Open Emails → Create campaign to start. Choosing Create campaign first opens the Template library, where you can search your templates, filter them by email tag (untagged templates group under Other), sort them (Newest first, Oldest first, Name (A—Z), Name (Z—A)), preview a template before committing to it, and then Apply & use template — or choose Create blank campaign to start from scratch. Applying a template replaces anything already on the canvas, and the campaign is then completely detached from the template. See Email templates — saving & managing the Template library (Document ID: 421) for the full detail. (The dropdown beside the button also has shortcuts into Settings — Manage templates, Brand hub, Edit categories, Edit tags — plus Learn about Emails.)
Campaigns are then built in four steps: Campaign → Recipients → Design → Schedule. (The Design canvas is covered in detail in Design your email — the email canvas, content & layout blocks (Document ID: 78).)
Step 1 — Campaign
- Enter a Campaign name.
- Choose a Campaign Category (required; configured in Settings). The category classifies the send and drives the categories recipients can manage on their email preferences page.
- Select tags — internal email tags (defined in Settings) used for classification and segmentation.
- Use A/B Testing (optional): switch it on, then set:
- the A/B Split — the percentage of your audience included in the test variations (default 20%),
- how SwiftFox decides the best performing email — By open rate or By click rate, and
- the test duration — after a number you enter, in Days, Hours or Minutes.
After the test period, the winning variant is automatically sent to the remaining recipients.
- Click Next.
Step 2 — Recipients
This step covers both who receives the campaign and the core email details.
- Recipient list (under Audience) — search for an audience list, or use Edit list to open and adjust the list in the Lists feature. With A/B testing on, the sender, subject line and preview text split into Campaign A and Campaign B tabs, which you set separately. The audience itself sits above those tabs and is shared by both variants.
- Representative contact (under Audience) — appears only when the recipient list is a list of organisations and your account has at least one representative role. It decides which people at each organisation receive the email, and whether each organisation gets one email or one per role. Full detail: Emailing an organisation's representative contacts (Document ID: 444).
- Send to unsubscribed contacts (checkbox): use only when necessary and lawful — ensure compliance with the Spam Act and relevant laws (see Emails — Limitations & best practice (Document ID: 74)).
- Sender name (under Sender details) — the name recipients see. Switch on Stakeholder beside it to send dynamically using each contact's assigned stakeholder leader's name.
- Sender email — the username and domain (choose the domain from your verified domains; auto-selected if there's only one). Switch on Stakeholder beside it to use the stakeholder leader's address. Set a fallback sender for contacts without a stakeholder leader.
- Send replies to this email address (ticked by default) — untick to set a different Reply-To.
- Subject line (supports merge fields) and Preview text (up to 123 characters).
- Advanced Tracking Options (optional): enter Google Analytics parameters (Campaign Name, Campaign Source, Campaign Medium) to measure link activity.
- Click Next.
Step 3 — Design
Design the email on the canvas — see Design your email — the email canvas, content & layout blocks (Document ID: 78) for content blocks, layouts, templates, style and testing. Click Next.
With A/B testing on, the canvas toolbar gains Switch to Design B. The two variants can therefore carry different content, not just a different sender and subject line — design each one in turn before moving on.
Step 4 — Schedule
Choose how the campaign sends, then use Send now or, from the arrow beside it, Schedule for later (top right). Neither sends the moment you click — see Sending, and the window to change your mind below.
- Standard — send to all recipients in a single batch, either at the next whole minute or at a time you schedule.
- SwiftPredict (shown only where enabled for your account) — sends at the optimal time for each recipient, within 24 hours of the scheduled or current time, based on past behaviour. Requires the contact to have 5 or more prior email opens; contacts below that threshold are sent to as soon as the campaign begins sending, rather than at an optimised time.
- Staggered — drip-send over a Total duration, in Slot duration intervals (e.g. 15-minute slots), with an optional Blackout period (a start/end time window, in a chosen timezone, when sending pauses). These settings sit in a Staggered Send Settings panel opened by the settings icon beside the send-method options, not inline with them.
Sending, and the window to change your mind
Send now does not send immediately. It books the campaign for the next whole minute, and until that moment the campaign sits at Scheduled with a countdown and an Un-schedule button. That gives you roughly a minute to pull out. Un-schedule returns the campaign to Draft, where it can be edited and scheduled again.
Before the campaign is committed, a confirmation step appears. It may carry two warnings:
- that the email does not include an unsubscribe option, and that under the Spam Act 2003 commercial electronic messages must contain a functional unsubscribe facility, with a Fix now link. This is a warning, not a block — the send will proceed if you continue.
- for a live list, that the recipient count may change between now and the send time, because the list re-evaluates its criteria when it sends.
Stopping a send that has started
Once sending has begun, the Un-schedule button is replaced by Stop send in the same place. Stopping asks you to confirm, and warns that emails scheduled in less than ten minutes may not cancel in time.
Stopping is final. The campaign moves to Cancelled and stays there — unlike un-scheduling, it does not return to Draft, and there is no way to resume or re-send it. Emails already delivered stay delivered. To send the content again, clone the campaign.
Because of that ten-minute caveat, Stop send is of little use on a campaign started with Send now, which is already sending within the minute. During that minute Un-schedule is the reliable way to pull out; Stop send is for campaigns scheduled further ahead, and for staggered sends still working through their slots.
Campaign statuses
The Status column on the Emails landing page, and the status shown on a campaign's overview, use the same terms:
- Draft — created but not scheduled and not sent. Draft campaigns open in the canvas for editing.
- Scheduled — committed to send at a set time, including the brief period after Send now. Can be returned to Draft with Un-schedule.
- Sending — in progress. A staggered campaign stays here for the whole of its total duration, with a countdown showing the time remaining.
- Completed — all sends finished.
- Cancelled — stopped part-way with Stop send. Final.
A campaign that has been sent, scheduled or cancelled opens on its overview rather than in the canvas.
Just after a campaign completes, its results can briefly show zero while the figures catch up. Reload the overview if the numbers look empty.