> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.the-meridian.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Introduction

Emails are the messages your app sends its merchants: welcome and onboarding, billing follow-ups, win-backs, usage notices. You design each one once, and an [automation](/automations) decides when it goes out.

Emails are available for **public apps**.

You can send them from [automations](/automations) or programmatically from your app backend via the [send email API](/send-email-api).

## Emails are sent by automations

There are no manual campaigns and no send button. An email is a reusable asset; a [Send email](/send-email) step in an automation is what delivers it. Every send is therefore tied to something that happened to a store: an install, a subscription change, a tracked event.

That also means an email on its own sends nothing: it needs a flow.

## Active and inactive

An email is **active** or **inactive**, and only an active email can be selected in an automation.

* **Activating** needs a subject. Inboxes show it as the headline, so Meridian requires one. An active email also keeps it: to leave the subject empty, deactivate the email first. The API and the MCP server apply the same rule.
* **Deactivating** an email pauses the active automations that use it, including when you deactivate through the API. Their email selections are kept. Activate the email before reactivating those flows. If a running flow reaches an email that became inactive during a wait, it stops without sending that step and records the reason in its run history. You can still test a draft email.

## The list

Every email with its status and its three rates, searchable by name or subject and filterable by status. Click a column header to sort: one click on **Open rate** ranks your emails best first, a second click reverses it, and a third returns to the default order. The name, status and rate columns all sort this way, the sort survives search and filter changes, and it lives in the URL so a ranked view can be shared. Above it: how many are active, and the average open, click and click-to-open rates across your active emails.

## Building one

Choose the authoring mode when you create the email (the [visual editor](/introduction-10) or custom HTML), name it, and set the subject and preview text. Start from a [template](/templates) or a blank canvas.

## Where they send from

From your organization's [sending domain](/sending-domain), or Meridian's platform sender until you add one. What happens after a send (delivery, bounces, opens) is on [Sends and deliverability](/email-sends), and the rates are on [Analytics](/introduction-9).


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