Create your first email campaign
Send your first email campaign in Mailsoftly. Start from the campaign list, choose a template, write your email, confirm recipients, and schedule.
Sending your first campaign in Mailsoftly takes just a few minutes. This guide walks you from an empty campaign list to a scheduled send.
You will open the campaign list, pick a template to start from, write and design your email, send yourself a test, confirm who receives it, and schedule the send. Each step shows the screen you should see.
Open your campaign list
Click Campaigns in the left menu to open Email Campaigns, where every draft and sent campaign lives together. Tabs across the top let you filter by All Campaigns, Sent, Draft, and Scheduled, each with a live count, and every card shows its status so you can tell a Draft from something already Sent or Scheduled.
To begin, press Create New Campaign at the top right. You can also search, filter by contact list, or sort the list from the same screen once you have more campaigns.
Open your campaigns in Mailsoftly
Pick a template to start from
The Create Campaign window asks how you want to build the email. You have two choices:
- Plain Text: a simple text based email that is fast and lightweight, good for personal notes.
- Design: a rich email with templates, images, and styling, best for newsletters and announcements.
Choose Design and the Pick a Template section opens. Templates are grouped so a saved layout, a recently sent one, and a popular one each have a place, and hovering a card gives you Preview and Use this template. If nothing fits, the Start Blank tile builds from an empty canvas. Pick the closest match, since you can change the colours, images, and text in the next step.
Write and design your email
This is where your campaign takes shape. On the campaign screen, fill in the setup rows on the left: Recipient List, From, Reply To, Subject, and Preview text. As you type a subject, a counter reminds you that subjects under 60 characters show fully in most inboxes.
The Reply To menu lists your teammates, plus a Reply-to addresses group with any external inboxes you added on the Senders page, so replies can land with someone who has no Mailsoftly login at all. An address whose owner has not clicked its confirmation email yet shows as pending verification: you can keep drafting with it, but the campaign will not send until it is confirmed. Adding these addresses is covered in Authenticate your sending domain.
To build the body, open the visual editor. Drag blocks from the left, such as Columns, Button, Heading, Paragraph, and Image, and click any block to edit its text, swap an image, or adjust spacing. Use Theme colors in the top bar to apply your brand palette, and press Save and Continue when the design is ready. For the full walkthrough, see the email design guide.
Back on the campaign screen, the branded Preview panel shows exactly what your subscribers will see, and the Spam and Delivery Check scores your email so you can fix anything that might hurt inbox placement.
Mailsoftly also sets the email subscription from your recipient list, shown as a quiet line, "Sending to subscribers of:", that names the subscription and adds "(from your selected list)", with a change link if you want a different one. Recipients who unsubscribed from that subscription are skipped automatically, so you never message someone who opted out.
Keep your subject line short and specific. A clear subject earns more opens than a clever one.
Send yourself a test
Before this goes to anyone else, send it to yourself. Use the Send Test Email button in the top bar of the campaign screen, then open the message in your real inbox and check the subject line, the layout, and every link.
Seeing the email in a real inbox catches small issues, such as a broken image or an unlinked button, before your subscribers do.
Open the test on your phone too. Most subscribers read email on mobile, so it is worth confirming the layout holds up on a small screen.
Confirm who receives it
Next to the Recipient List row, open Preview recipients. The Recipients window names the list and its count, then lists the real addresses that will get this campaign, with a Search by name or email box so you can look up anyone. Open list jumps to the full contact list if you want to make changes. A list that fills automatically carries a small bell pill showing its linked email subscription, and the recipient picker labels it with its contact count and that subscription name, so you can see at a glance which list feeds which subscription.
If anything looks off, fix it now. It is far easier than sending a correction later.
Schedule the send
Before you press send, it is worth a look at the From address, the reply-to and the preview text sitting under the subject line: Set your sender, reply-to and preview text covers all three, and Send, schedule or pace your campaign covers the sending window itself in more detail than this step does.
When you are ready, press Review and Send. The Review before sending window gathers your final options in one place: Send Test Email, A/B Test Subject, Send Gradually, Schedule for later, and Send Now.
For a larger list, choose Send Gradually to open Manage Gradual Sending, where you set a Number of emails per day, a Start date, a Send Time, and the Days to send. A sending plan then shows when the campaign starts and finishes, so you release it in steady batches instead of all at once, which is gentler on your sending reputation.
Once a campaign is scheduled, its page carries a View in calendar pill that jumps straight to the day it will go out.
The campaigns screen has a list and calendar toggle in the filter bar. Calendar view lays your drafts, scheduled sends, and past campaigns out by date, which makes it much easier to plan a month ahead and spot two sends landing on the same morning.
That is it. Your first campaign is on its way, and your next one will be even faster.
Ready to try it in your own account?
Free to start with your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 account. No credit card required.
