# Campaigns Send one approved set of emails to many saved affiliates from your own inbox, and see who's in, who's left out and why, before anything goes. A campaign sends the same four emails to a group of affiliates you've saved. Each person gets their own copy, and each email opens with a line about their own work. Nothing sends until you approve it. ## Make one Open **Campaigns** and press **New campaign**. Setup is four steps, **Offer**, **Who**, **Emails** and **Launch**, and your draft saves as you go. Leave whenever you like. It reopens where you stopped. **Offer.** One question: **What are you offering?** Pick the answer that fits. - **A share of every sale.** They earn from each customer they send. - **A fee for a post.** You pay for a post or video about you. - **A free account.** They try it. They talk about it if they like it. - **Content you'll reuse.** You pay. You post it yourself. Then name the campaign, which only you see. Below that is your offer, filled in from your setup, and you can check it or change anything for this campaign only. The **Offer check** scores it out of 100 and names the one missing detail that would help most. **Who.** Pick one of your lists, or everyone you've saved and not emailed yet. - The count next to **Everyone saved** is how many of them have an email. A campaign can only write to them. - If none of them has an email, the page says so and **Continue** stays off. Use the link to **Saved** to find their emails first. ### The last two steps **Emails.** Pick who writes them. Press **Show me the first email** to read the one your top lead would get, before the rest are written. [The emails](#the-emails) says more. **Launch.** One last look. [Review and start](#review-and-start) says what it shows. Sending lives here too, as one **Sending plan** line. Its **Edit** link opens every sending setting in place, so nothing is lost. ### Before you start You need an inbox. [Outreach and your inbox](/outreach) shows how. ### How many can send at once Your plan sets how many campaigns can send at once. The trial runs one, Launch runs 3, and Grow has no limit. Only a running or paused campaign uses a slot. A draft is free, so you can write and approve the next campaign while this one sends. Finished or stopped ones don't count. When you press **Start the campaign** and the slot is taken, the page names the campaign that has it. Stop or finish that one first. ### Drafts from before the four steps A draft you started under the old five steps opens in the right place. If you'd picked a type and a name but never confirmed the offer, it opens on **Offer**. If you'd finished the leads, it opens on **Emails**. If you'd got as far as the emails or the sending settings, it opens on **Launch**. Nothing you saved is lost, and your sending settings are all still there under **Edit** on the sending plan. ## Who's in, and who's left out RecruitAffiliates.ai takes a snapshot of the list when you save the campaign. Someone you save tomorrow doesn't join a campaign you approved today. Press **Check again** before you approve to take a new snapshot. Some people are left out, and the page counts each reason: - You marked them **Do not contact**. See [the pipeline page](/pipeline#do-not-contact). - They already work with you. That means they're on your existing affiliates list, or a partner in your AffiliateRail program. - They have no email yet, or their address bounced. - They unsubscribed from RecruitAffiliates.ai mail. That's for good, whichever brand wrote to them. - You're already emailing them, from another campaign or from the composer. - Their card is past **Saved** on your Pipeline. A campaign never writes over a conversation you're already having. - They match one of your own exclusions for this campaign. See below. - They're the same person as another lead on the campaign. One creator can show up as a website, a podcast and an Instagram account. They get one email. It goes to the lead with the strongest proof the address works. The lead list says who it was merged into. ### Leave some people out On the **Who** step, **Leave some people out** lets you add rules for one campaign. You can add sites (like acme.com), handles (like @janedoe), and a pasted list of emails and sites. Your current affiliates are always left out, with or without a rule. Each rule shows how many leads it left out. A rule holds at launch and again before each email. A rule you add later still keeps that person out. A follow-up never goes to them. **Clear all exclusions** removes them. ### What does your brand do? Every first email says what you do, and the writer doesn't guess. No summary and no **Why promote us?** line on your brand? The campaign page asks **What does your brand do?** above the emails. Type one line and save. For example: "Invoicing for freelancers that chases late payments for you." It's saved to your brand, so every campaign uses it. Only an owner or an admin can save it. ### A lead that needs a detail Some emails can't be written without a detail we don't have, such as your commission rate. The lead list then says **Needs:** and the detail, with a **Fix it** link. That lead is skipped. We never send an email with a blank in it. The review screen counts them. If nobody is in, the page links you to **Saved** to find their emails. ### Emails nobody has verified A **verified** email is one a mail server said is real. Others are found but not checked, and they bounce more often. A **bounce** is an email that comes back undelivered. Too many can hurt your domain. The **Who** step says how many of your leads have an email nobody has verified. Then you pick: - **Include them.