A campaign is an email sent to the guests of an event. The invitation is a campaign; the nudge to those who did not answer is another; the reminder the day before is a third.
You find them under Campaigns in the main menu. The Host role does not see them.
Before you start
To actually send, the account has to be ready: a payment method on file and a verified primary domain. You can prepare the whole campaign without that, but the send button stays locked.
If the banner at the top tells you something is missing, the answer is in Set up your sending domain or in Activating your account.
Creating the campaign
- Under Campaigns, click New campaign.
- Pick the event from the list. A campaign always belongs to an event and cannot be moved afterwards.
- Give it a campaign name: only you see it, it is there to find it again. "Invitation", "Reminder 1", "Day before" work better than "Campaign 3".
- Write the email subject, which is what recipients read.
- Fill in the preview text: the line many clients show next to the subject. Leaving it empty gives that space away to the first sentence of your template.
- Pick and adapt the template, as described in Email templates.
- Save.
Choosing recipients
Recipients are added after saving, from their own button. Two ways:
- All the event's guests.
- Select guests, filtering as you would in the event list: by confirmation state, list, slot.
The second is what makes the second campaign worth sending. The most valuable filter is no answer: those are the people who have not decided yet, and a well-written nudge recovers a sizeable share of them.
Anyone who unsubscribed or is blocked does not enter the recipient list, even if you select them: it is a filter downstream that cannot be worked around. It is why the recipient count is often a little lower than the guest count.
Testing
Always do a test send to your own address, and read it on a phone. Check the sender, the subject, that the placeholders were substituted, and click the answer button to make sure it goes to the right landing page.
Preview is handy while you work, but it does not replace the test: only a real mail client tells you how it actually looks.
Sending or scheduling
Send fires the campaign immediately. It asks for a confirmation, because there is no going back.
Schedule sets a date and time: the campaign goes out by itself and stays editable until then. A schedule can be cancelled right up until the send begins.
On timing: mid-morning or early afternoon on a weekday almost always beats late evening or Friday afternoon. But the real rule is that your audience decides, and after two or three campaigns your own statistics know more than any general advice.
What happens next
On confirmation the campaign produces one message per recipient and queues them. They do not all leave at the same instant: they are delivered at a sustainable rate, which is what protects your domain's reputation.
A large campaign takes a few minutes to drain. Meanwhile you see it as sending, and you can already look at the messages row by row.
The campaign states:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Created, not sent yet |
| Scheduled | Will go out at the set time |
| Sending | Messages are going out |
| Sent | Every message has been handed to the queue |
| Failed | The send did not go through — usually an account not ready, or an exhausted quota |
The limits
Two plan limits touch campaigns:
- Messages per month — if you do not have enough to cover the recipients, the send stops before it starts, with a message telling you how many you would need. Better to find out that way than halfway through.
- Campaigns per event — 3, 5 or 10 depending on the plan. The limit exists because writing to the same people six times is the quickest route to the spam folder.
Detail in Plans, quotas and billing.
Deleting a campaign
A campaign that has not been sent can be deleted. One that has cannot: it is the record of what went out, to whom and when, and that serves both you and the law.
Then
Once it is sent, you look at the results: Sending statistics.