and changes nothing. Marketer adds creating and editing templates, segments, automations and campaign drafts, publishing an automation, turning an automation — or one of its messages — on, sending campaigns, pausing and resuming email, recording what somebody told you about their consent, managing discounts, and the four acts that change who a restock emails: notifying a queue, holding one restock or one variant, marking an item discontinued, and canceling somebody's back-in-stock request. Manager adds managing the team and changing the store's settings and its connection — which includes the back-in-stock wave settings, the store-wide hold, and putting one variant back on the store's rule. Owner adds billing and removing data. Each role includes everything the one below it can do, and a role is checked on every action rather than by hiding controls.

What can a marketer do that a viewer cannot?

Everything that makes and sends the mail: templates, segments, campaigns, automations and forms; images; test sends and real sends; turning an automation on, and turning one of its messages on; pausing and resuming somebody's mail; recording what somebody told you about their consent; and the discount settings an offer spends. A viewer reads all of it and changes none of it.

What a marketer cannot do is change your store's settings, its Shopify connection, its team or its billing. And nobody who has bounced or reported you as spam can be put back by any role — that state is permanent.

How do I add somebody to my team?

Settings → Team. Type their email address, pick a role, and send the invitation. They get an email with one link in it — it works once and expires in seven days — and the link is where they set the password they will sign in with. The address has to be one that does not already work in another store, because each login belongs to one store.

Why can't I make someone an owner?

Because you are a manager. A manager may invite and manage everybody else, but handing out the owner role takes an owner — the owner role carries billing and the removal of data, and that is not a manager's to give. The invite card and the row menu both say so, and the row menu draws the option and refuses it rather than hiding it.

I removed someone — can their old invitation still get them in?

No. An invitation works once, so the one they accepted was spent when they used it. If they had another one waiting when you removed them, removing them revoked it in the same breath — otherwise accepting it would have handed back the access you had just taken away. Nothing they hold can let them back in.

Can I put somebody back after removing them?

Yes. They are at the foot of Settings → Team, under No longer on your team, and putting them back returns them at the role they had, signing in with the same login. Everything they made stayed where it was the whole time.

Somebody on our Shopify staff cannot get in.

That is right, and it is not a fault. Working in your Shopify store does not put somebody on your team here — Shopify's staff list is a list of who works in your store, not a list of who should see your customers. What they see is Ask for access, and pressing it puts them at the top of Settings → Team, under Asking to join, where you or a manager can invite them at a role you choose, or dismiss the ask. Dismissing tells them nothing, and they can ask again later.

What does "Not recently" mean under Last seen?

That the app cannot say. The record of a visit does not last forever, so somebody who has not been here in a long while and somebody who has never signed in read the same. Last seen counts visits to this store only — time somebody spends in another store they work in is none of this store's business — and it is a best estimate rather than a history. A date the app cannot stand behind would be worse than the honest sentence.

Where do I set what my email says about my store?

Store settings holds what every email carries about you. Your store name is what your store is called — filled in from Shopify, yours to change, and what somebody reads on your unsubscribe page. From name is the name beside your subject line, which is a different thing and often a person at your brand rather than the brand itself; a single email can set its own in the editor, and one that reads as an email address is refused. Your store address is the mailing address at the foot of every marketing email — filled in from Shopify if your store publishes one, yours to change, never overwritten, and it cannot be left empty, because an empty address stops every marketing email you send. All three are yours from your first day, whether or not you have set up a domain to send from yet.

Settings → Email holds Reply-to address — where a reply goes, filled in from Shopify to begin with, and leaving it empty sends replies to an address nobody reads — along with your typefaces and the mailbox names below.

Can I change the address my email is sent from?

The half in front of the @, yes, any time. Settings → Email has a box for each: Marketing mailbox name and Order and account mailbox name. Change hello to news and save, and that is the address your marketing email comes from from then on. It needs no new setup and nothing has to be published — news@yourdomain.com is signed exactly as hello@yourdomain.com was.

