Owlat Docs

Campaigns & Reporting

Campaigns are how you send marketing emails to your audience. Whether it's a weekly newsletter, a product launch announcement, or a seasonal promotion, the...

Campaigns are how you send marketing emails to your audience. Whether it's a weekly newsletter, a product launch announcement, or a seasonal promotion, the campaign workflow takes you from content selection through delivery and into performance analysis.

Campaign statuses

Every campaign moves through a lifecycle:

StatusMeaning
DraftBeing configured. Not yet ready to send.
ScheduledConfigured and waiting for the scheduled send time.
SendingCurrently being delivered to recipients.
SentDelivery is complete.
CancelledStopped before or during sending.

Creating a campaign

Step 1: Basics

  1. Open Campaigns > All Campaigns.
  2. Click New Campaign.
  3. Fill in the details:
    • Campaign name — internal reference (recipients don't see this)
    • Subject line — what recipients see in their inbox
    • Preview text — the snippet shown next to or below the subject in most email clients

Preview text is your second chance to get someone to open your email. Use it to expand on the subject line, not just repeat it. For example, if your subject is "Our biggest sale of the year", the preview text might be "Up to 50% off everything, this weekend only."

Step 2: Content

Select the marketing template you want to send. You can preview it before confirming to make sure it looks right.

If you haven't created a template yet, head to Mail > Marketing first. See Email Templates for details.

Step 3: Audience

Choose who receives this campaign:

  • All subscribers — send to every active contact
  • Specific lists — send to one or more Mailing Lists
  • Segments — send to contacts matching Segment rules
  • Combination — mix lists and segments for precise targeting

Recipients are automatically de-duplicated. If a contact appears in multiple selected lists or segments, they'll only receive the email once.

Step 4: Review

Before sending, the review step shows you:

  • Total recipient count
  • Sender identity and domain verification status
  • Subject and preview text confirmation
  • Template preview

This is your final check before delivery. Verify everything looks correct.

Step 5: Delivery

Choose when to send:

  • Send now — delivery begins immediately
  • Schedule — pick a future date and time for delivery

Consider your audience's timezone when scheduling. Sending at 10am in your timezone might be 3am for international recipients. If you have a global audience, test different send times to find what works best.

A/B testing

Campaigns support A/B testing to optimize your subject lines and content. Set up test variants, define a test audience share, and let Owlat pick the winner automatically.

See A/B Testing for the full guide.

Campaign reporting

After a campaign is sent, the reporting tools help you understand performance.

Key metrics

MetricWhat it measures
SentTotal emails delivered to mail servers
DeliveredEmails accepted by the recipient's mail server
Open ratePercentage of delivered emails that were opened
Click ratePercentage of delivered emails where a link was clicked
Hard bouncesPermanent delivery failures (invalid addresses, non-existent domains)
Soft bouncesTemporary delivery failures (full inboxes, server issues)
ComplaintsRecipients who marked the email as spam
UnsubscribesRecipients who opted out via the unsubscribe link

Reporting views

  • Campaigns > Reports — aggregate performance across all campaigns. Useful for spotting trends in your email program.
  • Campaign detail page — click into a specific campaign for detailed metrics, timeline, and per-link click data.

Understanding your results

  • Open rate below 15% usually signals deliverability issues or unengaged audiences. Review your Deliverability settings and audience hygiene.
  • Click rate below 2% suggests your content or CTAs could be stronger. Consider A/B testing different approaches.
  • High complaint rate (above 0.1%) is a red flag. You may be sending to people who didn't opt in, or your content doesn't match what subscribers expected.
  • Rising hard bounce rate means your list needs cleaning. Remove invalid addresses and check your import sources. Hard bounces automatically blocklist the address.
  • Soft bounces are usually temporary. Owlat tracks them separately so you can distinguish between permanent list hygiene issues and transient delivery problems.

Campaign archive

Enable campaign archiving to generate a public "View in Browser" link for each sent campaign. This is useful for recipients whose email clients don't render HTML well, or for sharing campaign content on the web.

How it works

  1. In the campaign settings, toggle Enable archive.
  2. When the campaign is sent, Owlat captures an HTML snapshot of the email content.
  3. A public archive URL is generated and included as a "View in Browser" link at the top of the email.
  4. The archive page displays the email exactly as it appeared at send time — it doesn't change if you later edit the template.

The archive URL uses a unique token per campaign. See the Public Endpoints docs for the GET /archive/:token endpoint details.

Operational tips

  • Warm up new domains — start with smaller batches and gradually increase volume. Sending 50,000 emails from a brand-new domain will trigger spam filters.
  • Maintain list hygiene — regularly remove inactive contacts and process bounces. A clean list improves deliverability for everyone.
  • Use segments for relevance — the more relevant your content is to each recipient, the better your engagement and the lower your complaint rate.
  • Review before every send — check recipient count, subject line, and template preview. A few seconds of review can prevent costly mistakes.

Next steps

Next A/B Testing