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Send Email Activity
Choose and configure an email message to be sent on its own or as part of one or more automations. You can put it in sequence with other Automation Studio activities and schedule it for a particular date and time.
- Click Activities.
- Click Create Activity.
- Select Send Email.
- Click Next.
-
Select a classic or Content Builder email. Use sorting options
to change the order in which emails display.

- Click Next.
-
Complete the define properties section:
- Activity Name - Enter a name for this email send definition.
- External Key - This unique key is for the API. If a unique key isn’t assigned, the system auto-assigns one.
- Folder - Select a folder in which the send definition resides.
- Description - Enter a brief explanation of the email's content or purpose for your internal use.
- Subject - The subject of the email message sent by this activity. Any changes made to the subject are reflected only in this send.
- Preheader - The text displayed after the subject when an email is previewed.
- From Options:
- Saved Send Classification - Sets a send classification to use for this activity.
- Sender Profile - Determines whether the send uses a different sender profile than indicated in the send classification.
- Overwrite Delivery Profile - Determines whether the send uses a different delivery profile than indicated in the send classification.
- Click Next.
-
Complete the select audience section. Audience folders are
displayed in the left pane where the root folders represent
different audience types. When you select a folder on the
left, individual audience objects appear in the grid. From
there, drag your audiences into the Targeted, Excluded, or
Suppressed drop areas.
Note Test audiences for user-initiated emails aren’t supported in Automation Studio. Editing a user-initiated email with a test audience in Automation Studio automatically removes the test audience. This removal doesn’t affect the content of the email. To perform a test send, navigate to Email Studio.
- Click Next.
-
Complete the configure delivery section.
- To use Send Time Optimization, select
Einstein Send Time
Optimization. If your Einstein Send
Time Optimization isn’t optimized yet for your
business unit or enterprise, you could have to
wait up to 72 hours. If you don’t see information
that the content isn’t optimized, you’re ready to
use Einstein Send Time Optimization. Note If your organization uses send throttling, you must choose either send throttling or Einstein Send Time Optimization. You can’t use both. If you check the Einstein Send Time Optimization box, send throttling is automatically turned off for this send.
- Delivery Window - Select a range of hours during which you want to send your email. A start and end time are required.
- Hourly Threshold - You can also specify how many
emails you want to send per hour during that
time.Note To mitigate performance issues, take processing time into account when you choose your time frame. Estimate approximately 20 minutes processing time for every million subscribers. For example, if you’re sending to 6 million subscribers, allow about 2 hours for Einstein to process the best send time for each subscriber.
- Track Clicks.
- Suppress From Send Report.
- Multipart MME - The system sends both HTML and Text version (including the text version you’ve created). The version that the subscriber's email client accepts is delivered.
- To use Send Time Optimization, select
Einstein Send Time
Optimization. If your Einstein Send
Time Optimization isn’t optimized yet for your
business unit or enterprise, you could have to
wait up to 72 hours. If you don’t see information
that the content isn’t optimized, you’re ready to
use Einstein Send Time Optimization.
- Click Next.
- In the Activity Summary section, review configurations from the previous tabs and confirm that the information is correct and ready to send.
- Click Finish.
- Edit an Inline Email Activity
You cannot edit Send Email activities that were created with classic email editor inside an automation, but you can replace them. After replacing the email send definition, you can edit it within an automation. - Edit Emails in a Running Automation
To edit the subject line or content of a user-initiated email send in a running automation, update or recreate the Send Email activity.

