Sending an Email

Compose a campaign, pick a template, choose your audience, and send it now or schedule it for later in any timezone.

A campaign is the actual email that lands in inboxes. You bring together a template (the design), a subject line, an audience, and a moment to send. TribeNest handles the rest.

Starting a new campaign

Go to Emails then Emails in your dashboard.
Click Send Email in the top right.

You can also start a campaign two faster ways:

From Templates, open a template's More menu and pick Create Email. The template is pre-selected.
From Lists, open a list's More menu and pick Send Email. The list is pre-selected.

What you'll fill in

Title

An internal name for the campaign so you can find it again. Recipients never see this. Something like "May newsletter" or "Spring tour announcement" works well.

Subject

The line recipients actually see in their inbox. Treat it as the most important sentence of the entire email, because most opens or skips happen right here.

Email template

Pick the template that holds the design. The dropdown lists every template you've made. If you opened the campaign from a specific template, that one is selected automatically.

If you don't have a template yet, head to creating a template first.

Recipients

Choose who gets the email:

Email List sends to everyone subscribed to that list.
Individual Email sends a single message to one address. Useful for a quick check with a bandmate or a one-off send.

If you picked Email List, you'll see a dropdown of all your lists, each showing its current subscriber count.

If you've built saved segments in your contacts, a Send to a segment instead toggle appears under the list selector. Flip it on and pick a segment from the dropdown. Each segment shows how many contacts currently match, or "not yet evaluated" for a brand-new segment. The recipient count is worked out at the moment the campaign is created, so it's always current.

Segments are built in your contacts area. See segments for how to make one.

Lists vs segments

Use a list when subscribers explicitly opted in for a particular kind of message ("the newsletter", "tour updates"). Use a segment when you're slicing the people you already have by behaviour or attributes, such as fans in a city, members of a tier, or people who bought a specific item.

Scheduling for later

By default, hitting send fires the campaign immediately. To schedule it:

Toggle Schedule for later on at the bottom of the form.
Pick the Date, the Time, and the Timezone.

The timezone defaults to whatever your browser is set to. Change it if you're aiming at fans in a particular region. The form refuses a time in the past, so you can't accidentally pick yesterday.

When the moment arrives, the campaign goes out on its own. Until then it sits in your emails list with a Scheduled badge, and the Send at column shows the exact date and time it will go.

Which address it comes from

Every campaign goes out from your default sending identity: the From name and address you set under Emails then Settings. Check it before a big send, because that name is the first thing a fan reads. See sending settings to change it, or to add an address on your own domain.

Sending it

When the form is filled in, the button at the bottom shows either Send Email or Schedule Email, depending on whether you've toggled scheduling. Click it.

You'll be taken back to your emails list, where the new campaign appears at the top. Its status moves through:

Scheduled, waiting for its moment.
Sending, actively going out to recipients.
Sent, finished.

Email credits

Each email sent counts against your account's email allowance. You can track usage from your billing area. See email credits for details.

Changing a scheduled campaign

Plans move. A campaign that hasn't started sending can be pushed to a new time:

Go to Emails then Emails.
Find the campaign with the Scheduled badge.
Open its More menu and pick Reschedule.
Pick a New send time and click Reschedule.

The Send at column updates straight away, and the campaign waits for the new moment instead.

Only before it starts

Rescheduling and deleting are both available only while a campaign is still Scheduled. Once it flips to Sending there is no plan left to change, only a record of what went out, so both options disappear. If the send happens to start between loading the page and clicking, you'll get a message telling you it has already begun.

Managing existing campaigns

The emails list shows everything you've created. Use the search box and the Filters dialog to narrow by status: All, Scheduled, Sending, or Sent.

Each row shows the subject, who it's going to (a list, a segment, a single address, or a recipient count), the status, the Send at time, and when it was created.

From the More menu on a row you can:

View Send Report, for campaigns that have finished sending.
Reschedule, for a campaign that hasn't started yet.
Delete, for a campaign that hasn't started yet. Nothing has gone out to anyone, so nothing is lost.

After it goes out

Once a campaign reaches Sent, open its More menu and choose View Send Report. That's where you'll see opens, clicks, bounces, complaints, and a per-recipient timeline. See email reports for how to read it.

Where to go next

Want to design a better template before you send? See creating a template.
Need to grow or reorganise your audience? See email lists.
Want to capture more sign-ups before your next send? See lead magnets.
Want emails to come from your own domain? See sending settings.
Want to reach the same people on their phone? See messaging.