Sending your first email campaign

Create your first campaign from a saved email template, choose an audience, send a test to your own address, and schedule the reviewed message. This guide covers a single email; leave follow-up steps off until that first send is ready.

Start with a draft. The new-campaign builder defaults to Send at a set time. Choose Keep as a draft while preparing and testing. Scheduling authorizes future delivery; it is not just a reminder to review the email later.

Check your sender and audience

Open Campaigns in your site's admin. You need campaign editing access to prepare a draft and separate send permission to test or schedule it. Template editing also needs the appropriate access. If controls are missing or disabled, see Why can't I see or use a feature?.

Your site needs outbound email enabled, an active sending provider, and a sender verified for that provider and domain. Receiving mail in your inbox is a separate setup. If Campaigns shows Outbound sending is blocked, follow Open Domain Settings or Open Email Settings, whichever your site offers, or ask the administrator who manages email to complete setup.

New campaigns take their sender defaults from the template when supplied, otherwise from the site's default sender and email settings. Check the actual campaign's From name, From email, and Reply-to before sending; a familiar template name does not prove those addresses are correct. Use a reply address your team monitors.

Prepare the audience in Lists before creating the campaign. See Creating an audience list if you need one. Include people who have agreed to receive the kind of message you are sending. A purchase, contact record, or visitor tag alone does not establish that permission.

The builder shows list membership counts, not a promise of how many messages will be delivered. Cedros also checks consent, preferences, suppressions, address validity, and recipient status. For an older list, review Cleaning an email list before proceeding.

Prepare the email template

The campaign builder selects a saved template; the template supplies the subject, preview text, and message body. Prepare that content before creating your campaign. See Creating reusable email templates for body formats, personalization, and template maintenance.

1. From Campaigns, select Manage Templates. Open an existing template to inspect it, or select New Template.
2. Enter Template Name, choose an appropriate Category, and write the recipient-facing Subject. The template name helps your team find it; it is not the email subject.
3. Add Preview Text to complement the subject in the inbox. State the useful detail rather than repeating the subject word for word.
4. Choose a Body Format: Visual builder, Raw HTML, or Plain text. For a simple first message, Plain text gives you a straightforward writing field; use the Visual builder when you need a designed layout.
5. Write the message, check every date and offer, and provide a clear next step. Replace example copy and links. Use only personalization fields your site supports, and check how the message reads when a recipient has no name.
6. Select Create template or Save template, then use Preview to inspect the saved text. This library preview does not render the email design; review that through the saved campaign preview and test below.

If you need to adapt a shared template, duplicate it first so the original remains available to other campaigns. Check the copy's body format before editing: duplication preserves saved content but may not preserve the visual builder's editable block arrangement. Check links by opening their actual destinations; a preview that looks correct does not establish that a booking page, product, or download works for visitors.

A campaign stores its own copy of the email when created. Editing the template later does not automatically rewrite that saved campaign. If you change the content after creating a draft, create a fresh draft from the updated template or ask the assistant to update the existing campaign's saved content, then preview and test that campaign again. Do not rely on the builder's template preview alone to confirm a saved content change.

Create and save a campaign draft

Return to Campaigns and select New Campaign.

1. Under Email, choose the prepared template. If there is only one available template, it may already be selected. With a larger template library, use the Email dropdown.
2. Under Audience, select the intended list in Send to. When only one list is available, its name is shown without a choice; still verify it is the right audience. If no list exists, use Create list and return afterward.
3. Under Schedule, select Keep as a draft. Confirm that the Preview's Sends line says Not scheduled — stays a draft.
4. Review Public campaign page. Leave Publish a web version after sending off unless you want a shareable public copy. Check Measure opens and link clicks separately; its default can come from the template.
5. Leave Follow-up steps empty for this single email. Leave optional Social posts off unless you also intend to prepare supporting posts.
6. Open Internal name and enter a recognizable name, such as “October customer update.” This names the campaign for your team; it does not change the subject line.
7. Select Save draft, then locate and reopen the saved campaign in Campaigns. Confirm its status is Draft.

Review public-page settings even if you plan to keep the email as a draft. Enabling the web version can also enable the site's newsletter archive when needed; it is not simply a private preview setting. New public campaign pages are excluded from search indexing by default, but that does not make a shareable page private.

If creation reports that the campaign was saved but another setup step failed, open that existing draft and resolve the named problem. Do not immediately create a duplicate.

Review the saved campaign and send a test

Use the Cedros assistant for a rendered preview of the saved campaign, sender details, and readiness checks. Identify the campaign by its exact name, and resolve any ambiguity if several drafts share that name.

For example:

Review the draft campaign “October customer update.” Show its saved subject, From name, From email, Reply-to, audience, and schedule. Preview the saved message and check send readiness, eligible recipients, and any blocking issues. Do not schedule or send it.

Review the returned content and warnings. The builder's Preview shows the selected template; the saved-campaign preview checks the campaign record. A preview may use sample recipient details, so it does not prove every personalized message is correct.

Before testing, resolve sender, provider, missing subject or body, unsupported personalization, and public email-link configuration errors. For a marketing campaign, Cedros also needs working unsubscribe-link generation and any required footer details. Ask your email administrator to fix those settings rather than removing the required links or changing the message's purpose to bypass a check.

