Before you can send

What’s required before Hiveku will dispatch a marketing email — and what you can build freely without any setup

Marketing email at Hiveku follows a deliberate build-vs-send model: you can create campaigns, design templates, build audiences, import contacts, and save sequences at any time — without any account or domain configuration. Setup is only required when you actually click Send, Schedule, or Test send.

This page explains exactly what that means and how to unblock sending.

The amber banner at the top of every /dashboard/marketing/* page surfaces the most-blocking gate currently failing for your account, with a one-click CTA to the right setup screen. You can ignore it while building; it’ll auto-hide the moment everything is ready.

What you can do without any setup

Action	Requires setup?
Create / edit / delete audiences	No
Import contacts via CSV	No
Create / edit / delete templates	No
Use the visual builder + preview templates	No
Create / edit / delete campaigns	No
Create / edit / delete sequences	No
Create static + dynamic audience filters	No
Browse the deliverability dashboard	No
Use the AI marketing agent for planning + critique	No

You can spend hours building out a complete marketing program before you ever need to set up a domain. This is intentional — it lets you evaluate the platform, prepare your launch, or build out work for a client whose DNS access you don’t yet have.

What requires setup

Action	Required setup
Send a campaign now	All four gates below
Schedule a campaign for later	All four gates below
Test-send to your own inbox	Marketing enabled + tenant active
Enroll a contact in a sequence (will fire emails)	All four gates below

The four gates (in order)

The dispatcher checks these every time a send is attempted. The setup banner surfaces the first failing one as the primary CTA.

1. Marketing enabled (Hiveku staff action)

Marketing email is enabled per-account, not by default. Hiveku staff flip this on after a brief consent conversation about your list source and CAN-SPAM compliance. This is the one gate you can’t self-serve.

To unblock: email [e-mail] with a summary of your intended use case (broadcast newsletter, drip sequence, etc.) and a confirmation that your list has documented opt-in consent.

2. SES tenant active (automatic after gate 1)

Once marketing is enabled, Hiveku provisions an isolated SES tenant for your account (this isolates your sending reputation from other Hiveku customers’). The tenant becomes active automatically when provisioning completes — typically seconds.

If stuck in pending: contact support so we can re-run the provisioning script.

3. Verified email domain

You need at least one email domain on your account in verification_status='verified' so SES knows you control the from-address you’re sending from. This is the same domain verification flow used for transactional email — verify a domain once and it unlocks both transactional + marketing sending.

To unblock: go to Email Service → Domains, click “Add domain”, enter your domain, paste the DKIM CNAMEs + SPF + DMARC records into your DNS provider, hit “Verify”. Status flips to verified once SES picks up the records (5-30 min for DNS propagation).

Verified domains show a violet Marketing-ready badge on the email service page so you know they’re available as marketing from-addresses.

The campaign’s from_email must be on a verified domain owned by your account. Sending from [e-mail] requires yourdomain.com to be verified, not just any domain you’ve added.

4. CAN-SPAM physical address

US law (CAN-SPAM Act) requires every commercial email to include a valid physical mailing address. Hiveku enforces this at the dispatch layer.

To unblock: add your address in Account Settings (street, city, ZIP at minimum). This will be auto-injected into your email footer if not already present in your template.

Pause is a separate state

Even when all four gates pass, your account can be in a paused state (set by Hiveku staff when reputation drops below threshold). When paused, the dispatcher refuses sends with a banner explaining why and how to resolve it.

The pause/unpause flow is staff-only today — contact support if you believe a pause was applied in error.

Related

• Quickstart — fastest path through all setup gates to your first send.
• Email Service: Domains — full domain verification walkthrough.
• Deliverability — once you’re sending, watch the reputation metrics that matter most.