Help · Getting started
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
The app runs inside your Shopify admin and at its own address, with the same screens and the same data. Your Shopify customers arrive by themselves when you install it, so there is nothing to import from your store. If you uninstall, your data waits 30 days before it is deleted.
12 questions
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. The embedded app runs inside your Shopify admin, and Shopify signs you in. The standalone app is at app.carpemessaging.com, where you sign in with your email address and a password. They are the same app, with the same screens, the same data and the same store, and your role lets you do the same things in both.
The standalone app needs no Shopify login, so you can give somebody access to the app without giving them your Shopify admin. A few things are done in Shopify rather than here — installing the app, making discounts, enabling your forms in the theme editor, the wording beside your checkout's consent boxes, and your store's policies. Neither is better; the Your team page compares the two side by side, says when each one is handier, and has that list.
Do I need a password?
Not for the embedded app. Shopify has already signed you in, so opening the app is the whole of signing in. The standalone app asks for a password, and accepting an invitation is where you set one — which is how somebody with no Shopify login of their own works in your store.
Forgot it? Forgot your password? on the sign-in page emails you a link to set a new one. Setting it signs you out everywhere you were already signed in, including on a device you no longer have, and disconnects every MCP AI assistant you connected.
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, your images 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?
Yes. One email address can work in as many stores as have invited it, with one password. You work in one store at a time. Inside Shopify, it is the store whose admin you opened the app from. At app.carpemessaging.com, you choose a store after you sign in, and you switch by pressing your store's name at the foot of the menu. Each store keeps its own team, roles, profiles and billing, and an MCP AI assistant is connected to each store separately.
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.
The email inside a campaign or an automation opens at a 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 Uninstalling the app help page.
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 disabled 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
A profile is your record of one person: their address, their name, what they did and where their consent stands. Owners and managers can export profiles whenever they want, and the owner can delete them, with no undo. A profile reads Not confirmed yet until something your store trusts confirms the person, and until then it is never emailed.
12 questions
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.
Can I change a profile's name, phone number or email?
The name and the phone number, yes — press Edit on the profile's page. Anyone on your team except a Viewer can. The email address, no: its consent and any Do not email belong to that address, so a different address is a different profile. A new phone number starts with no text message consent; consent never moves from one number to another. For a customer in your Shopify store the name is saved there too, and their number is changed in your Shopify admin. A number whose text messages were stopped can't be removed while another profile shares it. The Profiles help page has the whole of it.
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.
Does the app recognize somebody who comes back to my store?
Yes, once they have told your store who they are — by giving their email address at checkout or by signing up on one of your forms. From then on what their browser does is recorded on their profile, along with what it did before, usually for about a year and in Safari too. Each device and each social app's own browser is recognized separately. A shopper signed in to your store with their customer account is also recognized by your forms, usually from the first page, so your rules about consent and segments apply to them. Being recognized is not consent. The Returning visitors help page has the whole of it.
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 excluded from every count and every audience, and no email you send reaches them.
Can I confirm somebody myself?
If you are the store owner, yes. On a profile that reads Not confirmed yet, the ⋮ beside it offers Confirm this person. You type why — your founder, a customer you know by name — and the reason is kept on their profile. It does not subscribe them: their consent still decides every email and text, and an unsubscribe or a bounce stays as it is. It cannot be undone, and there is no way to confirm a whole segment at once.
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, Turned away as not a person or Checkout 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
Consent is the person's own answer, in one of four states, and it is checked for every email at the moment it is sent. You can record somebody's answer from their profile. Do not email can never be undone, and an unsubscribe here reaches your Shopify store straight away.
9 questions
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 — marking a profile by hand never changes that. (A bounced address has one separate way back, for the store's owner alone: see the next question.) 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.
There is one exception, for a bounce alone. A bounce can be a passing thing, so when the person has since ordered, started a checkout or signed up on one of your forms, nobody has ever reported your mail as spam from that address, and it has never been released before, the store's owner can release it once from the profile — with a reason, which is kept. The consent it gets back is whatever your Shopify store says now, never more. If it bounces again, it stays on Do not email for good.
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 no form can bring it back. Only the store's owner can release a bounced address, once, from the profile.
Can a form change somebody's name or phone 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 phone 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
A pause is your decision and you can undo it; consent is the person's answer. You can pause one person, a segment or a list. Paused people stay in your segments, lists and counts, and every email you send skips them until you resume them. Marketers, managers and owners may pause.
4 questions
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 excludes them. 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. Resuming a list works the same way: it also releases people you paused with the list and have since taken off it.
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
A segment is a rule, and who is in it follows from the rule; a list is people you put there. A count is measured when you ask, and a send checks consent again for each person, so the two can differ. You can describe a segment in plain words and Talaria drafts the rule.
10 questions
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 excluded 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.
