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Email campaigns are scheduled or immediate email sends to a targeted segment of your members. Unlike autoresponder flows (ongoing automations triggered by events), campaigns are discrete sends: anniversary sales, free-to-paid pushes, holiday promotions, fundraising appeals. Unlike a Ghost newsletter send, campaigns have a separate marketing opt-out, so members can opt out of marketing without unsubscribing from your main list.
Email Campaign List
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.
On a site still under this limit, a large campaign takes several days to reach everyone. On a day when your site’s other Outpost email has already used the allowance, the campaign sends nothing at all rather than a partial batch. It isn’t marked Finished while recipients are still waiting. If you need the send to go out in one pass, connect Stripe first, or send to a small segment.

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Campaign list

The Campaigns page displays all your campaigns, including active ones, scheduled ones and your past ones, in an expandable table:

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Creating a campaign

Go to Campaigns in the left navigation and click Create New Campaign.
New Campaign Button
For your first campaign, we recommend testing with a small segment. Label a few staff members or trusted readers and send the campaign to that label only.

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Basic settings

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Audience targeting

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Actions (email sends)

Each campaign has one or more actions, individual email sends at specific times: Click Add Action to add additional sends to the campaign. Each action can use a different template and send at a different time.
Add Action Button
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.

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Campaign status

Use the On/Off switch at the top of the campaign editor to enable or disable the entire campaign.
Big On Off Button

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Statistics

After a campaign sends, Outpost tracks per-action statistics:

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Campaign vs. autoresponder flow

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.

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FAQ

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.
When enabled, the campaign automatically excludes any member with the Marketing_OptOut label (or the legacy Marketing_Optout and Shopify No_Marketing labels). This helps comply with email marketing preferences.
No. Once a campaign reaches the Finished status, the editor is read-only. Create a new campaign if you want to re-send to a similar audience.
When a campaign starts, Outpost evaluates your targeting criteria and records the matching members. The audience is locked at that point: members who join or change status after the campaign starts are not included in subsequent actions of the same campaign.
Outpost’s count is usually the smaller of the two, for three reasons.
  • 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.
  • Opt-out labels are excluded as a family. With the marketing email toggle on, the campaign’s Exclude Members Labeled list shows Marketing_OptOut, but Outpost also holds back members carrying the legacy Marketing_Optout spelling and the Shopify No_Marketing label. Copying the visible filter into Ghost excludes only the first, so Ghost’s count stays higher.
  • 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.
If the gap looks larger than these account for, refresh your site data and then click Refresh Members Count.