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Why my emails aren't sending

The ten quiet failures, as symptoms. Start here when something should have gone out and did not.

3 min readUpdated
  • email
  • automations
  • forms

Almost every "my emails are not working" turns out to be one of ten things, and most of them fail without an error message. Find your symptom below.

"My automation is on but nobody gets anything"

Three causes, in order of likelihood.

Your form does not add anyone to a list. Open the form, look at the right panel, and check that Add them to an audience has a list selected. Without it the form collects contacts that go nowhere.

The list does not match. Your form adds people to one list and your automation is watching another. Compare the two names directly. This is the single most common cause.

Nobody has joined since you turned it on. An automation only picks up people who join the list afterwards. If your signups came first, use "Include people already on the list" on the trigger. It is one way, so be sure.

"I cannot press Send now"

That email has another job. Emails attached to an automation step, a form's confirmation, or a funnel signup cannot also be broadcast, because it would be far too easy to send your entire list a welcome message meant for one new person.

Duplicate it and send the copy.

"My download button did nothing"

A Download block with no file and no link attached simply does not appear in the sent email. It fails silently and it is the most common broken lead magnet.

Open the email, find the Download block, and confirm a file is actually attached.

"My subscribers got two emails at once"

Your form has a confirmation email set and your automation starts with an immediate send. Both fire within a minute. Pick one to own the welcome.

"It sent at three in the morning"

Wait steps default to UTC. If you set nine in the morning without changing the timezone, it goes out at nine UTC, which is the middle of the night in much of the Americas.

Open the wait step and set your own timezone.

"Some people got it and some did not"

On the free plan you get 100 sends per month, counted per recipient. Once you cross that, the rest are not delivered and the email still shows as sent.

Other people are skipped permanently: anyone who unsubscribed, anyone whose address hard bounced, and anyone on your blocked list.

"They only got the first email in the sequence"

Automated emails are limited to three per person per day across all your journeys. Extra ones are held back rather than dropped, so they arrive late rather than never. If several sequences overlap, spread the waits out.

"The same person went through twice"

They cannot. Each person goes through a given automation once, ever. Removing them from the list and adding them back does not restart it.

"My automation switched itself off"

Automations need the Creator plan. Dropping to free sets every live one back to draft. They are not lost, but switching one back on starts fresh and does not replay the gap.

"I cannot open the email editor"

It does not run on a narrow screen. On a phone or a portrait tablet you get a message asking for a wider window. Nothing is broken.

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