Learn how to choose who receives your emails in Kartra, so you can send more relevant messages and avoid common deliverability issues.

Kartra lets you control exactly which contacts receive an email — whether you’re sending a one-time message or automating emails in a sequence. Using targeting conditions helps ensure your emails reach the right people at the right time.

Sending emails in Kartra

There are two main ways to send emails in Kartra:

  • Email broadcasts: Send a one-time email to a group of contacts. Find this in Marketing > Emails & SMS
  • Sequences: Set up a series of automated emails that are triggered by user actions or a preset schedule. Find this in Marketing > Sequences

Both options allow you to refine your recipient list using specific conditions to make your emails more relevant and personalized.

How targeting can make your emails more effective

Targeting helps you send emails that match each contact’s behavior, interests, or engagement level. 

Instead of sending the same message to everyone, you can create multiple versions of an email and decide who receives each one using AND / OR conditions.

For example, you can create different versions of an email based on the following conditions:

  • Recipients subscribed to the "Updates & Offers" list AND
    • Recipients with the tag "Repeat Buyer"
    • Recipients without the tag "Repeat Buyer"
    • Recipients who watched the video "Special Offer"
    • Recipients with access to the "Free Course" membership

This approach ensures each recipient receives a version of the email that aligns with their specific actions or interests, resulting in higher engagement and fewer issues caused by emailing inactive or unresponsive contacts. 

How Kartra assesses deliverability risk in broadcasts

When you select a recipient group, Kartra analyzes how likely that segment is to cause deliverability problems.

This appears as a color-coded risk indicator, shown as a heat-style bar that ranges from red (high risk) to dark green (no risk).

Broadcast recipients module showing a high risk recipients segment.

Broadcast recipients module showing a low risk recipients segment.

A greener score means your audience is more engaged and safer to email. Red or orange indicates a higher risk and suggests you should narrow or clean your audience before sending.

Risk score and guidance

Kartra calculates this score using recipient engagement signals, including:

  • How often contacts open your emails
  • How recently they engaged with an email
  • The bounce rate within the selected group

These signals help identify whether a segment is engaged, inactive, or potentially harmful to your sender reputation.

Alongside the risk indicator, Kartra provides clear, actionable suggestions based on your audience’s risk level. As the risk level improves, the guidance becomes lighter, or confirms that your segment is safe to email.

How to target recipients in a single email

When setting up a broadcast email, follow these steps to choose your target audience:

  1. In Emails & SMS, open or create an email.
  2. Access the From-To settings.
  3. Use the drop-down fields to select the initial group of recipients (e.g., "Subscribed to list").
    • Pro tip: Always start with a list-based condition like "Subscribed to list," then refine the group by adding extra filters.
  4. Click Add to apply your selection.
  5. To further narrow the group, add additional conditions using AND/OR logic. This allows you to control your email’s audience by applying multiple factors that combine list membership, engagement, and other behaviors.

Example below: Target people who are subscribed to the "2024 Summit Attendees" list AND clicked a link in a previous email within the last 30 days. This ensures you reach contacts who are both engaged and recently active.

Use recipient conditions to segment by multiple factors

How to target recipients in a sequence

For automated emails in a sequence, you can apply similar filtering:

  1. In the sequence canvas, drag a Send email step into the workflow.
  2. Go to the Recipients step and use the drop-down fields to apply advanced filters.
    • Pro tip: In most cases, choosing "Anyone reaching this step" ensures that all leads subscribed to the sequence will receive the email unless additional conditions are applied.
  3. Only people subscribed to the sequence are eligible to receive the email, no matter the filters you set.

Send an email to people who do not have a tag