Building your first email campaign
A campaign is a one-time email sent to a defined audience — typically a smart list, static list, or filtered set of contacts. Use campaigns for newsletters, promotions, announcements, and event invitations.
Create a campaign
1. Marketing → Email → Campaigns → "+ New Campaign"
2. Name it (internal name — customers don't see this)
3. Choose recipients: a smart list, static list, or filtered query
4. Set the sender (from name and from email — must use a verified domain)
5. Set the subject line and preview text (the gray text after the subject in inboxes)
6. Build the email in the visual editor (templates, drag-drop, custom HTML, or rich text)
7. Insert merge tags via {{ for personalization
8. Send a test to yourself first
9. Schedule or send immediately
Subject lines that get opened
Be specific. "Your appointment is confirmed for Thursday at 2 PM" beats "Confirmation"
Promise value or relevance. "3 ways to save 20% this month" tells the reader what they get
Avoid spam triggers. All caps, multiple exclamation marks, "FREE!!!", "100% guaranteed" — all push you toward spam folders
Keep under 50 characters. Mobile inboxes truncate longer subjects
Use the preview text. It's free real estate. Don't leave it blank — inboxes will fill it with the first words of your email body, which often look bad
Send timing
Tuesday–Thursday mornings tend to outperform weekends and Mondays for B2B
Saturday morning often works for consumer campaigns (people checking email leisurely)
Always send during the recipient's local business hours when possible — use the "Send by recipient time zone" toggle
A/B test send times if you have list size to support it (5,000+)
WARNING — Always test before scheduling
Sending to 5,000 contacts and discovering a typo, broken link, or wrong merge field is a nightmare. Send a test to yourself, your business email, and ideally a Gmail and Yahoo account (to spot-check rendering across providers) before scheduling.
