Send a campaign

Create a campaign

Open Campaigns and choose New Campaign. Fill in each section:

• Sender: the Campaign Name (Internal), which only you see, and the Sender Profile it comes from. Add sender names and addresses in Settings, then Sender addresses. Replies go to the sender address.
• Recipients: the Target Recipient List. A campaign goes to one list.
• Subject: the subject line, and optional Preview text shown next to it in the inbox. The variable picker inserts merge tags.
• Design: the email itself. See below.

Choose Create Campaign to save it as a draft. You can come back and edit it until it's sent.

Design the email

In the Design section, choose a template from Start from a template, open the builder with Open Design Builder, or paste your own HTML into Or Edit HTML Source Directly.

Starter layouts: Editorial newsletter, Link digest, Product drop, Sale announcement, Password reset, and Welcome & onboarding. Your templates are designs you saved with Save as template in the builder. Manage them under Templates, where you can edit, rename, duplicate and delete them.

The builder has 21 block types:

• Title, Text, Image, Video, Button, Logo, Social links, Divider, Spacer, Footer and Navigation bar;
• Split row, Columns and Section / card for layout;
• Product grid, Article cards, Order receipt, Notification list and Dynamic content;
• Raw HTML, for anything else;
• Survey, which links to a survey or puts its first question in the email.

Page styles set the width, colours, link colour, buttons and a legal footer line. Switch between desktop and mobile to check both. Images can be JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP, up to 5 MB. When you're done, choose Save & quit.

Two switches sit above the design:

• Include Unsubscribe Link, on by default. Each recipient gets a personal link, and one-click unsubscribe headers let mail apps show their own Unsubscribe button. On Magpie Cloud it's always on.
• Track opens, on by default. It adds a hidden image that records when each person opens the email.

Merge tags

Merge tags work in the subject, preview text and body. Each is replaced with the recipient's details when the campaign is sent.

{{ contact.first_name }}        or {{ contact.FIRSTNAME }}
{{ contact.last_name }}         or {{ contact.LASTNAME }}
{{ contact.COMPANY }}
{{ contact.EMAIL }}
{{ contact.custom.<key> }}      a custom contact field, e.g. {{ contact.custom.plan }}
{{ unsubscribe }}               this recipient's unsubscribe link

Find each custom field's key in Settings, then Contact fields. A tag for an empty field becomes blank, so write greetings that still read well without a name.

With Include Unsubscribe Link on, if your design doesn't use {{ unsubscribe }}, an unsubscribe line is added at the bottom. To place the link yourself, for example in your own HTML:

<a href="{{ unsubscribe }}">Unsubscribe</a>

Preview and test

1. Choose Preview & Test, in the campaign or in the builder.
2. Pick a contact to preview the email as. Merge tags are filled in with their details.
3. Type one or more test addresses, separated by commas, and send. The subject starts with [TEST], and merge tags use the contact you picked, or placeholders.

Send or schedule

Edit the saved campaign and choose Schedule. Choose Send now, or Schedule for later and pick a date and time. If anything is missing (name, sender, subject, list or design), you're told what to fill in first.

A scheduled campaign sends on its own within a minute of its time. Until then, its page has Cancel schedule and Send now. Self-hosted, a send interrupted by a restart carries on when the app starts again.

Who receives it:

• Only subscribed contacts on the list.
• Not anyone who has unsubscribed, complained, hard-bounced or opted out of prospecting, unless they signed up again since.
• If the email has a Survey block, the survey must be published, or the campaign isn't sent.
• On Magpie Cloud, the whole campaign must fit in what's left of your emails allowance.

Read the results

A sent campaign's page has four tabs:

• Deliverability: sent to, delivered, delivery rate, soft and hard bounces, bounce rate.
• Opens: opened, open rate, total opens and first opens over time.
• Clicks: clicked, total clicks, click-to-open rate, and clicks for each link. Pick a link to see who clicked it.
• Unsubscribes: unsubscribes and spam complaints, with their rates.

Below, the list of recipients can be filtered: All, Opened, Clicked, Didn't open, Bounced and Unsubscribed. Export results downloads everyone it went to, with when they opened, clicked, unsubscribed or bounced, as CSV or Excel. Clicks and opens from email security scanners are filtered out.

A hard bounce or a spam complaint means that address is never emailed again. A soft bounce only affects that campaign. Analytics compares all your campaigns over a date range.

Duplicate a campaign

On the Campaigns page, choose Duplicate on any campaign, sent or not. You get a new draft called "Copy of" the original, with the same sender, list, subject, preview text, design and settings. Change what you need, then send it. It's the quickest way to send a follow-up or the next issue of a newsletter.