Release contacts a few at a time

A release pool holds contacts you’ve imported and releases a random group of them on a schedule, for example 500 every Monday. Contacts waiting in a pool aren’t mailed and don’t count toward your plan. Once released, they’re ordinary contacts, and every broadcast, segment and sequence they match picks them up. Until then, they don’t enter sequences and no automation runs for them, so nothing starts for a pooled contact before its release.

Mailing a large new list all at once can hurt your sending reputation if part of it is stale. Releasing it in groups means a bad list shows itself before most of it has been mailed, and the pool pauses itself if bounces or complaints run high. Because each group is picked at random, the groups are also a fair comparison: if one behaves differently from the others, that’s worth a look.

Before you begin#

• Have a CSV of contacts to import. See Import and manage contacts.
• If released contacts should land on a list, create the list first. See Use static lists.

Create a pool when you import#

1. Go to Contacts→Import and start a new import. Upload and map the file as usual.
2. On the Settings step, choose Add & update contacts.
3. Under When should new contacts start getting email?, choose Hold in a release pool.
4. For Pool, keep A new pool, or pick an existing pool to add these contacts to it.
5. Name the pool and set it up. The settings come in four groups:
   • When: First release, Repeat every and At, in your workspace’s time zone. Repeat every so many days, weekdays (Saturdays and Sundays skipped) or weeks. With weeks, the first release’s weekday is the release day.
   • How many: Same number each time, Split into releases (a number of releases), or Ramp up (start small and grow each release by a percentage or a number of contacts, up to an optional ceiling).
   • After release:
     • Add them to: a list, or No list — just make them mailable.
     • Enroll them in: an optional sequence, for example a short welcome series. To have a sequence that only the pool starts, give it the Enrolled directly trigger. See Choose an entry trigger.
     • Set their stage to: an optional stage, set when each contact is released. If a sequence starts when contacts enter that stage, it starts on the day they’re released, not the day you imported them.
   • Safety settings: the per-company-domain cap and the bounce and complaint limits that pause the pool. See Common issues for what a pause looks like.
6. Check the schedule preview below the settings, then click Preview Import →.
7. The preview says how many new contacts will wait in the pool, and shows the releases with their dates and sizes. The import button reads Hold N contacts in pool.

In a pool import the Stage for new contacts setting is replaced by the pool’s Set their stage to, so the stage lands on release. A stage column in the file isn’t set on pooled contacts either: they take the pool’s stage when they’re released.

Only contacts the import creates go into the pool. People already in your contacts are left as they are, and a contact already waiting in a pool stays in that pool.

Release a few each day instead of a big group each week#

If released contacts go into a welcome sequence, a weekly release starts everyone’s first email on the same day. To spread them out, release smaller groups more often: for example 100 every weekday instead of 500 every week. Each release is still a random group, and the pool’s page shows results for each one.

What happens at each release#

At the scheduled time, RadarSend takes the next contacts in the pool’s random order and makes them active, with the pool’s stage if you set one. Then it adds them to the pool’s list and enrolls them in its sequence, if you chose them.

• Contacts who can no longer be mailed are skipped. Anyone who unsubscribed, bounced, was suppressed, or whose email domain doesn’t accept mail is removed from the pool, and the release takes the next contacts instead.
• Each release mixes domains. A release takes at most a few people from any one company domain, and keeps a similar mix of Gmail, Outlook and other mailboxes to what’s left in the pool. Free mailbox domains aren’t capped.
• Releases count toward your plan. If a release would go over your plan’s contact limit, it releases what fits and the pool pauses.
• The default release time is 6:00 AM. A broadcast picks its recipients when it sends, so a release at the same time as a send makes it unclear who gets it. The broadcast review warns you when a release lands within an hour of the send.

Contacts released early#

You don’t have to wait for the schedule. A pooled contact is released straight away when they:

• sign up on one of your forms (or confirm a double opt-in signup),
• are created or updated through the API, including by the WordPress plugin,
• identify themselves on your site, or
• appear in a later import that adds them now.

So someone who becomes a customer while waiting is released by the same call that records them, with nothing extra to set up. Editing a contact by hand in RadarSend, or changing them with an automation, doesn’t release them. To release someone yourself, open the contact and choose Release now from the ⋮ menu next to Edit. Remove from pool is in the same menu.

Early releases don’t use up a place in a scheduled release. The pool just finishes a little sooner. They also keep the stage they arrive with (from the form, the API or the import) rather than the pool’s, or your default stage if that way of adding them doesn’t set one. A contact you release by hand gets the pool’s stage.

Watch and steer a pool#

Go to Contacts→Release pools. While a pool is active or paused, the Release pools button on the Contacts page shows how many contacts are waiting; hover over it for the next release. With one pool, the button opens that pool.

