A campaign is a one-off email sent to a list or segment: a newsletter, a product launch, a sale announcement. This guide takes you from empty account to a delivered campaign.
Prerequisites
- Verify your sending domain - required before anything can be sent
- Import or collect subscribers into a list
Create the campaign
- Go to Campaigns and click New campaign
- Give it a name (internal, recipients never see it) and choose your audience: a list or a segment
- Pick a starting point: describe the email and let the AI draft it, choose Start from a template to browse your saved designs (search, filter by category, hover a card to preview it, then click Use this template), or start from a blank canvas
Write and design
The campaign workspace has everything in one place:
- Subject line and preheader: what recipients see in the inbox. If you have added an OpenAI key in Settings, AI Suggest proposes both based on your actual email content.
- Design: use the drag-and-drop block editor, or the HTML editor if you prefer raw HTML. Personalize with merge tags like
{{firstName}}. - Sender: defaults come from the list's sender settings; you can override name and address per campaign.
The AI builder can generate the whole design from a brief, using your brand profile and real products from a connected store.
Test before sending
- Use the preview to check desktop and mobile rendering
- Send a test email to yourself and check it in a real inbox
- Confirm the unsubscribe link is present ({{unsubscribe}} is required in every campaign)
Send or schedule
Send immediately, or schedule a date and time. A campaign sent now starts leaving within seconds; a scheduled one starts at its scheduled minute. The campaigns overview shows the scheduled time under the Scheduled status and updates live as the campaign moves to Sending and Sent. After sending, statistics (deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes) appear under the campaign and update as events come in.
Clone campaign in the row menu creates a draft with the same email content, subject, preview text, sender and recipients, so you can reuse a campaign without rebuilding it.
Sending is built so that no subscriber can receive the same campaign twice. In the rare case that a sending worker is interrupted at the exact moment an email is handed to Amazon SES, that single recipient is counted as failed on the sending progress instead of being retried automatically, because we cannot tell whether the email left or not. A failed count of one or two on a large campaign is this safeguard at work; contact support if you want the affected addresses so you can resend to them.
A note on your first sends
Mailbox providers are cautious with domains they have not seen before. Start with your most engaged subscribers, keep a steady rhythm rather than one huge blast, and your reputation builds quickly. More in the deliverability guide.