# Your First Campaign

Send your first email campaign with SendBeam.

## Create a new campaign

A campaign in SendBeam is a single email send to a group of contacts. Campaigns have a name
(visible only to your team), a subject line (visible to recipients), a sender name and address,
and the email body content. Once a campaign is sent, SendBeam tracks delivery events
and surfaces them in the campaign statistics view.

Before creating your first campaign, make sure you have:

- Verified your sending domain in **Settings > Email & Domains** (or chosen the shared platform address).
- Added at least one subscribed contact (or imported a list of contacts).

To create a campaign:

1. Click **Campaigns** in the left navigation bar.
2. Click **New Campaign** in the top-right corner.
3. Enter an internal **Campaign name**. This is for your reference only and is not
  shown to recipients. Something like `May Newsletter` or `Product Launch`
  works well.
4. Enter the **Subject line** — this is what recipients will see in their inbox.
  Keep it concise and descriptive.
5. Check the **From name** and **From email**, which are pre-filled from
  your sender details. The from email must use a domain you have verified under
  **Settings > Email & Domains**, or the shared address every workspace starts
  with. For example, `hello@yourbrand.com`.
6. Click **Next**.

**Subject line tip:** Aim for 40–60 characters. Shorter subject lines are less
likely to be truncated on mobile devices. Avoid all-caps words and excessive punctuation, which
can trigger spam filters.

## Choose your recipients

SendBeam gives you three ways to target your audience:

- **All Contacts** — Send to every contact in the workspace with a
  status of Subscribed. Use this for broad announcements where you want maximum reach.
- **A specific list** — Target only members of a particular list. This is the most
  common option. Select the list from the dropdown. Only subscribed members of that list will
  receive the email.
- **A segment** — Use a saved segment to target a dynamic subset of contacts based
  on filters such as tags, custom fields, or engagement. See the
  [Segments](https://sendbeam.io/docs/segments) guide for how to build segments.

Click **Next** once you have chosen. The number of recipients actually queued is
shown on the campaign page once the send starts.

**Note:** Contacts with a status of Unsubscribed, Bounced, or Complained are
automatically excluded from all sends, regardless of which recipient option you choose.

## Write your email

SendBeam offers two ways to compose your email body:

- **Visual builder** — Pick a starter layout, then add and edit content blocks
  (headers, text, images, buttons, dividers, columns and more) without writing any code. This is
  the recommended option for most users and is the view a new campaign opens in.
- **Edit** — A rich-text editor for simple formatted messages, with a toolbar for
  bold, lists, links and images.
- **HTML** — Paste or type raw HTML directly. Use this option if you have
  a custom-coded template from your design team or another tool. If your HTML has no
  `{"{{unsubscribe_url}}"}` tag, SendBeam adds a plain unsubscribe link at the
  bottom when it sends.

Whichever editor you use, you can personalise content using merge tags:

- `{"{{first_name}}"}` — Replaced with the contact's first name (empty if not set).
- `{"{{last_name}}"}` — Replaced with the contact's last name.
- `{"{{email}}"}` — The contact's email address.
- `{"{{custom_fields.key}}"}` — Any custom field on the contact.
- `{"{{unsubscribe_url}}"}` — A unique unsubscribe link for each recipient.

## Preview, send, and review stats

Before sending, always preview your email to catch formatting issues:

1. Switch to the **Preview** view to see a rendered preview of your email in the
  browser. Use the desktop and mobile toggle to check how it looks on smaller screens, then
  click **Next**.
2. On the **Review & Send** step, check the summary. To test in a real inbox
  first, wait — the campaign is saved as a draft at this point — then open it from the
  Campaigns list and click **Send test**, which delivers a copy to the address you
  sign in with.
3. When you are satisfied, click **Send Now** to dispatch the campaign immediately,
  or pick a date and time under **Schedule**. Scheduled campaigns can be edited or
  cancelled at any time before they send.
4. After sending, SendBeam moves the campaign through **Sending** to
  **Sent**. Its page shows sent, delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, and
  unsubscribed counts as delivery events arrive.

**Tip:** Stats update within seconds of events occurring. Opens and clicks depend on
recipients loading images or clicking links, so a brand-new campaign can legitimately show zero
for a while. Delivered, bounced and unsubscribed update as soon as the mail servers respond.

Congratulations — you have sent your first campaign with SendBeam. From here, explore
[Contacts](https://sendbeam.io/docs/contacts) to learn about tags and custom fields, or head to
[Automations](https://sendbeam.io/docs/automations) to set up triggered email sequences.

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Source: https://sendbeam.io/docs/getting-started/first-campaign