Campaigns

A campaign is one newsletter. You name it, write it, send yourself a test, and send it to an audience. Under Campaigns you start one, follow it while it goes out, and read how it finished.

1. Paused. Sending stopped, and it can carry on.
2. Published and ready to send. Its words are frozen and it waits for you to press Send.
3. A draft. You are still writing it.
4. Sending. Open it to follow the progress.

Start a campaign

An owner or admin chooses New campaign and types a name. The name is for your own list, up to 120 characters, and recipients never see it. Wakio then opens the composer, where you write the email.

You do not choose the domain a campaign sends from. Wakio picks the first of your sending domains that is verified and able to send, and the page says Sending from that domain. If no domain is ready, Wakio asks you to add and verify one first.

Write it

1. Switch to the HTML view of the same body.
2. Add a button, which is a link styled so it is easy to tap.
3. Upload an image into the body.
4. Insert a merge tag, which fills in each person's own detail.
5. Choose whether this issue appears in your public archive.

The composer has a Subject, which is what people see in their inbox list, and a Body. You write the body in Rich text, where the toolbar gives you bold, italic, a heading and a subheading, bulleted and numbered lists, a button and an image. HTML shows the same body as markup, for anyone who prefers to write it by hand. Both views edit one body, and Save keeps whichever you last touched.

Email programs only understand a small set of formatting, so a campaign may use paragraphs and line breaks, bold and italic, two heading sizes, bulleted and numbered lists, links, and images. Anything else is refused when you publish, with the name of the tag to remove. The rich text view only offers what is allowed. A link must start with https://, http:// or mailto:, because an address with no site in front of it points nowhere once it lands in an inbox.

Image uploads a PNG, JPEG, GIF, or WebP file of up to 5 MB. Other types are refused, including SVG, because most email programs do not show it. You can also paste the full web address of an image you host yourself.

A merge tag is a placeholder that Wakio replaces with something about each person. The toolbar has one button for each tag you can use: first_name and email, unsubscribe_url, and one for every active contact field you have declared. A tag that is not on that list is refused at publish, so declare the field first.

Wakio adds a footer to every campaign email with your account's name and an Unsubscribe link. When the issue is in your public archive, it also adds a View this in your browser link at the top.

Publish it

Publish checks the campaign and freezes it. The subject, the body, the sending domain and your archive choice cannot change afterward, because they are the record of what the campaign sends. If a check fails, Wakio lists what to fix: a missing subject, an empty body, a tag that is not allowed, a link that is not a full address, or a merge tag that does not exist.

Publishing also decides tracking. If your account's tracking is on at that moment, Wakio rewrites the links and adds a small image so it can count opens and clicks. Turning tracking on later does not change a campaign you already published.

Your audience is not frozen by publishing. You can still change it until you press Send.

A published campaign cannot be edited. If you spot a mistake, cancel it and choose Copy into a new draft, then fix the copy.

Test it

1. The address that gets the test. It starts as your own.

Once a campaign is published, the composer shows Send a test to. The field starts with your own address, and you can type any other. The test goes out immediately, the same way a real send does, so what lands in the inbox is what your audience will get.

Merge tags fill in from the contact with that address. If the address is not one of your contacts, each tag shows its own name in square brackets instead.

A few things to know about tests:

• A test counts toward your monthly allowance, like any other message.
• A test is not tracked, and the unsubscribe link in it does not work.
• A test appears in Deliveries with the source "Campaign test".
• One test makes the campaign impossible to delete. Wakio keeps the record of everything it sends. A campaign with a test can still be sent, canceled or copied.
• Wakio refuses a test when your plan does not allow campaigns, when the address is not valid, or when it is on your suppressed addresses.

Choose who gets it

1. Everyone who is active at the moment you send.
2. Only the active contacts in one list you choose.

Choose Every active contact or One list, then Save audience. The list menu shows how many active contacts each list holds. Either way, a campaign reaches active contacts only. Someone who has unsubscribed, cannot be reached or was never subscribed is left out, whatever list they are in.

The audience is fixed at the moment you press Send. Anyone you add afterward is not included. Active contacts whose address is on your suppressed addresses are still counted in Recipients, and they show under Not sent once the campaign starts.

If you delete the list a campaign was going to, the campaign page reads "A list that no longer exists" and Send asks you to choose an audience.

Send it

There is no scheduling for campaigns, and no sending window. Send starts now. Your account's sending hours apply to flows, which are automated emails, and campaigns ignore them.

Open the campaign and look under Before you send. It shows Recipients, how many active contacts the audience holds if you press Send now, suppressed addresses included. Send this campaign asks you to confirm, and says plainly that nothing already sent can be recalled.

When Send is not possible, the page shows a note in place of the button, and the note says why. Wakio checks these in this order, and shows the first that applies:

1. The campaign has already started or finished: "This campaign is already sending. This page shows the progress.", "This campaign is paused. Resume it to carry on sending.", "This campaign was canceled. Copy it if you want to send it again." or "This campaign has already been sent."
2. "Publish the campaign before sending it."
3. "Choose an audience before sending."
4. "This campaign's sending domain is not ready to send. Verify it first."
5. "There is nobody on this audience yet. Add active contacts, or choose a different audience."
6. "Sending is on hold for this account, so this cannot start yet."
7. "This send was refused: " followed by the reason from your plan, such as no plan, a subscription that is not active, an overdue payment, or a monthly allowance that is used up.

Only an owner can open Billing, so an admin who sees the last note passes it to the owner.

