This guide will walk you through the process of sending your first campaign.

When using Elastic Email, when you send an email to any group of contacts we call that a "campaign". To send a campaign you need a template (which becomes the email body itself) and you need contacts (the recipients who receive the email). Let's start with contacts.

The easiest way to add large groups of contacts to your account at once is to upload a .csv file:

Most spreadsheet software should allow you to export your contact list as a .csv file.

Make sure your .csv file has a minimum of at least one column labeled 'email' that contains a list of email addresses.

Example:
​

email
​company@yourdomain.com

For an overview of your Contacts Screen and other contacts' tools visit this tutorial.

Now that you have contacts in your account, it is time to prepare a template.

There are many templates to choose from and very many ways to customize them:

Now that you have a template ready, it is time to create the campaign:

Once you select a template you will be able to send a test email. Please note, however, that you can send test emails only to contacts that are present and active on  your lists.

Try not to get distracted by all the other bells and whistles as this step is easy. In the Campaign Creator just choose the list of contacts, pick a template, and press "Send". The campaign will submit for processing.

You can read more about interpreting results of your campaign in the Campaign Results article.

If you would like to implement a few settings intended at improving sending time precision after all, you could consider experimenting with the send-time optimization options:

Send to the most engaged contacts first to optimize delivery

This option calculates your recipient engagement based on total emails sent to them vs number of such emails that were actually opened. Based on this calculation, the most engaged contacts will receive your emails first.

Send this campaign to each contacts optimal open time over the next 24 hours

This option adjusts the exact time of your campaign's contacts delivery time. It uses the calculations of your submitted contacts' latest "Last opened" data. Please note that in order for this option to work to its best effect, your contacts would need to already have some history of emails that they received and opened.