Who actually receives my automatic emails?
The most common surprise in email is the gap between two numbers: the people in your contact book, and the people your emails can actually go to. On a bernard site that gap is shown to you plainly - Buyers · 12, Students · 5, Everyone who’s said yes · 19
- and it exists for a good reason.
The prompt
“Show me my audiences with honest numbers - who can receive emails today, who’s in my contact book but not emailable, and why.”
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Your contact book is a record; your audience is a permission. A few kinds of yes put someone in the audience:
- They bought from you. Buyers and students may be emailed about what they bought and closely related things - the thank-yous, care advice and check-ins in Thank people after they buy and Look after a new student automatically.
- They signed up and confirmed. Joining a list on your site sends a welcome with one button; pressing it is the yes. Until then they’re a contact, not an audience - which is exactly what Remind people who didn’t confirm their signup politely helps with. On a form with its own marketing tick - a waiting list, a download, an enquiry, a registration - Send a greeting when someone fills in a form is the greeting that carries that button.
- Almost nothing else. Hand-added contacts stay in the book but out of the audience until a real yes exists. Imported lists are different since the ActiveCampaign importer shipped: permission you genuinely brought over now counts too, at the lowest authority and behind rails - see When can I email the people I just imported?.
- You confirmed it for one course. Students you enrolled by hand or through ThriveCart can get that course’s automatic emails if you confirm, in your own words, that they agreed when they bought. It never adds them to your campaigns - see My course emails are not reaching students I enrolled by hand or through ThriveCart.
These same audiences - with the same honest counts - are who a one-off announcement can reach too; Send an email campaign to my audience covers that side.
The other half of the promise is the exit: every unsubscribe works, applies instantly, and stops journeys mid-flight as well as one-off news. You can also hold one person’s automatic emails yourself with the “on hold” tag, and a student who finishes the course stops getting the new-student emails. Nobody gets more than 1 automatic email a day. Nobody - not you on a deadline, not an AI assistant with the best intentions - can send around these rules, and every email that does go out was approved by you first. That’s not bureaucracy; it’s why your emails keep landing in inboxes instead of spam folders.
Questions people ask
- Why can’t I email everyone in my contact book?
- Because a contact and a permission are different things. Your book can hold anyone - someone you added by hand, a hand-typed enquiry, most imported lists. Emailable people are the subset with a recorded yes: buyers and students (who bought from you), sign-ups who confirmed, and - since the ActiveCampaign importer shipped - permission you genuinely brought over from another tool, after a short wait and under a capped first campaign. Bernard shows both numbers honestly rather than letting you find out from a spam complaint.
- What counts as a yes?
- Two things. Buying from you - the law calls that a soft opt-in and it covers emails about what they bought and similar things you do. Or signing up AND pressing the ‘Yes, keep me posted’ button in the welcome email. A ticked box alone isn’t enough until it’s confirmed.
- What happens when someone unsubscribes?
- Every marketing-flavoured email carries a working unsubscribe link. One click and they stop receiving everything from your site - journeys mid-flight included - immediately and permanently. An unsubscribe from you doesn’t affect their relationship with any other business, and vice versa.
- Can bernard or my AI assistant override this and email someone anyway?
- No. The audience is computed by the platform on every send - it isn’t a setting anyone can loosen, and there’s no approve-my-way-around-it. That’s deliberate: it protects your sending reputation and keeps you on the right side of the law without you having to be an expert in it.