How to review a campaign before sending

Every batch in Landing Zone moves through a draft and preview stage before you approve it. That pause is the best moment to catch problems — a stale scrub, a mismatched audience, a missing opt-out — while they are still free to fix. Walk through the following review, in order, before you approve any send.

The pre-send review#

1. Audience source and consent posture#

Know where this audience came from — an import with an opt-in acknowledgment, a skip trace, a purchased dataset — and what consent it actually carries. Imported and skip-traced contacts start UNVERIFIED, and batch SMS requires VERIFIED consent. Ask the harder question too: does the consent on file match this channel and this message, or was it given for something else? See Consent records.

2. Screening freshness#

Check when this audience was last run through DNC & Litigator Scrub. Suppression and litigator data change, so a scrub from months ago can miss new entries. Re-screen against your current workspace data and review the results — see Review screening results.

3. Suppression respected#

Suppression is enforced automatically for SMS and calls, so your main job is to not defeat it: never export an audience and message it from outside tools, and never re-import a list hoping a suppressed number slips through (it won't — suppression outlives contact deletion). For email, confirm your process honors recorded unsubscribes. See Suppression lists.

4. Message content#

Read the message as the recipient will. It should be truthful, clearly identify who it is from, and carry a working opt-out. Landing Zone appends "Reply STOP to opt out." to the first outbound SMS to a contact, and campaign email includes one-click unsubscribe — but the honesty of the content, the sender identity, and (for email) the physical mailing address in your signature are yours to verify. Check the preview to confirm merge fields and spin syntax render correctly.

5. Timing and quiet hours#

Quiet hours are enforced at the default of 9 PM–8 AM in the contact's local time unless your workspace has changed the window. Confirm the configured window is at least as strict as the strictest rule that applies to your audience — see Quiet hours and State-specific variation.

6. Sender registration status#

For SMS, open the Trust Center and confirm your A2P 10DLC registration is approved — sending gates on it. For email, confirm the sending accounts you are using are connected and verified.

7. Preview exclusions — understand, don't work around#

The pre-send preview counts every contact excluded from the batch and why: consent status, the 30-day cooldown (with the last outbound date, days remaining, and prior batch), suppression, line type, and quiet hours. If the batch includes unverified line types, a "Send to unverified numbers?" dialog asks for explicit acceptance, which is timestamped.

Exclusions are information, not obstacles. If a large share of your audience is excluded for consent, the fix is collecting consent — not finding another path to send. Investigate surprising exclusions before approving; a preview you don't understand is a send you shouldn't approve.

The decision is yours#

Passing this review is your judgment, not Landing Zone approval. The platform surfaces what its controls can see; whether this audience, this message, and this moment are appropriate and lawful is a decision only you can make — and the acknowledgments you accept along the way record that you made it. See Pre-send acknowledgments and User responsibilities.