Audience Activation: Email Send Logic and Cadence – Fullpath Help Center

Overview

Audience Activation doesn't work like a traditional email blast tool. There's no single "send day" when every shopper in your CRM gets a message. Instead, each shopper's emails and texts are triggered individually, based on their own intent signals — how they've engaged with past emails, what they're doing on your website, their activity with your ads, and where they stand in your CRM.

This article explains the logic behind that system: what determines whether a shopper is eligible for a message, how often they can be contacted, and the safeguards in place to protect both your customers and your sending reputation.

Note: By default, system emails and texts send Monday–Friday only, with no sends on weekends or national holidays — so if you launch a campaign on a Friday, don't expect to see engagement until the following Monday at the earliest. Weekend sending is configurable per dealership (separately for Sales and Service).

How It Works

Every Message Has a Reason

Rather than a scheduled blast, Audience Activation continuously evaluates each shopper against your active campaigns and their own behavior. A shopper becomes eligible for a specific email or text when their intent signals — page visits, ad clicks, email opens, CRM status — line up with a campaign's criteria. That means two shoppers in the same audience can receive their next message on completely different days.

After a Vehicle Purchase

Once a shopper is marked Sold in your CRM (this reflects the CRM status — it may not always match the DMS), they move into what we call the imminent sale category. While there, they will not receive Sales emails — whether the vehicle was an acquisition, finance, or cash deal — for the next 12 months.

Exceptions to the 12-month Sales suppression:

Shoppers who lease for less than 2 years may still receive a lease-renewal email within that 12-month window.
If your dealership has adjusted the "engagement since last sale" setting in the Audience Activation Dashboard to less than 12 months, that shorter window applies instead.
Shoppers remain eligible for Service-related emails within 12 months of purchase — the Sales suppression doesn't extend to Service.
All subsequent messaging is still shaped by intent — how the vehicle was purchased, which VDPs they've visited since, and whether they're opening or clicking emails.

By default, we also won't reach out within 14 days of the "last contacted" date on file in your CRM. This gives your BDC or Sales team a clean window to follow up directly before system messaging resumes. This buffer is configurable via the Email Frequency settings in the Audience Activation Dashboard.

After Becoming a New CRM Opportunity

New leads follow their own quiet period: no system engagement in the first 14 days after they enter your CRM. Once that window passes, a lead with no associated sold vehicle becomes eligible for Sales-related messaging, including:

Acquisition — cadence can begin within the first month.
Lease — if purchase details exist in the CRM, cold campaigns can start up to 24 months before the lease ends.
Finance — if purchase details exist in the CRM, cold campaigns are timed off the last payment date.

From there, the same intent signals apply: VDP visits, email opens and clicks, and ad engagement all shape what a lead receives next.

Note: A lead is treated as imminent sale — and pulled out of Sales messaging — whenever their CRM lead status is Delivered, On Order, Pending Finance, or Sold, or when an Active status carries a Sold sub-status.

Group-Level Suppression

If your dealership belongs to a group, a purchase can suppress marketing across the whole group, not just the selling rooftop. Once a shopper is marked sold, they can be treated as not-in-market for Sales campaigns group-wide for 12 months — keeping a customer who bought from a sister store from getting Sales messaging from every other rooftop in the group at once.

Message Spacing

On top of the eligibility rules above, Audience Activation enforces a minimum gap between messages to the same shopper so no one gets double-hit by two campaigns firing on the same day:

Channel	Default Minimum Gap
Email	3 days between any two system emails to the same shopper
SMS	30 days between texts to the same shopper (adjustable per dealership)

Compliance note: Beyond Audience Activation's own cadence rules, outbound texts and phone calls to shoppers are separately governed by federal telemarketing regulations — including the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule and the TCPA — which generally restrict this kind of outreach to between 8:00am and 9:00pm in the recipient's local time zone. Dealerships remain responsible for their own compliance with these quiet-hour rules for any calling activity outside of Audience Activation's own send logic.

The Sunset Policy

To protect your sending reputation and avoid fatiguing shoppers who've genuinely disengaged, every email series carries a built-in sunset safeguard.

How it works:

When the first email in a series goes out to a shopper, a 12-month sunset window opens.
Up to 5 emails can send within that window while we monitor for engagement.
If the shopper opens an email, visits your site, or converts (form fill) at any point, the window resets and normal sending continues.
If all 5 emails go out with no opens, we pause further email sends to that shopper for the rest of the 12-month window.
Once the 12 months elapse, the shopper comes out of sunset and becomes eligible for re-engagement.

Important: Sunset only applies to email. Shoppers in a sunset window can still receive SMS messages — the two channels are tracked independently.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why didn't a specific shopper get an email this week?

A shopper can sit out a campaign for any of the reasons below. These are the same categories that power the eligibility breakdown you'll find on a campaign's audience view:

Reason	What it means
No email address	There's no email address on file for this shopper.
Unsubscribed	The shopper opted out of emails directly.
Do Not Contact	Either the National Do Not Contact list or a Do Not Contact flag logged in your CRM applies to this shopper.
Bounced / undeliverable	Prior sends to this address failed or are predicted to bounce.
In an exclusion list	The shopper is on an exclusion list your dealership has uploaded or configured.
Suppressed	A general data/compliance flag is suppressing this shopper's messaging.
In sunset	The shopper has gone through 5 emails in the current 12-month window without engaging — see the Sunset Policy above.
No matching audience	The shopper doesn't currently meet the criteria for any active campaign.
Compliance restriction	Certain finance-related messaging carries additional compliance restrictions (e.g. Equifax-related rules) that can limit eligibility.

Note: A more granular, per-shopper eligibility breakdown directly on the campaign page — showing exactly which of these reasons applies — is actively being built. If you don't see this level of detail in your Dashboard yet, check with your account team on availability.

Does the sunset policy apply to text messages too?

No. Sunset is an email-only safeguard. A shopper who's stopped opening emails and entered a sunset pause can still be reached by SMS, subject to the normal SMS cadence rules.

Can a shopper come out of sunset before the 12 months are up?

Yes — any open, click, or website visit at any point during the window ends the pause and resumes normal sending. The system is actively watching for that signal the entire time, not just at the end of the 5-email series.

Why don't new leads get contacted right away?

The 14-day quiet period on new CRM opportunities exists to give your Sales or BDC team room to make first contact directly, rather than having a system email land in the same window as your team's own outreach.

Can any of these windows be adjusted?

Some can. The "engagement since last sale" and Email Frequency settings are adjustable in the Audience Activation Dashboard, and SMS cadence can be tuned per dealership. Reach out to your account team if you'd like to discuss changing any of these defaults.