** This is the default. They get your emails, and a few may bounce. - **Skip them.** Only verified emails get sent. You'll reach fewer people. Skip leaves out catch-all emails too. Their domain takes mail for every address, so a check can't tell if this one is real. It also leaves out an email whose domain has a mail server but whose mailbox nobody checked. The rule runs on our server when the list is saved, so it holds even if the page is out of date. A campaign holds up to 300 people. ## The emails Four emails. The first goes out on day 0. The rest follow on days 2, 6 and 11, but only if the person hasn't replied. Waits of 2, 4 and 5 days. Each wait grows. The whole run takes 11 days, so a campaign you start in the first three days of a trial sends every email before it ends. Four is enough. If they haven't replied by the fourth, they probably won't, so more would only annoy them. That's the default. Each one opens with a line about the creator's own work, then your offer. A reply stops the rest. Any step. **Review new leads before they're emailed** starts on. ### What each email is for Each one has its own job. The review screen names it under every follow-up, so you never read email 3 and wonder why it's there. The first asks. The second follows up on the first and asks "Would you like to join?". The third recaps the offer in a line: what they earn, and a free account to try, with your signup link if you have one. The fourth says it's the last note and asks for nothing. If they want in later, they reply "link". Every fact has a source. The page marks where each one came from. ### Older campaigns and your choices Older campaigns are different. A campaign keeps its saved timing. One made before the days moved from 0, 3, 7 and 12 to 0, 2, 6 and 11 keeps its own days. A campaign made before the four-email sequence shipped keeps the length it had. That is three emails on day 0, 4 and 10, or five if it was made while five was the default. Its last email still says it's the last, and the emails already written for its people stay put. ### Read and edit the emails On a draft campaign's page, **The emails** shows each email as the person gets it: the real subject and body, for one real lead. We write them from your offer and each creator's own content. - **Showing the emails for** picks another lead, so you can see how the emails read for different people. - **Save** keeps your words for that lead. What you save sends word for word. - **Rewrite with AI** writes that email again. With the AI writer off, the same button says **Try another wording**. - **Reset to the original** puts back what we wrote. You also choose: - **A line of your own.** Open **Add a line of your own to every first email**. It goes in the first email only. Leave numbers out of it. The offer's numbers come from your deal terms, so each one has a source. - **The wait before each email.** Under **Edit** on the sending plan, **Follow-up timing**, each email after the first has its own wait, from one to thirty days. Each wait counts from the email before it. The last email has to go within 60 days of the first. The page won't save waits that push it past that. ### With no offer, or with the AI writer No offer, no drafts. The page sends you to **Brand**, then **What you offer**, and you come back here once the offer is saved. Most of each email is fixed text with your facts filled in. A small AI model writes the subject, one sentence and, when code has no opening line to use, that line too. See **How the emails are written** in [Outreach and your inbox](/outreach) for what each of the four says. The **Emails** step lets you pick **Long (recommended)** or **Short**. Got a free account in your offer? Then you pick the first email's ending. **Ask them to join (recommended)** offers the link to join, and **Ask them to try it first** offers the free account to try before deciding. Change either and you approve again. Every email is written again. Each email is written once, so what you preview is exactly what sends, never a fresh version each time you look. A big campaign shows its own progress ("Writing 40 of 120 done.") while the rest of the emails are written in the background. If the writing stops, the page says so. **Approve again** starts it over. ## When it sends Short version: weekdays, in working hours, a few at a time. - Weekdays, 09:30 to 15:30 in each person's own time. You can make the window narrower, never wider. - Never at lunch: nothing sends 12:00 to 13:30 in their time. - Two to five minutes between emails. - At most 30 new people a day from one inbox. That limit is shared by every campaign and every email you send from the composer, so two campaigns can't send 60. - No open or click tracking, on any email: no tracking pixel, no rewritten links, no images. The only links in an email are the ones at the bottom that let the person opt out or see how you found them. Their time zone comes from their country. A country with more than one zone gets the one that keeps those hours inside everyone's working day: - **US:** Central time. That's 10:30 to 16:30 in New York and 07:30 to 13:30 in Los Angeles. - **Canada:** Toronto. **Australia:** Sydney. **Brazil:** São Paulo. **Mexico:** Mexico City. - **No country?