A pool’s page shows its schedule and results:

• Schedule lists every release with its date and size. Contacts are shuffled once, when they join the pool, and each release takes the next group in that order. Click a size that hasn’t been released yet to change it: later releases keep their sizes, and releases are added or dropped at the end so everyone still fits.
• Results by release shows emails delivered, hard bounces, complaints, open rate, click rate and unsubscribes for each release, over its first 14 days. Measuring every release over the same stretch gives a new release a fair comparison with an older one; a recent one says still collecting until its 14 days are up. Open and click rates are per delivered email. Releases are random samples of the pool, so they should perform about the same; if one stands out, look at what was different about it. Contacts released early are shown on their own row and left out of the comparison, because people who signed up or became customers aren’t a random sample.

From the page you can Release next now, Pause and Resume, and from the menu Edit settings, Skip next release and Archive. Skipping or pausing pushes the remaining releases back; RadarSend never releases two groups at once to catch up.

To see a pool’s contacts, click a number in the row under the pool’s header (Waiting, Released, Released early), or a release in Results by release. Each opens the Contacts list filtered to those people. View all contacts in this pool, in the page’s menu, shows everyone who was ever in it.

On Home, a Release pools card shows how many contacts are waiting, the next release, and how far through the pools are. It also compares released contacts’ open and click rates on your broadcasts with all your broadcasts over the last 30 days. On Insights→Audience, Release pool performance goes further for each pool: broadcast open and click rates beside all your broadcasts, hard bounce and complaint rates beside the pool’s limits, click rate release by release, and a one-line verdict such as “Engaging like your broadcasts or better”.

• Broadcasts on both sides. Released contacts often get a welcome sequence first, and sequence emails engage differently from a newsletter, so opens and clicks are compared on broadcast emails only.
• Small differences don’t count. A pool is called behind only when it’s more than 10% below your broadcasts, because a release of a few hundred contacts varies by a few points on its own.
• Only scheduled releases count. Early releases aren’t a random sample.
• Early days. Until a pool has 100 delivered emails, the verdict reads Too early to tell; until it has 100 broadcast emails, Not enough broadcast mail yet to compare.
• Home’s numbers can lag by a couple of minutes. The pool’s own page is always current.

On a contact’s page, a contact who’s still waiting shows In pool under their name, with the date they’re due. Hover it to see which pool. Their Story marks the day they joined the pool and the day they were released or removed.

On a segment or list page, a line under the count shows how many pooled contacts will join it, and by when, for example “+1,240 waiting in Trade show · +180 by Oct 19”. The broadcast review shows the same for releases due before the send.

You can also filter on pools anywhere you build a filter, on the Contacts list or in a segment: under Segment/List Membership, choose Release pool. Pick one pool or any release pool, then whether contacts are waiting in it, were released on schedule (in a particular release, if you like), were released early, or were ever in it.

The Global subscription status filter keeps the two kinds of waiting contact apart: In a release pool for contacts in a pool, and Pending confirmation for people who haven’t confirmed a double opt-in signup yet (or were taken out of a pool). Pending (either) matches both, as Pending did before.

Common issues#

• The pool paused itself. A released group crossed the bounce or complaint limit (5% hard bounces or 0.3% complaints by default, over its first 14 days, once it has 100 delivered emails), or you reached your plan’s contact limit. The pool page says which. Clean the list or change your plan, then click Resume. Resuming accepts the groups already released, so the same group won’t pause the pool again; only later releases are checked.
• Some contacts weren’t imported: “your release pools are full”. Pools can hold up to twice the number of contacts you’re currently billed for, or your plan’s contact limit if that’s more. Release some, or import fewer.
• “In pool” or “Pending”? Both mean the contact can’t be mailed yet. In pool means they’re waiting for a scheduled release; open the contact to see when they’re due, next to In pool under their name (hover it for the pool’s name). Pending means they haven’t confirmed a double opt-in signup yet (or your site identified them without a signup), and they become active when they confirm.
• Activating pending contacts in bulk releases pooled ones early. The confirmation says how many of the selected contacts are in a pool before you go ahead.
• A pooled contact wasn’t enrolled in a sequence, or an automation skipped them. Contacts waiting in a pool don’t enter sequences, and automations skip them. Once released, the segments they match and the pool’s own sequence pick them up. Enrolling a pooled contact by hand says to release them first.
• Released contacts haven’t started the pool’s sequence. The sequence was paused, or still a draft, when they were released. They’re on the pool’s list and stage already, and they start the sequence when you resume or activate it. Your notifications say how many are waiting. If the sequence is archived or deleted instead, they stop waiting and a notification says so: pick another sequence for the pool, then enroll them from the pool’s list. Picking a different sequence for the pool also stops them waiting; they don’t start the new one.

Good to know#

• Contacts in a pool aren’t billed. They count toward your plan when they’re released.
• You can change a pool’s schedule and sizes at any time from Edit settings. Released contacts stay released.
• Change the safety limits, and the per-domain cap, under Safety settings in a pool’s settings.
• A contact is in one pool at a time.