New sites on the Space Station plan are limited to 20 emails a day. The limit lifts when you connect Stripe or upgrade your plan. Every email Outpost sends for your site counts toward it, including autoresponder and report emails, not just campaign sends.
Campaign list
The Campaigns page displays all your campaigns, including active ones, scheduled ones and your past ones, in an expandable table. Use the Keyword Search box above the table to find a campaign by name. Click the arrow at the start of a row to open that campaign and edit it.Creating a campaign
Go to Campaigns in the left navigation and click Create New Campaign.
Basic settings
Every campaign is a marketing email, and there is no switch to set. New campaigns start with the
Marketing_OptOut label under Exclude Members Labeled, and members who have opted out of marketing emails don’t receive campaigns.
The removal condition also decides which members get the campaign, not only when a member stops receiving it. Member Upgrades to Paid sends to free and complimentary members, and drops each one as soon as they start paying. Member Downgrades to Free sends to paid members only. Member Renews sends to members whose current subscription period ends within the next year. Choose a condition that fits your Apply to selection: a campaign that applies only to paid members and removes members who upgrade to paid has no one left to send to.
Audience targeting
Actions (email sends)
Each campaign has one or more actions, individual email sends at specific times. The actions grid has the columns Send Time, Email Template, Offer, and Action:
Gift subscription emails work differently. They have no Offer field when you edit them, but they always have one in the Offer column. Choose an offer there, or the email’s offer link won’t work, because campaigns don’t use the prices on the Gift Subscriptions page. The offer you choose applies only to this campaign.
Click Add Action to add additional sends to the campaign. Each action can use a different template and send at a different time.
Each template sends only once per member per campaign. If a member has already received a particular template in this campaign, they will not receive it again.
Emails linked to an event
When an email uses event details or a Register button, or already has an event linked, a Link an event drop-down appears under its template picker. The campaign won’t save until you choose an event, and events that have already passed are not listed. Emails that have already sent don’t need one. See one-click registration from a campaign email. If an email has an event linked but no template yet, a Use the event announcement email button appears. It fills in the event’s announcement email, which you can then edit. See Send Campaign. Once an event is linked, a Skip members registered for this event box appears, ticked by default. Outpost checks registrations before each email sends, so someone who registers part-way through the campaign won’t get a redundant email asking them to register. Members Count does not reflect this skip. For events that take sign-ups on another site, the Register button goes to that outside page. Outpost doesn’t know who registered there, so the skip box does nothing for them.An offer only works when the email links to it with
%OFFER_URL%. If an email has an offer chosen but no %OFFER_URL% link, a line appears under the email to tell you readers won’t see the offer. Open the email with the pencil icon and use %OFFER_URL% as the offer button’s link.Campaign status
Use The Big Off/On Button at the top of the campaign editor to turn the whole campaign on or off. It is disabled once the campaign has finished. Flipping it saves the campaign straight away, as long as the campaign has no errors. If it does, the errors are highlighted, nothing is saved, and the switch goes back to where it was. Turning on a campaign that includes current subscribers asks you to confirm first. New campaigns start with the Big Button Off to prevent accidental sends.
At the bottom of the editor, Save saves your changes and leaves the campaign on or off as it was. While the campaign is off, Save and Turn On appears next to it: it checks the campaign for missing settings, turns it on, and saves. If the check finds something missing or the save fails, the switch goes back to where it was. Saving a campaign that is off shows a message that nothing will send until you turn it on.
Turning a campaign on doesn’t send anything straight away. Each email waits for its own Send Time, which must be in the future.
When you save a campaign that is switched on and whose Apply to selection includes readers who already have a subscription, Outpost asks you to confirm first. The dialog is a reminder to check that each email has its offer chosen and links to it with
%OFFER_URL%. Choose Turn on the campaign to save. Go back, or closing the dialog, leaves your changes unsaved and puts the switch back the way it was. You won’t get this warning if you save a campaign that was already on and already sends to these readers.
Cloning a campaign
To run a campaign again, open it and click Clone at the bottom of the editor. You can clone a campaign before it starts or after it finishes, but not while it is sending. The copy is named after the original with “(copy)” added, and it is switched off. It has the same audience, offers, linked events and emails, with its own copies of the email templates, so editing the copy never changes the original. It has no send history. The old send times stay on the copy for reference. Give each email a send time in the future, then turn the campaign on.Statistics
After a campaign sends, Outpost tracks per-action statistics. Each action in the campaign editor shows Sent, Opened, Clicked, Converted and Revenue, and each appears only once there is something to show:
Open rates in the Statistics cell of the campaign list are counted the same way. That cell also shows Unsubscribed: the number of members who stopped this campaign from the unsubscribe page, each counted once, and Converted Count, the total number of conversions. See Email preferences.
Event campaigns
When a campaign has an event linked, the campaign list also shows:
Converted and Converted Count are hidden for event campaigns unless something converted.
Campaign vs. autoresponder flow
Related features
Email Templates
Create the email content used in campaigns.
Autoresponder
Set up ongoing automated email sequences.
Offers & Discounts
Link offers to campaign emails for tracked conversions.
Autoresponder Settings
Configure global exclusions that apply to campaigns.
FAQ
Can I add multiple email sends to one campaign?
Can I add multiple email sends to one campaign?
Yes. Click Add Action to add additional sends. Each action can use a different template and be scheduled for a different time, creating a multi-touch campaign.
Do members who opted out of marketing emails receive campaigns?
Do members who opted out of marketing emails receive campaigns?
No. Every campaign is a marketing email. New campaigns list the
Marketing_OptOut label under Exclude Members Labeled, and Outpost also checks every recipient’s marketing preference when it works out who receives each email.Can I edit a campaign after it finishes?
Can I edit a campaign after it finishes?
No. Once a campaign has the Finished status, the editor is read-only. Click Clone to start a new campaign with the same audience and emails. See Cloning a campaign.
How are campaign audiences calculated?
How are campaign audiences calculated?
Outpost works out who receives each email at the time that email is due to send. It applies your audience settings, the Remove Member from the Campaign when condition and each member’s email preferences as they stand at that moment, and it leaves out anyone who has already been sent that email. Because every send is worked out fresh, a member who joins or changes status part-way through a campaign is included in the later emails if they match, and a member who no longer matches receives nothing further.
Why is my campaign audience smaller than the same filter in Ghost?
Why is my campaign audience smaller than the same filter in Ghost?
Outpost’s count is usually the smaller of the two. There are three common reasons.
- The removal condition narrows the audience as well. With Remove Member from the Campaign when set to anything other than No Condition, the count includes only members who have not met that condition yet.
- Campaigns only count members who can currently receive email from you. Anyone who has unsubscribed from your newsletters, or turned off promotional and event notification emails in their subscription settings, is left out. A label filter in Ghost does not apply that check, so Ghost still counts those members.
- Labels applied through Ghost’s bulk Add label and Remove label actions may not have reached Outpost yet. Outpost catches up on its own within a few hours; see labels for how to bring the two in line right away.