To test delivery:

1. Keep the saved campaign in Draft. Test sends are available only for draft campaigns.
2. Ask the assistant to send one test of that exact draft to an address you control. For example: “Send one test of the draft ‘October customer update’ to my address, [your email address]. Do not send to the audience or schedule the campaign.” Replace the bracketed text with your actual address.
3. Review the named campaign and destination before confirming the test action. A test is a real email to that address.
4. Open the message in your inbox. Test messages have [Test] at the start of the subject. Check the sender, reply address, subject, preview text, message, images, links, and readability on desktop and mobile.
5. Correct any problems in the saved campaign and send another test only when needed. Keep the campaign as a draft until the final version is approved.

A successful test does not authorize or schedule the audience send. It also does not prove the full audience is eligible. Test messages do not reproduce every production feature: they do not include campaign open tracking, preference-link generation, or web-version-link generation. Preview unsubscribe links are demonstration links, not a way to validate a real recipient's preference change.

If a test is suppressed, ask your administrator to check that test address's consent, preferences, and suppression state. If Cedros reports that provider acceptance is unknown, check the delivery/provider result before retrying; the first test may already have been accepted. Test sends are rate-limited, so follow any wait instruction instead of repeatedly submitting.

Schedule the reviewed message

When the saved message, sender, links, and audience are ready, open the draft in Campaigns.

1. Recheck the chosen Email and Audience, including any automatically selected list. Confirm that no unwanted follow-up or social-post options are enabled.
2. Under Schedule, choose Send at a set time and enter a future date and time.
3. Read the Preview's Sends line, including its displayed timezone and date. Check the actual scheduled instant if you or your teammates work in different timezones; do not assume “9:00” means each recipient's local time.
4. Ask the assistant to recheck the saved campaign's readiness if anything changed since your test. Review eligible and skipped counts, and resolve blocking issues before committing the send.
5. Select Save changes when editing the saved draft. For a new campaign created directly with a send time, the final button is Schedule campaign. Both can schedule delivery when Send at a set time is selected; do not expect an additional review dialog afterward.
6. Return to Campaigns and confirm the campaign is Scheduled for the intended time. A saved date field or a missing error message alone is not confirmation that scheduling succeeded.

Scheduling performs readiness checks. A failure can leave the campaign safely saved as a draft while reporting why it could not be scheduled. Read the status and error rather than assuming the entire save failed.

If you want an immediate send instead, use the assistant after completing the same preview, test, and readiness review. Specify the exact campaign and explicitly request sending it now to its selected audience. Confirm the returned audience and send details. Immediate sending queues delivery; it does not mean every recipient receives the email at once.

If you later edit a scheduled campaign, verify its status again. Saving content changes takes it through draft state, and scheduling must succeed again to restore the scheduled send. Recheck and retest changed content before authorizing delivery.

Confirm progress and stop an incorrect send

At the scheduled time, open the campaign to inspect its delivery results. You may see Queued, Sending, Paused, Completed, Cancelled, or Failed, depending on progress and any problems.

Queued means work is waiting to send. Sending means delivery is in progress. Completed means processing has finished; it does not mean every intended message reached an inbox. Review failures, skips, suppressions, and delivery events as well as the completion percentage.

Sent records provider acceptance; Delivered depends on delivery feedback. Opens and clicks are separate engagement signals and depend on tracking and available events. Do not treat a missing open as proof that someone did not read the email.

The This send details identify the subject, audience, sender, reply-to address, and provider where available. Compare those with your intended send before interpreting the totals. If results cannot load, use Retry delivery results rather than starting another campaign.

To pause a queued or active send, use Pause sending when available. Investigate the reason before choosing Resume sending, which requires resume permission. To stop a scheduled or active campaign, open Campaign actions, choose Cancel campaign, and review Confirm cancellation. Cancellation skips remaining unsent recipients and cannot be undone through that dialog.

Pausing or cancelling cannot recall a message already delivered or handed to a provider. If some messages have already gone out, review the actual recipient outcomes before deciding whether any correction is needed; do not resend the whole audience automatically.

Resolve common first-send problems

There are no email templates or audience lists. Use Create template or Create list, finish that setup, and return to New Campaign. Saving a list or template does not itself send a campaign.

The sender is missing or unverified. Ask the assistant to show the saved campaign's sender and selected provider. Have your email administrator fix or verify the sender for that provider. A working inbox or verified website domain alone is not proof that the campaign sender is ready.

Readiness reports no eligible recipients. Check the selected list, confirmed memberships, consent, preferences, and suppressions. Do not remove opt-outs to make the count rise. See Managing unsubscribed and suppressed recipients.

The test looks different from the builder preview. Review the saved campaign content and sender. Template edits do not automatically update an existing campaign, and the builder preview does not include every rendered footer or recipient-specific detail. Update the draft deliberately and test again.

Schedule campaign or Save changes fails. Check for a future time, send permission, provider and sender readiness, valid public email links, required footer information, supported personalization, and an eligible audience. Reopen the campaign to see whether the draft was saved before the scheduling error.

The time has passed but nothing arrived. Check the campaign's current status and delivery results first. A scheduled time starts delivery processing; provider limits or errors can delay it. If the request was interrupted, read the saved state before retrying so you do not create a second send.

For help, provide the campaign name, status, intended time and timezone, exact error, and whether the problem affected a test or the audience send. Avoid sharing a full recipient export. See Getting help with your Cedros site.