Send an email campaign

Send engaging marketing emails to your customers.

In this guide, we'll walk you through setting up and sending your first email marketing campaign with Bird.

What you'll need

• An installed Email channel instance.

• An Email message template.

• A list or segment or customers that have opted-in to receive marketing messages on Email.

Step one: Set up your Email campaign

1. Navigate to your Marketing Dashboard

2. Click Campaigns, then select Create in the top-right corner

3. Choose Email as your campaign channel

4. Give your campaign a clear, memorable name.

Step two: Select your audience

1. Choose your recipient list or segment.

2. Select one or multiple audience lists by searching and adding each one.

3. Optionally, exclude specific groups from receiving this campaign.

4. Open Advanced settings to see the following options:

   • Skip frequently messaged contacts

   • Limit maximum recipients

   • Global & Percentage Holdout settings

1. Click Save and continue.

Step three: Choose your Email sender

1. Use the Send from dropdown to choose the Email account that you want to send your campaign from.

1. In the Sender name field, enter the name that you want to send your email from.

1. In the Sender email address field, enter the email address you want to send your campaign from. The domain name is automatically filled based on the Send from email channel you chose.

1. [Optional] If you want to use a different 'Reply-to' address, uncheck the Use this as your reply-to address box, and enter the email address that you want to use in the new field.

Step four: Schedule your campaign

Choose your sending type:

• Send immediately

• Fixed time – schedule a future date and time

• Optimal send time - delivers messages at the best time for each recipient.

• Gradual send – control delivery over time

• Auto-warmup - ideal for new IPs

If scheduling:

• Select the date and time

• Adjust the timezone as needed

• Set a fallback timezone for unknown locations

• Choose a time when your audience is most likely to engage

Step five: Organize and track

Navigate to More Settings to setup the following.

1. Add tags to categorize your campaign.

Want to add a new tag? Start typing in the tag you want to create, and then select Create New Tag. This tag will then be saved to your Campaign tag list, ready to use for any other Campaign.

1. Set up custom tracking parameters to override defaults:

• Use dropdown to add parameters

• Define Medium (e.g., email, social, CPC)

• Toggle Customize tracking parameters on/off

1. Click Locale matching to ensure recipients get the right language version.

Step six: Choose your content

1. Click the Select a template button to choose the Email message template that you want to send as your campaign. You'll be able to see a preview of your message.

Can't see your email template? Make sure it's set to published. You can check this by going to content > email templates > selecting your template.

1. [Optional] If your message template is localized into more than one language, choose the language that you want to send it in.

2. If there are variables in your template message, map them in the Template variables section.

3. Click Continue to preview.

Step seven: Preview and test your campaign

1. Click Send test to preview the campaign before launch. Select Send test in the top right hand corner.

2. Click the Simulated contact dropdown and search and select for a contact that you want to send a test message to. You can choose an: Email Address, List or Contact.

1. For Contacts: If the test message recipient has more than one email on their profile, select the email that you want to send to.

1. Click Send a test message.

You've just sent your first Email campaign! Time to sit back, relax, and watch the results roll in.

FAQs

I can't send a test message. I'm seeing an error message that says “An error occurred while trying to send the message. Please, try again.”

This might stem from an unhealthy email channel. Visit Enable Channels > Email and double-click on the channel you want to inspect. If that channel is not healthy, you will see error messages to explain the issues. Once you have addressed these issues, you can try to send your email campaign again.