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
A list holds the people you put on it, whatever their consent. Adding a segment's people is a copy, not a link, and putting somebody on a list or taking them off never changes their consent.
3 questions
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 more than one number?
People is everyone currently on the list, whatever their consent. Consented to email is how many of them could be emailed — they have an address, they said yes to email, their identity is confirmed, and they are not paused. If your store sends text messages, consented to texts is the same count for texts. Each is the best count available at the moment it was taken, which is why the clock time rides with them, and neither is 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
Popups, corner cards, bars and full-screen forms need forms enabled on your store: press Enable forms on your store on Content → Forms and save in the theme editor. Forms inside a page and back in stock work without it. A paused form stays paused when you publish an edit, and any version you published can be put back.
7 questions
I published my form and nothing appears on my storefront.
If it is a popup, corner card, bar or full-screen form, forms have to be enabled in your current theme. Content → Forms says so in red when a published form is waiting: press Enable forms on your store, then Save in the theme editor. Switched themes lately? Enable it in the new theme too. A form inside a page needs its block placed instead; back in stock needs its own block.
Should I enable forms before I have a popup?
You can, and nothing is lost if you wait. When no popup, corner card, bar or full-screen form is published, enabling forms adds nothing to your store's pages once the app has checked your store, which it does within a day. The setup guide offers it early with Set up now and Not now; once a published popup needs it, the step comes back on its own and names the form while your setup guide is open; once the guide is complete, Home names the form in its list of things to fix.
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 forms 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 enable the other.
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 → Email there is one switch, on when you start, on the card headed:
Catch-all addresses
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. The switch covers your back-in-stock form too: while it is on, a shopper with one of those addresses who asks to be told when something is back gets that email when it is; disable it and they do not, including anyone already waiting.
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
You build and send a campaign under Campaigns, as an email or a text message. When your store has a text-message number, a text can go out with your email.
2 questions
Where do I send a campaign?
Under Campaigns. Create campaign asks for a name and whether it is an email or a text, then opens the builder's three steps: Who gets it, The email or The text, and Schedule, where you send it or schedule it. It saves as you go. 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 applied your changes and enabled it. Either way, sending is your store's own act. A marketer builds, schedules, applies changes and enables an automation; 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 or disable something for you — that is where it stops.
Can a text go out with my email?
Yes. When you schedule an email and your store has a text message number, the campaign's page offers Add a text for the same people? Talaria drafts the text from your email, you choose when it goes — the same time, an hour or two before, two hours after, or a time of your own — and it opens as a draft for you to read and schedule. After a text, the same card offers an email. A pair is never moved for you: if the first one is rescheduled, the second goes back to draft for you to schedule again. The Campaigns page has the rest.
Email templates
Every email must carry an unsubscribe link and your store's postal address, and it will not go out without them. A campaign sends its own email, so editing it changes that campaign alone. Analytics → Not sent says why anybody did not get an email.
17 questions
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. And what you see is what goes out: when you open a campaign's Schedule step, the email exactly as it is on screen is kept as the version that sends. 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.
Why didn't my customer get my email?
Open Analytics → Not sent. 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, somebody held as a checkout bot, an email over the size limit, and the rest. Narrow it by reason or by campaign, and read the Not sent help page 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 excluded. 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 somebody with access to this store, at the address they sign in with. A test email never goes to one of your profiles.
There is nowhere to type an address, so a test can never reach a stranger by typo. To send tests to a shared company inbox, invite that address to your team as a Viewer in Settings → Team, and it shows up in the list. Anyone who can read that inbox can then sign in and read everything in the app, though a Viewer cannot change or send anything.
Does a test behave like a real send?
Almost, and the differences are the ones worth knowing. A test is not marketing email, so its unsubscribe link does not work and nothing about it is tracked. Consent is not asked about either, so a team member whose own profile is unsubscribed still gets their test.
One thing still stops a test: 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 sentence you get back is a true one about that person: the address is on Do not email, or they no longer have access to this store. 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 all of your profiles — no filter, because previewing is not sending, and seeing an unsubscribed person's copy is a fair thing to want. The test-send picker is the narrower one: your team, and those of your profiles who have given you permission.
Discounts
You make a discount in Shopify, and the app sends codes from it. Each person gets their own code, which stops working once it is used, and the codes never run out. You can also send a discount's own single code instead.
6 questions
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 enable it 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 it can send to 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. A discount that goes into a rollout in Shopify stops its form showing at all until the rollout ends; somebody who already had the form open sees those words.
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
Your images live under Content → Images & media, and an email or a form points at the image itself, never a pasted web address. Every image needs a description, and a deleted image can be brought back for 30 days.
3 questions
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
A metric is a kind of thing that happens, like Placed Order or Opened Email, and nothing has to be registered. Charts count profiles with a verified identity only, and opens and clicks count people, not machines.
4 questions
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?