Warm-up stages

1. Where your account is on the warm-up ladder, and whether sending is on hold.
2. Stops sending. You can resume it.
3. Stops anything that has not gone out yet.

A new account's campaigns do not go out all at once. Sending climbs through stages of 500, 2,500, 10,000, and 50,000 recipients, and after the last stage there is no limit. A stage counts recipients across all your campaigns, not one campaign alone, so an account that sends several small campaigns stays in an early stage until the stage is full, however long that takes. The Paced sending block on a campaign's page tells you your stage.

The next stage opens only when the current one is both full and settled. Full means its whole limit has been used. Settled means 90 percent of the messages that went out in the stage have reported back, whether delivered, bounced or marked as spam, or 2 hours have passed since the last one went out. Wakio does this so it can see how your first messages landed before it sends more. While a campaign waits for the next stage, it stays Sending.

On your first stage, Wakio sends in random order. After that it sends first to the contacts Wakio most recently delivered to, or who most recently clicked a link.

Wakio puts your account on hold when a stage goes badly. That is a bounce rate of 4% or more with at least 10 bounces, or a spam complaint rate of 0.08% or more with at least 3 complaints. A campaign that still had people to reach pauses. While the hold lasts, you cannot resume it, you cannot start another campaign, and no flow email goes out. Only Wakio can clear a hold, so email [email protected].

If your plan changes while a campaign sends

• Reaching your monthly allowance stops new campaigns from starting. A campaign that is already sending carries on, even past the allowance. Flow email does not: it waits until sending is allowed again.
• A subscription that ends, or a payment that is overdue, pauses a campaign that is sending. The campaign page shows the reason.
• After you fix billing, the campaign does not restart by itself. An owner or admin chooses Resume sending.

If your daily sending quota runs out partway through, the campaign waits and carries on after midnight UTC. Nobody has to do anything.

What each state means

Sent, some did not arrive means at least one message failed before it left Wakio. It does not mean bounces. A bounce is counted on its own line and does not change the state.

Pause, resume, cancel and copy

• Pause sending stops anything not yet sent, and Resume sending picks up where it stopped. A message already on its way is not recalled.
• Cancel this campaign is available while the campaign is a draft, ready to send, sending or paused. Nothing that has not gone out will be sent. Messages already sent cannot be recalled.
• Copy into a new draft is offered on a campaign that has finished or was canceled. The copy keeps the subject, body, sending domain and archive choice. It gets "(copy)" after the name, and it has no audience, so choose one. It keeps the sending domain even if that domain was removed or is no longer ready, and a copy's domain cannot be changed, so Send then says the domain is not ready. Start a new campaign instead, which picks a domain that is ready.

Wakio can also pause a campaign by itself. The campaign page then reads Sending stopped and gives the reason: the account was suspended, a subscription ended or a payment is overdue, the account is on hold, the account has no sending budget yet, or sending failed 5 times in a row and cannot continue on its own.

Follow a send

1. Everyone the campaign was sent to, fixed when you pressed Send.
2. Messages that reached an inbox.
3. Messages still waiting to go out.
4. Messages Wakio did not send, such as to a suppressed address.

A campaign's page keeps a running count. The figures add up to Recipients: Delivered, Sent, waiting on confirmation, Bounced, Marked as spam, Not accepted, Not sent, and Still to send. The page recounts every time you open it, and test sends are left out.

Once a campaign has finished or been canceled, Still to send becomes Handed over. Handed over means the message was passed on for delivery before the campaign stopped, and no answer came back for it. Nothing further will be attempted. Bounced and Marked as spam keep arriving for hours after the last message goes out, so those two can still change on a campaign that has finished.

When your account's tracking is on, the page also shows how many people opened and clicked.

Your public archive

Wakio can keep a public page of the campaigns you have sent, so anyone can read them without being on your list. It is on by default. There are two switches. The account's owner turns the archive on or off for the whole account in Settings. Each campaign has its own checkbox, Publish this issue to your public archive, in the composer until you publish. New campaigns start with the account's setting, and the checkbox is frozen at publish.

An issue appears in the archive once it starts sending, not when you publish. A canceled campaign that had started stays listed. The archive lists issues newest first, and offers a feed of the latest 50. A feed lets a news reader app follow new issues. If you turn the account's archive off, the list and the feed disappear, but a link to a single issue keeps working.

The archive shows the subject, the date and the email as it was sent. It leaves out the footer's unsubscribe link and the open-tracking image, and clicks from the archive are not counted. An unsubscribe link you wrote into the body shows as plain text. Merge tags that depend on the person show blank, so "Hi {{first_name}}," reads "Hi ,". Write issues you plan to archive so they read well without a name.

Wakio's dashboard does not show you the archive's address. To find it, open an issue you sent and choose View this in your browser. The address in your browser is the issue's page, and removing the issue's name from the end gives you the archive's front page.

Who can do what

Every role can open Campaigns and every campaign's progress page. Writing, publishing, testing, sending, pausing, resuming, canceling, copying and deleting are for owners and admins. A member sees the list and the figures, with no buttons to change anything.

Good to know

• Deleting is for campaigns that never sent anything. On the list, Delete appears only for a campaign with no messages behind it, and a test send counts as one. Wakio keeps the record of what it sent.
• A canceled campaign cannot be sent again. Copy it into a new draft instead.

Related

• Opens and clicks, for how Wakio counts what people do with a campaign.
• Contacts and lists, for who is on your audience.
• Deliveries and suppressions, for every message and the addresses Wakio will not send to.
• What recipients see, for how a campaign arrives in the inbox.
• Sending domains, for the domain a campaign sends from.