Product guide # Announcements One message to a list of people. Each person gets their own conversation from your own number, so they can reply and you can answer — it is not a group chat and nobody sees anybody else. Two speeds, told to you first People you already message go out in minutes. People you never have are first contacts, paced at fifty a day per line. The screen splits your list and says how many days before you send. Opt-outs are removed Anybody who replied STOP is taken off the list before a single message goes out, and counted so you can see it happened. Variables {{contact.name}} fills in each person's name, and {{contact.name|"there"}} falls back when you do not have one. Filled in per person as their message goes. One number An announcement goes from a single line, because which of your numbers said this is something the recipient sees and replies to. ## Why a big list takes days A handle that opens hundreds of conversations without replies is the exact shape Apple treats as broadcast spam, and the consequence is the Apple ID being flagged — which takes your number down with it. So first contacts are limited to fifty a day per line, spaced about five minutes apart, and never more than eight an hour. This does not apply to people you have already been messaging. A list of five hundred regulars is out in minutes; five hundred strangers is a week. Most lists are a mix, and the screen does the arithmetic before you commit. ## Quiet hours On unless you untick it: each person is reached only between 8 AM and 9 PM in *their* time, or tighter where their state requires it, worked out from their area code. People who are awake get it now and the rest as their morning comes, so a list across the country arrives in waves, and the announcement shows Sending until the last of them has had theirs. [How quiet hours work](https://missblue.dev/docs/quiet-hours). ## Your first one is read by a person A project’s first announcement waits for us to look at it. It is not about the content being to our taste — it is that a bad first broadcast can get a brand new number flagged before it has any history to protect it. After the first one is approved, the rest go straight out. ## Stopping one Stopping a running announcement stops everybody who has not been messaged yet. It does not unsend what has already arrived, and nothing in the product will pretend otherwise. ## Testing versions first An announcement can say two or three things. Add a version under the message and give each one a weight. When you continue, the list is divided by the weights, exactly, and the preview says how many get each version, so what you approve is what goes. Tick Test first to try the versions on part of the list, 20% say, and wait a few hours after the last of them has gone out. Then everybody else gets the version with the best reply rate. A version that looks to cause more opt-outs is left out, however many replies it got. If too few of the test have been reached by then, it waits longer and says so. The announcement says which version the rest got and why, and Compare shows the test side by side. If you would rather choose, Use this one sends the rest that version straight away. Everything else is as for one text: people who opted out are left out, first contacts are paced, and a project’s first announcement waits for a person to read every version. ## What the numbers mean - **Sent** — handed to the line. Delivery is the carrier’s business after that. - **Skipped** — never attempted, because they opted out, are blocked, or cannot receive messages. - **Replied** and **opted out** — counted inside the reply window you set when you created it, first reply per person only. [Next Opt-outs and suppression Who is taken off an announcement's list, and how somebody gets back on it.](https://missblue.dev/docs/opt-outs)