Opens and clicks count people. Apple Mail opens every email by itself to protect the reader's privacy, and some email security systems open emails and follow their links before anyone reads them; those automatic opens and clicks are counted only in "in all". A real read behind Apple's protection cannot be seen by any sender, so an Apple Mail reader who never clicks shows no open of their own.
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 exclude people stops excluding them, 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
Your team members hold one of four roles: viewer, marketer, manager and owner. You invite people on Settings → Team, and only an owner can make someone an owner. What your email says about your store, and the address it comes from, are in Settings too.
12 questions
What are the roles?
Viewer sees the app and changes nothing. Marketer adds creating and editing templates, segments, automations and campaign drafts, applying changes to an automation, enabling an automation and its messages, sending campaigns, pausing and resuming email, recording what somebody told you about their consent, managing discounts, and the four acts that change who a back-in-stock email reaches: notifying a queue, holding one back-in-stock email 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; enabling an automation or one of its messages; 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 full name and 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.
Why can't I invite anybody?
Because only an owner manages the team. Inviting somebody, changing a role, removing somebody, answering a request to join and putting somebody back are the owner's alone, so everybody else sees who is on the team and nothing more. Ask an owner to do 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 an owner can invite them at a role they 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?
Settings → Store 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.
Why must I use my own domain?
Because your own domain is where good deliverability starts, and what you build on it is yours. The large inboxes judge email by the domain that signs it, so every good campaign you send from your own domain adds to a sending reputation that belongs to your store and goes with you. Email signed by somebody else's domain would build their record, not yours.
It is quick to set up, and the app does most of it. On Settings → Domain it prepares every record your domain needs: the ones that sign your email (DKIM), two on your bounce address (send.yourdomain.com, or another name if that one is already in use) that say which servers may send for you (SPF) and bring bounces and spam reports back, the names your links use, and — only if your domain has none — a DMARC record. If your DNS provider supports automatic setup, a button adds them after you approve — all but a DMARC record, which you add yourself; otherwise you copy them in by hand, which takes about five minutes. The app then checks for you every few minutes. Every record goes on a name under your domain, never on the domain itself, so your website and your existing email are not affected, and a DMARC record your domain already has is never touched. The Sending reputation and deliverability help page has the whole story.
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
Most of the hygiene you built by hand in another tool is done for you here. Counts are smaller because they count only profiles with a verified identity. People you import usually arrive held until their address is known to work, and nothing you do here writes back to the tool you came from.
5 questions
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 excluded from 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 excluded from all of them. Once your store is sending, your home screen shows the two together — how many profiles are confirmed and subscribed, and under it 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.
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 import screen gives you the ways past it: they leave the held pool by themselves the moment they order or fill in a form on your store; a free re-check takes off hold anybody something new now vouches for; a small test group goes out with your next campaign; you pay 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 catch up. 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.
Text messages and billing
You can send text messages on the $29 plan, once your store has its own number, approved by the carriers, and approval takes days to weeks. Billing is on Settings → Billing, and you pay through Shopify on the same bill as your other apps.
4 questions
Can I send text messages?
Yes, as a campaign, once your store has a text-message number of its own that the carriers have approved. Choose Text message under Send it as when you create the campaign. An automation can hold a text step as a draft; it waits there until text messages are open and enabled for your store.
Getting the number is the slow part. Enable text messages in Settings → Text messages, publish a form that asks for a number, and send the registration. A person at the carrier reads it, which takes a few days to a few weeks, so starting early is the point. The Text messages help page walks through it.
Consent is recorded per channel — one row for Email and one for Text messages, moving independently — so agreeing to your email is not agreeing to your texts.
Can a customer text a word, like SELFIE, to start an automation?
Yes. Add your word under Keywords in Settings → Text messages, then build an automation that starts on Texted Keyword with the rule keyword is SELFIE. When somebody whose number is on one of your profiles texts exactly that word, the automation starts for them, and any image they send is kept on their profile. Texting a keyword is not consent: the automation's texts go only to people who already agreed to your texts. A number that is on none of your profiles starts nothing. The Text messages help page has the details.
Where is billing?
Settings → Billing. It shows your plan and this billing period's usage — on the Free plan, how many of its 1,000 emails you have used; on the $29 plan, every usage charge with its rate. You pay through Shopify, on the same bill as your other apps, and only your store's owner can choose a plan. The Plans and billing help page has the two plans and every rate.
Is there a free plan?
Yes. The Free plan includes 1,000 emails each billing period, with campaigns, automations, forms, back-in-stock sign-ups and discount codes, and no limit on your profiles. Back-in-stock emails are sent on the $29 plan. Past 1,000, your emails wait, and go out on their own when the next billing period starts or when you choose the $29 plan. Text messages and checks of addresses you import are on the $29 plan, which includes 25,000 emails. The Plans and billing help page compares the two.