How to send an email campaign

Overview

Email campaigns are one-time, broadcast-style emails you can use to send newsletters, updates, announcements, or any other type of marketing content to your audience. Campaigns are great for sale/special offer, date, or event-specific content.

If you want to send content based on a contact's behavior and preferences, check out our guide to automations!

🚦 Before getting started

Create a Sender Profile and a List, Segment, or created before you begin building your campaign

Create a new campaign

To create a new campaign:

Click the Campaign icon
Click New Campaign
Click Create Email Campaign

Campaign settings

Name your campaign, select a sender profile, set your Audience, and configure advanced settings on the left hand pane of the Settings & Content page.

Campaign Name

Under Campaign Name, enter a descriptive name for your campaign. This name will identify the campaign on the campaigns page; it is not the subject line for your campaign email.

Sender Profile

Select an existing or create a new Sender Profile to send the campaign from.

Audience

Select Lists, Segments, or Tags from the the Send to (will receive the campaign) or Don't send to (will NOT receive the campaign) dropdown menus.

Use the audience size estimate button to calculate an estimate of how many contacts are included in the Audience options selected:

⚠️ Don't send to overrides Send to

If a contact is on a List Segment, or Tag in the Send to section but is also on a List, Segment, or Tag in the Don't send to section, they will not receive the campaign. contacts in the Don't send to section are not included in the Audience count.

UTM Tracking

Check the Customize UTM checkbox to edit UTM tracking information for the campaign. If you have global UTM tracking set up, you will see your global settings when the button is checked. Change or add new UTM parameters and values for this campaign only.

RSS Feed

Check the RSS Feed box if you'd like to add your campaign to an existing RSS feed on your website, then enter your RSS feed's URL.

Experiments

Check the Experiments box if you'd like to turn on campaign Experiments for your campaign.

Campaign content

Set your subject and preheader, and access the email builder for your campaign on the right hand pane of the Settings & Content page.

Subject & Preheader

Subject	The subject line should be an attention-getter. Use 4-6 compelling words for best results, and consider using the personalization icon to add personalized data from your contacts' profiles, like their first name.
Preheader	The preheader text is used build curiosity and increase your open rates by displaying a summary of your message in your audience's inbox!

Content

Click Create Email to go to the Email builder, where you can either use a template for your campaign or design it from scratch! Read the guide to Sendlane's email builder for details about everything you can achieve with our MJML drag-and-drop email builder.

Sendlane has many resources to help clarify a winning marketing strategy for your brand! Check out our blog 6 Email Design Tips to Increase Engagement for tips on creating a style guide for your brand, optimizing for mobile devices, personalization, color psychology, and call-to-action best practices.

In addition to design resources, consult content resources that focus on how content can affect deliverability, such as Why is my email going to the spam folder?

Here are a few simple rules that can help your email reach as many contacts as possible:

Emails should be 40% images at most. Some inbox providers block automatic image downloading which means contacts who use those services will not immediately see any images in your email. Images are also not readable by screen readers. Use text or buttons whenever possible!
Content order matters. contacts see the top of your email first; if the first sections don't grab them, they likely won't continue scrolling. Keep logo images and generic brand information at the top of an email as small as possible while still being readable, or consider moving it to the bottom of the email.
Use one call-to-action per email. When emails have multiple calls-to-action, contacts aren't sure which is the most important. Keep your content focused and concise so contacts can easily scan it!

Click Next to Summary to continue to the campaign Summary page.

Campaign summary and sending

Select a sending method, turn on send time optimization, and view a summary of campaign content and settings on the Schedule & Summary page.

Select a sending method from the radio buttons under the Schedule heading:

Save as Draft	Use the Save as Draft option to save a draft of your campaign for later. When you're ready to send, find your campaign on the campaigns page, then click through to the Schedule page.
Send Immediately	Use the Send Immediately option to send your campaign to your contacts as soon as you click Send.
Schedule	Use the Schedule option to specify a time in the future to send your campaign

Time zone options for scheduled campaigns

You can schedule a campaign to send to all contacts simultaneously or at a specified time in their local time zone. For example, if you schedule a campaign to send at 9 AM your time (EST), contacts will receive the campaign at whatever time 9 AM EST is in their time zone.

Contacts' time zones are determined by the following attributes in the following order:

Combination of the ZIP code or province and country shown on the contact profile
Contact's phone number area code
Contact's IP address (set by their latest click on a tracking link)
Country shown on the contact profile (see default time zones by country here)

The campaign will be sent in the account's local timezone if none of the above attributes are available.

To send a campaign to all recipients at the same time in a specified time zone, select a time zone from the Time zone dropdown (your account's time zone is noted as Default) and set your preferred time:

To send a campaign to recipients at a specified time in their local time zone, select Recipient's Local Time zone from the Time zone dropdown and set your preferred time:

When you schedule campaigns to send at recipients' local time, you'll see a note informing you when the campaign will begin to send. This is the first instance of the specified time for all time zones represented in your campaign's audience. Campaigns sent at recipients' local time may have a Sending status for up to 24 hours; use the Scheduled tab of the campaign report to view contacts scheduled to be sent the campaign.

Machine Learning Open Predictability

Select this checkbox to send your campaign when contacts are most likely to open it based on past behavior. Machine Learning Open Predictability is unavailable if Recipient's Local Timezone is selected. Check out our guide to Machine Learning Open Predictability to learn more!

Campaign statuses

The campaigns page's Status column provides a Status for all campaigns

Completed - The campaign has finished sending. We suggest waiting 24 hours before reviewing the campaign's report to give your contacts enough time to engage with your campaign.
Denied - The campaign has been reviewed and denied by the Sendlane Compliance Team. Common reasons for denial include spam-like or misleading content; broken, unmasked, or untrusted URLs, and poor image-to-text ratio (i.e. single, large image with hardly any text).
Experimenting - The campaign was sent and has campaign Experiments turned on.
Draft - The campaign has not been sent.
Pending Compliance Review - The Sendlane Compliance Team is reviewing the campaign. Most campaigns are approved within 24 hours. If after 24 hours your campaign has not been approved, please reach out to our Support Team.
Scheduled - The campaign is scheduled to be sent at a specified date and time.
Sending - The campaign is being sent. The campaign may remain in this status for a period of time if the audience is large, or if the campaign is being sent via Machine Learning Open Predictability.
Stopped - The campaign was manually stopped after sending began.

Campaign audience pop-up

To view the Audience that was used in a campaign, click the number in the Audience column

Campaign actions

The action buttons at the right of each campaign's name on the campaigns page provide different available actions based on the status of the campaign

Edit - Make changes to any campaigns that have not yet been sent.
Duplicate - Create an exact copy of a campaign including all settings, audience, and content details.
Delete - Delete any campaigns that have not yet been sent.
Un-schedule - Change the Schedule settings for your campaign. You can re-schedule sending, send immediately or save the campaign as a draft.
View Report - View the reporting data and statistics for any sent campaigns

Troubleshooting

My contacts are seeing blank emails!

This usually occurs when campaigns comprise a single image instead of the recommended minimum of 60% text. Contacts may not see the image because they have not downloaded or allowed images in their inbox provider settings.

Why is the click or open rate >100% on the Campaigns page?

The campaign page's metrics show the total click rate and total open rate. Click on the Campaign report to view the unique click rate and unique open rate.