The half after the @ is not a box, and that is not something waiting to be built. Your email is signed so that inbox providers can tell it is really from you, and the signature belongs to your domain — a different domain could not be signed, and mail that cannot be signed is mail that lands in spam. The domain itself you do choose, once: Settings → Domain is where you type it, pick your two mailbox names, and publish the records it gives you.

Why can I pick only a few typefaces?

Because those are the faces every inbox already has. A person opening your email might be in Gmail on a laptop, at work, or on their phone, and each draws the words in a face the device itself carries. Choosing from faces that are everywhere is what makes what you design and what your reader sees the same thing. Match my theme reads your online store's theme and shows you the closest match, and nothing changes until you say so.

Coming from another email tool

Do I have to rebuild my deliverability rules here?

Most of them, no. In a real store's account, more than half the segments existed to hand-build hygiene: recent bounces held back, never-openers walled off, the previously-unsubscribed kept out by a definition somebody had to remember to write and remember to reuse. Here consent is checked at the moment of sending rather than the moment of defining, an address that bounces or is reported as spam is never emailed again with no rule involved, and an unconfirmed identity is left out of every count and every send before any rule is written. Your segments can go back to being about who you want to talk to.

Why is my count smaller here than in the tool I came from?

Because every count here is of profiles with a verified identity, and profiles that are not confirmed yet are left out of all of them. Your home screen shows the two side by side — how many profiles are confirmed and subscribed out of all your profiles, and how many are not confirmed yet. The second number never hides inside another one.

Why is "profile" the word, rather than "contact"?

Because it is the honest one. A profile is a record about a person, carrying no promise of contactability, and most profiles are deliberately not reachable for marketing. Consent states — subscribed, unsubscribed, do not email — are states a profile is in, never kinds of person.

What is not here yet

Where do I send a campaign?

Under Campaigns. Create campaign opens one screen with the whole campaign on it — its name, who it goes to, the email, and when — and Review is the screen you read it on before it goes: the audience and its count, the email light and dark, the checks, the footer, your sending addresses, the subject and the schedule. Scheduling it is the last thing you do, and the app sends it when the time comes.

Automations are the other half of this answer: an automation sends by itself once you have published it and turned it on, because a person's own action starts it rather than a time you picked.

Either way, sending is your store's own act. A marketer can write a campaign and schedule it; turning an automation on is a manager's or your owner's; nobody at Carpe Messaging can make your store send. We can help you shape what would go out, and we can pause something for you — that is where it stops.

Can I send text messages?

Not yet. Consent is recorded per channel — one row for Email and one for Text messages, moving independently — and email is the channel this app sends today. What you can do now is turn text messages on in Settings → Text messages, publish a form that asks for a number, and ask a carrier to approve a number of your own. That review is read by a person and takes a couple of weeks, so starting it early is the point. The Text messages help page walks through both steps.

Where is billing?

Settings → Billing is where your plan will live, and it is the one page in Settings still being built. Everything else in Settings is there today, Integrations included.

I imported my people and almost everybody arrived held. Is that broken?

No, and it is the normal outcome of a real migration. Two separate things have to be true before you email anyone: they agreed, and their address still works. A profile in another email tool tells you the first and cannot tell you the second — an address it last used a year ago may be gone — so those people are imported, visible and counted, and waiting.

The migration screen gives you four ways past it: they leave the held pool by themselves the moment they order or fill in a form on your store; you release a small batch and see how it goes; you ask us to have the addresses checked; or you import a check you had run elsewhere. Nobody is lost, and nothing has to be imported twice.

If somebody unsubscribes here, does the tool I came from find out?

No. The connection only reads — nothing this app does writes to the account you connected — so an opt-out recorded here stays here until you take it there yourself. Export your do-not-mail file under Audience → Exports and upload it there each time you import changes. While you are sending from both tools, that is the step that keeps somebody who opted out of one from being mailed by the other.