Creating a campaign — Gorilla Dash

A campaign is one send. It points at an email and one or more mailing lists, and says who it comes from and when it goes.

The campaign screen has two columns. On the left is the Email: select the Select Email button to choose one, and a preview of it appears underneath. If the email has no preview image yet, the panel says No preview available instead; the email can still be sent. On a wide screen the preview stays in view while you scroll down through the settings. On the right are the campaign's settings. The table below describes each setting, and includes the email so that everything a campaign needs is in one place. On a phone the email comes first and the settings follow it.

Field	What to put in it
Campaign name	For you, not the customer. "March newsletter — customers" is findable in a year.
Mailing Lists	Who receives it. Pick this first — the recipients drive everything else. You can choose more than one list, and someone who is on several of them is sent the email once. A Tribe Campaign, which sends to your tribes, uses a single list.
Email	What they receive.
From Name	What appears in their inbox. A business name people recognise, or a person at it.
From Address	Where replies go. Make sure it is a mailbox somebody actually reads.

Sending to more than one list

Choose each list in the Mailing Lists field. Up to an hour before the campaign sends, Gorilla Dash combines the lists into one, so a person who is on two of your lists receives one email, not two. The recipient count on the campaign counts each person once for the same reason. It is the most the campaign can reach: people who have unsubscribed, or whose address has bounced, are left out when the lists are combined. Someone who unsubscribes after that is still left out, because Gorilla Dash checks again just before the email goes.

PEOPLE ADDED AT THE LAST MINUTE

Someone added to one of the lists after they have been combined is not sent this campaign. Every list also has to finish updating first: if one is still being rebuilt at the send time, the campaign waits for it and goes out once it is ready. If the email service refuses the campaign outright, nothing is sent and the campaign goes back to Draft, so you can correct it and launch it again.

The from name matters more than you think

On a phone the sender is often more prominent than the subject line. A name customers recognise gets opened; "noreply" does not, and it tells people you are not interested in a reply.

PICK THE LIST BEFORE THE EMAIL

Several other choices on the campaign screen depend on the mailing list, so choose it before you fill in the rest, even though the email is shown first. If an option looks unavailable, it is usually because no list has been selected yet.

Before you go further

Look at the recipient count. Is it what you expected?
Send a test and read it on a phone.
Check the from address is a real, monitored mailbox.