Campaigns

Punchmail walks you through a four-step creation flow: Setup, Sending, Content, and Review. Let's go through each one.

Step 1: Setup

Click Create Campaign from the Campaigns page to get started.

Campaign Name (required) — An internal name for your reference, like “March Newsletter” or “Black Friday Promo.” Subscribers won't see this.
Type — Choose between:
Regular — A standard email sent to everyone in your audience.
A/B Test — Send two variants to a portion of your audience, then send the winner to the rest. Great for testing subject lines, content, or send times.
Mailing List (required) — Pick which list to send to.
Segment (optional) — Narrow your audience further by applying a segment. Only subscribers who are in the selected list AND match the segment rules will receive the email.
Suppression Lists (optional) — Select one or more suppression lists. Any subscriber on a suppression list will be excluded, even if they match the list and segment.

As you make selections, Punchmail shows a dynamic recipient count so you can see exactly how many people will receive the campaign.

Step 2: Sending

Configure how and when the campaign goes out.

SMTP Server — Choose which SMTP connector or pool Punchmail should use to deliver this campaign. If you have multiple connectors set up, pick the one that's appropriate for this send.
Fallback SMTP (optional) — Select a backup SMTP server. If the primary server runs into issues during delivery, Punchmail will automatically switch to the fallback.
When to Send — Two options:
Send Now — The campaign will start delivering as soon as you confirm on the Review step.
Schedule — Pick a specific date and time. The campaign will wait and send automatically at the scheduled moment.

Step 3: Content

This is where you craft the actual email your subscribers will see.

Subject Line — The subject line that appears in your subscribers' inboxes. Make it count.
Preview Text — The short snippet that appears next to (or below) the subject line in most email clients. Use it to complement your subject and encourage opens.
Load from Template — Don't want to start from scratch? Use the dropdown to load any of your saved templates as a starting point.
Email Editor — Build your email using the block editor (drag-and-drop sections for text, images, buttons, dividers, and more) or switch to the HTML editor if you prefer to work with raw code.

A/B Test Content

If you chose A/B Test in Step 1, the content step shows separate tabs for Variant A and Variant B. Each variant gets its own subject line, preview text, and email content. You'll also set the split percentage — how much of your audience receives each variant before the winner is determined.

Step 4: Review

Before anything goes out, Punchmail gives you a full summary of everything you've configured:

Campaign name and type
Target list, segment, and suppression lists
SMTP server and fallback
Send timing
Subject line and preview text
Recipient count

Sending a Test Email

This is strongly recommended before every send. Enter an email address in the Test Email field and click Send Test. You'll receive the campaign in your inbox with a [TEST] prefix on the subject line so you can check formatting, links, images, and rendering across email clients.

Final Actions

At the bottom of the review step, you have three options:

Button	What it does
Save as Draft	Saves the campaign without sending. You can come back and edit it later.
Schedule	Locks in the scheduled date and time. The campaign will send automatically. (Only appears if you chose “Schedule” in Step 2.)
Send Now	Starts delivering the campaign immediately. A confirmation modal will pop up to make sure you're ready.

Campaign Statuses

Once a campaign exists, it moves through these statuses:

Status	Meaning
Draft	Saved but not yet sent or scheduled. You can still edit everything.
Scheduled	Locked in for a future send time. You can still edit before it fires.
Preparing	Punchmail is building the recipient list and queuing emails. Almost go-time.
Sending	Emails are actively being delivered.
Sent	All emails have been dispatched.
Completed	Delivery is finished and final stats are tallied.
Paused	You manually paused the campaign mid-send. It can be resumed.
Cancelled	You cancelled the campaign. It won't send.

Only campaigns in Draft or Scheduled status can be edited. Once a campaign starts preparing or sending, it's locked.

The Campaign Report

After a campaign sends, click into it to see the full report. This is where you find out how your email performed.

Stat Cards

Five cards across the top give you the headline numbers:

Total Sent — How many emails were delivered.
Opens — Number of opens and the open rate percentage.
Clicks — Number of clicks and the click rate percentage.
Bounces — Number of bounces and the bounce rate percentage.
Unsubscribes — Number of unsubscribes and the rate.

Expanded Metrics

Below the stat cards, you'll find a more detailed breakdown:

Unique vs. Total Opens — Unique counts each subscriber once; total counts every open.
Unique vs. Total Clicks — Same idea for clicks.
Hard vs. Soft Bounces — Hard bounces are permanent failures (bad address); soft bounces are temporary (full inbox).
Complaints — Subscribers who marked the email as spam.
Delivery Rate — Percentage of emails that were successfully delivered.
Click-to-Open Rate — Of the people who opened, what percentage clicked? This is often a better measure of content quality than raw click rate.

A/B Test Results

If this was an A/B test campaign, you'll see comparison cards for each variant showing their respective open rates, click rates, and other metrics. The winning variant gets a Winner badge so you can see at a glance which version performed better.

Engagement Over Time

A chart showing opens and clicks plotted by hour over the first 48 hours after sending. This helps you understand when your audience is most engaged and can inform future send times.

Link Performance

A table listing every link in your email, along with:

URL — The link destination.
Total Clicks — Every click on that link (including repeat clicks).
Unique Clicks — How many different subscribers clicked it.

This tells you exactly which content and calls-to-action resonated most.

Recipients Table

A paginated table showing every subscriber who received the campaign:

Email — The subscriber's email address.
Status — Delivery status for that recipient.
Sent At — When the email was sent.
Opened At — When they first opened (if they did).
Clicked At — When they first clicked (if they did).

Human Only Toggle

At the top of the report, you'll see an “All engagement” vs. “Human only” toggle. Email security scanners (like those built into corporate mail systems) can automatically open emails and click links, inflating your numbers. Switching to “Human only” filters out this bot traffic so you see real engagement from real people.

Export

Click the Export CSV button to download the full recipient data as a spreadsheet. Useful for further analysis, sharing with your team, or importing into other tools.

Tips for Better Campaigns

Always send a test email. It takes 30 seconds and catches issues that are invisible in the editor — broken images, wonky formatting, missing links.
Write your subject line last. It sounds counterintuitive, but once you've written the email body, you'll have a much better feel for what subject line will hook people.
Use preview text intentionally. Many marketers leave this blank, but it's prime real estate in the inbox. Use it to complement (not repeat) your subject line.
A/B test when in doubt. Not sure which subject line will work better? Test it. Even small improvements in open rate compound over time.
Check “Human only” on your reports. Especially if you send to a lot of corporate email addresses, bot traffic can significantly skew your numbers.
Watch the Engagement Over Time chart. If most of your opens happen in the first 2 hours, your audience is engaged. If they trickle in over 48 hours, consider experimenting with different send times.