Create a campaign

This guide walks through the campaign wizard step by step: picking recipients, setting the sender and subject, writing the content, testing it and sending it. It also explains who ends up receiving the campaign and how to do the same with the API.

Before you begin

• Your workspace needs production access. Until then, campaigns can’t be sent. See Production access.
• Verify the domain you’ll send from. See Add a domain.
• Create at least one audience with subscribers.
• Optional: prepare a template to start the content from.

Create the campaign

On Email Marketing›Campaigns, select Add campaign, enter a Name and select Create. The name is for you only. The wizard opens on its first step.

The steps are listed on the left. A check mark shows which ones are complete, and you can go back to any step. Continue saves the current step and moves to the next. While the campaign is a draft, you can leave and come back to it from the Campaigns list.

Step 1: Recipients

Choose who the campaign goes to.

• Audiences: pick one or more audiences. Each option shows how many subscribers it has. At least one is required.
• Exclude audiences: optionally pick audiences whose subscribers should be left out.
• Estimated recipients: updates as you change the selection. It counts the unique contacts subscribed to at least one selected audience, minus those subscribed to an excluded audience.

Select Continue to save the recipients.

Who actually receives the campaign

Emailit works out the final list when sending starts, not when you pick the audiences. A contact receives the campaign when:

1. It’s subscribed to at least one of the selected audiences.
2. Its marketing status is Subscribed. Contacts unsubscribed with the Unsubscribe bulk action or unsubscribed: true are skipped.
3. Its address isn’t on the suppression list, with any suppression type that hasn’t expired.

Each address receives one copy, even if it’s in several selected audiences. People who join an audience after you schedule the campaign are included, and people who unsubscribe before sending starts are left out.

The estimate doesn’t subtract globally unsubscribed contacts or suppressed addresses, so the number of emails sent can be lower than the estimate.

Step 2: Sender and Subject

Select Continue to save.

Step 3: Content

Pick how you want to write the email:

See Editors for how each editor works.

Once the campaign has content, the step shows a preview with these buttons:

• Open editor reopens the editor you used.
• Remove content clears the content so you can pick another editor. Switching editors always starts from empty content.
• Save as template saves the content, subject and sender as a new template you can reuse in other campaigns or send with the API. Enter a Name and an Alias, then select Save or Save & Open.

Add {{unsubscribe_url}} as a link in your content. In Dragit it’s listed with the special links, and in the rich-text editor it’s the Unsubscribe URL variable. See Unsubscribes.

Select Continue when the content is ready.

Step 4: Preview and test

• Desktop and Mobile show the email at each width.
• Preview as contact fills in the merge tags with a real contact’s name, email and custom fields. Search for a contact by name or email.
• Send test sends the email to up to 5 addresses.

See Test and schedule for details and limits. Select Continue when you’re happy with it.

Step 5: Send

The last step summarizes the From, Reply to, Subject, Recipients and Content, with an Edit link back to each step, and runs these checks:

Select Send campaign, then choose:

• Immediately, then Send now, to start sending right away.
• Schedule, then pick a date and time in Schedule for, in your computer’s time zone, and select Schedule. The time must be in the future.

The campaign page opens and shows the campaign as In process or Scheduled. See Test and schedule for what happens next.

Verify it worked

• The Campaigns list shows the campaign under In process or Scheduled, then Sent.
• The campaign page shows a Send progress bar while emails are created, then the delivery and engagement counts. See Campaign reports.
• Each recipient email appears under Email API›Emails with its own status.

Create a campaign with the API

The same steps with the Campaigns API, using an API key with Full Access:

1. Create the draft with the sender, subject and HTML.

   Terminal

   curl https://api.emailit.com/v2/campaigns \
     -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMAILIT_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
       "name": "October newsletter",
       "from_name": "Acme",
       "from_email": "news@acme.com",
       "reply_to": "support@acme.com",
       "subject": "October news for {{first_name}}",
       "html": "<p>Hi {{first_name}},</p><p>Here is what is new.</p><p><a href=\"{{unsubscribe_url}}\">Unsubscribe</a></p>",
       "text": "Hi {{first_name}}, here is what is new. Unsubscribe: {{unsubscribe_url}}"
     }'

   The response contains the campaign id, for example cmp_4Tq9Xv2kLm8Rw, with status draft.

2. Set the recipients with Update a campaign. recipients replaces the current list and needs at least one audience.

   Terminal

   curl https://api.emailit.com/v2/campaigns/cmp_4Tq9Xv2kLm8Rw \
     -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMAILIT_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{ "recipients": [{ "audience_id": "aud_5hJ2kL8mNp4Qr" }] }'

3. Send it with Send or schedule a campaign, or schedule it with scheduled_at. See Test and schedule.

   Terminal

   curl https://api.emailit.com/v2/campaigns/cmp_4Tq9Xv2kLm8Rw/send \
     -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMAILIT_API_KEY"

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