Create a campaign

A campaign is one email that goes to a group of contacts. You build it in four steps: Setup, Audience, Design and Review & Send. MailGraf saves as you go, and Save draft at the bottom left saves on demand, so you can leave a draft and come back to it later.

Before you start

• A verified sending domain. See Add a sending domain.
• People to send to: at least one list, segment or tag, or active contacts in your account.
• Company details saved under Settings > Billing > Company information. MailGraf asks for them before your first send.

Set up the sender and subject

1. Open Campaigns and click New campaign

   MailGraf creates a draft called Untitled campaign and opens the Setup step.

2. Name the campaign

   Enter a name in Campaign name. Only you and your team see it; recipients never do.

3. Fill in the from name and from email

   From name is what people see in their inbox. In From email, type the part before the @ and choose one of your verified domains from the list. If the list is empty, click Set one up in Settings first.

4. Add a reply-to address if replies should go elsewhere

   Click Add reply to and enter the address. Without it, replies go to the from address.

5. Write the subject and preview text

   Both are required. Subject has room for 60 characters and Preview text for 100; the preview text is the first line people see in the inbox, right after the subject. Inbox preview on the right shows how both look, and Subject & preview checks points out what to fix.

6. Click Continue to audience

   MailGraf saves the step and moves you on.

Campaign settings, behind the cog at the top right, holds two more things. Content language sets the language of the unsubscribe page. Under Tracking, Open tracking can be switched off, Click tracking is always on, and UTM parameters adds utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign to every link in the email, so the visits show up in Google Analytics or Matomo on your own site. Leave utm_campaign empty and the campaign name is used.

Choose who receives it

1. Pick the audience under Send to

   Choose All active contacts, or Lists, Segments or Tags. Then click Add list, Add segment or Add tag to pick the ones you want.

2. Decide how the sources combine

   With more than one source, Match contacts in lets you choose Any selected or All.

3. Exclude anyone who should not get this email

   Under Don't send to, click Add exclusion and pick a list, segment or tag. Unsubscribed and blocked contacts are always skipped; MailGraf marks that row as System.

4. Check Estimated recipients, then continue

   The panel on the right shows how the audience shrinks from matched sources to Final sendable: duplicates, your exclusions and invalid addresses are taken out. Click Continue to design.

Frequency and contact limits lets you skip people who already received 3 or more campaigns in the last 7 days, keep at least 24 hours between emails, or cap the number of recipients.

Design the email

1. Choose a starting point

   Pick Drag & drop editor to design from scratch, a ready-made layout, or Import HTML if you already have a coded email. Your saved designs are under Template gallery.

2. Build the email in the editor

   Click Edit design to open the editor. When you come back, Content checklist on the right checks the subject, image alt text, links and the unsubscribe link.

3. Send yourself a test

   Under Content tools, click Send a test email. Enter your address in Send to and click Send test. The subject gets a [Test] prefix and merge tags stay empty.

4. Click Continue to review

   To see the desktop, mobile and dark mode versions first, use Preview on devices.

Review and send

The Review & Send step shows a green Ready to send banner when setup, audience and content are complete. If something is missing, the Almost ready banner lists it, and the Before you can send card shows account-level blockers, such as a missing sending domain or incomplete company details.

1. Read the summary cards

   Campaign details shows the sender, subject and preview text, each with an Edit link. Email design shows whether a test was sent. Deliverability & compliance confirms SPF and DKIM alignment, the DMARC record, the unsubscribe link and the plain-text version.

2. Choose when it sends

   Under When should this send?, keep Send now or pick Schedule for a date and time. Scheduling has its own guide: Schedule a campaign.

3. Look at the safeguards

   Quiet hours, when on, pauses sending between 21:00 and 08:00. Sending waves splits a large send into up to 48 waves. Send-time optimization sends to each contact at the hour they are most likely to open; it is part of the Pro plan and starts working after 5 sent campaigns and 2,000 deliveries. Final estimate shows the recipient count and the estimated completion time.

4. Click Send campaign and confirm

   The Send this campaign? dialog repeats the sender, subject and recipient count. Confirm, and MailGraf queues the campaign and takes you back to Campaigns.

After you send

The campaign moves from Queued to Sending to Sent. While it is sending, you can choose Pause sending or Cancel sending from the Campaigns list; emails already sent stay in the report. Once sending starts, the content cannot be changed. When the status is Sent, open the campaign to see the delivery funnel and the report.