# Send your first campaign

> Create an audience, import contacts, build a campaign in the five-step editor with merge tags, send a test, schedule it and read the report.

This quickstart walks you through your first campaign in the dashboard: a newsletter or announcement sent to a list of contacts. You'll create an audience, add contacts, build and test the campaign, send or schedule it, and read the report. No code is needed.

## Before you begin

- **Production access.** Workspaces in sandbox mode can't send campaigns. An Admin can request access in **Workspace → Settings → Requests**. See [Production access](/docs/workspaces/production-access/).
- **A verified sending domain** for the From address, such as `news@acme.com`. See [Add a domain](/docs/domains/add-a-domain/).
- **Credits.** Each campaign email costs 2 credits, so a campaign to 1,000 recipients uses 2,000 credits. See [Credits](/docs/billing/credits/).
- **Contacts who agreed to hear from you.** Don't import bought or scraped lists.

## Create an audience

An audience is a named list of subscribers. Campaigns are sent to one or more audiences.

Go to **Email Marketing → Audiences**, select **Create audience**, and enter a name such as `Newsletter`. The list shows how many subscribers the audience has and how many your plan allows.

## Add contacts

Add a few people by hand, or import a file.

**One at a time**

  Open the audience and select **Add subscriber**. Enter the email address and, optionally, the first and last name. Emailit creates the contact if it doesn't exist yet.

**Import a file**

  1. Go to **Email Marketing → Contacts** and select **Import**.
  2. Upload a `.csv`, `.xlsx` or `.xls` file with up to 2,500 contacts. Leave **File has header** on if the first row has column names.
  3. Map each column to a field: **Email** is required, and you can map first name, last name, unsubscribed and your [custom fields](/docs/contacts/custom-fields/). Set columns you don't need to **Exclude**.
  4. Choose the audience to add the contacts to, check the preview, and select **Import**.

You can also let people subscribe themselves with the audience's [subscribe URL](/docs/audiences/subscribe-url/) or add them with the [Contacts API](/docs/api-reference/contacts/create/). See [Import and export contacts](/docs/contacts/import-export/) for larger lists.

## Build the campaign

Go to **Email Marketing → Campaigns**, select **Add campaign**, and enter an internal name such as `October newsletter`. The campaign editor opens with five steps. Select **Continue** to save each step and move to the next.

1. **Recipients.** Select one or more audiences. **Estimated recipients** counts subscribed contacts, without unsubscribed and suppressed addresses, and counts each address once even if it's in several audiences.

2. **Sender and Subject.** Enter the **From name**, the **From email** on your verified domain, the **Subject**, and optionally a **Reply to** address.

3. **Content.** Choose the **Dragit editor** (drag and drop), the **Rich text editor**, or the **HTML editor**, or start from one of your [templates](/docs/templates/). Add an unsubscribe link with `{{unsubscribe_url}}` and personalize the content with [merge tags](#personalize-with-merge-tags).

4. **Preview and test.** Check the desktop and mobile previews, and use **Preview as contact** to see the merge tags filled in for a real contact. Then enter up to 5 addresses and select **Send test**. You can send 3 test batches per minute.

5. **Send.** Review the summary and the checks for the From address, subject, content and unsubscribe link. Emailit also warns you if the content is over about 100 KB, because Gmail clips large messages. Then choose **Immediately** or **Schedule** and pick a date and time in your local time zone.

A scheduled campaign shows in the **Scheduled** tab. To change it, open the row menu and select **Cancel Schedule**. The campaign goes back to draft so you can edit and schedule it again.

## Personalize with merge tags

Campaigns replace these tags for each recipient:

| Tag | Replaced with |
| --- | --- |
| `{{first_name}}` | The contact's first name |
| `{{last_name}}` | The contact's last name |
| `{{email}}` | The contact's email address |
| `{{unsubscribe_url}}` | A personal unsubscribe link |
| `{{cf.company}}` | The value of the custom field with the key `company` |

A tag with no value is replaced with an empty string. Campaigns don't support Temple defaults or conditionals such as `{{first_name|"there"}}` or `{{#if}}`, so write text that reads well without the value. See [Merge tags](/docs/campaigns/merge-tags/).

Emailit adds `List-Unsubscribe` and one-click unsubscribe headers to every campaign email, so mailbox providers can show their own unsubscribe button. A contact who unsubscribes is removed from all of their audiences.

## Read the report

Open the campaign from **Email Marketing → Campaigns**. While it's sending, a progress bar shows how many messages have left the queue. When it's done, the **Overview** tab shows sent, delivered, bounced, suppressed, complained, loaded (opened), clicked, click-through rate and unsubscribed counts, plus delivery by mailbox provider.

The **Loads**, **Clicks** and **Unsubscribes** tabs list who opened, which links they clicked and why people left. Opens and clicks need a verified [tracking subdomain](/docs/tracking/) on the sending domain. To share the results, select **Export report** to download a PDF.

## Next steps

  - [Create a campaign](/docs/campaigns/create/): Every option in the campaign editor.
  - [Test and schedule](/docs/campaigns/test-and-schedule/): Test sends, scheduling and canceling.
  - [Campaign reports](/docs/campaigns/reports/): What each metric means and how to export it.
  - [Automations](/docs/automations/): Send welcome and onboarding emails automatically.

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Source: https://emailit.com/docs/quickstart/campaign/