** Your brand's time zone. An unknown time zone never holds an email back. Each lead's emails say which clock they follow, for example "Sends 09:30 to 15:30 their time, not 12:00 to 13:30 (Chicago, guessed from US)." ## Review and start The last step, **Launch**, is one screen. The campaign's name sits at the top with its **Draft** label. **Start campaign and review emails** stays at the bottom, the one yellow button. Below the step bar the screen has two panels side by side on a wide screen, and stacked on a phone. On the left are the affiliates in the campaign. Pick one and their first email opens on the right, with the follow-ups and when each one sends. Under each follow-up it says what that email is for. A card under the panels sums up the settings, with an **Edit** link on each. It shows everything you should know before anything sends: - Where it sends from. - Whether that inbox is on your own domain. - How many people get it, and how many don't, with the reason for each. - Three real emails, written for your three best-scored leads, each in full with its spam check. You pick the person on the left to read theirs. If fewer than three people can be emailed, you see fewer. Under each one is the line that goes at the bottom of the sent email, so you can see how a person opts out. Open **Where each fact came from** on an email to see the source of each number and claim in it. - The sending plan: your inboxes, the days and hours, the daily limit with your inbox's ramp, and that it stops on reply. **Edit** opens every sending setting in place. Press **Done** to save them. **What that means** shows the inbox, the timezone and about how many days it takes from launch to the last follow-up. - Tracking is off. - Unsubscribe is on. - How many bounces pause the campaign. One spam complaint pauses it too. - Your signature. ### Read the first email, and every other Tick **I have read the first email** to start. That's the gate, and it covers the first of the three. Read all three. That's the quickest way to see the writing change from one person to the next, and not one template with the names swapped. Start stays off until you do. Change the emails and it asks again. **Read and edit every lead's emails** opens them one lead at a time. **J** is next. **K** is back. Quick. Each email shows where its address came from and which angle it takes, so you can judge it on the spot instead of trusting it. A spam check says **Clear** or names the exact line to fix. Edit it, put it back with **Reset to the original**, or press **Write this one again**. Anything you rewrite counts as edited. **Send a sample to me** sends one email to your own address, marked as a sample so you can't mistake it. Easy. It never counts as a send. ### When something blocks the start Anything that would stop the campaign is listed under **Fix these before you start**, and each line has its fix beside it. **Set your offer**, **Choose an inbox** and **Pick who gets it** take you back to that step of the wizard, so you keep your place. **Choose a plan** opens billing. The sending terms come earlier, on the **Offer** step. If you haven't confirmed them yet, the first step asks you to tick the box that says you send these emails yourself. Then press **Continue**. You only do it once, and each teammate ticks for themselves. ### On a trial Some emails may go out after your trial ends. If so, the last step says it before you start. For example: "Your trial ends on 23 Oct. Emails 3 and 4 go out after that, so they need a plan." It counts from today, using your gaps between emails. **Choose a plan** opens billing. If every email lands inside the trial, you won't see it. ### What Start does **Start campaign and review emails** starts the campaign, then opens the review queue. Nothing sends yet. Every lead's emails wait there for your yes, and the top of the queue says so, like "0 of 20 approved. Nothing has sent." until the first one goes. Still writing the emails? Press Start anyway. The campaign page says "Waiting for the emails to finish, then it starts." You can close the tab. When the last email is written, the campaign starts by itself and the bell says **Your campaign has started**. If it can't start, for example because you've left the team, the campaign page says why. ### Your main domain Sending from an address at your own site? The review warns you. Cold mail can hurt your invoices and support mail. Use a separate domain, or keep it under 20 a day. The campaign sends 20 new people a day from that inbox. That is the cap. Read the warning and set a higher limit of your own if you want more. ## Approve and start The last section is a short summary, one row each, with **Edit** beside every row: - **Who:** how many people are in. - **From:** the inbox it sends from. - **When:** the days and hours, in their time. - **Emails:** how many each person gets. Anything that would stop it sending sits under the summary. Each has its fix. **How sending works** opens the rest: what a reply, a bounce, an unsubscribe and an out-of-office do, and every check that already passed. The server runs those checks again before anything sends: - Your plan can send. - Your offer is set. - Your inbox is connected. - At least one person has a usable email. - Existing affiliates, unsubscribes and people you're already emailing are left out. - Unsubscribe links work. - You approved these emails. Approve, then start: 1. Read the emails above. 2. Tick **I've read the emails, and they look good**. 3. Press **Approve these emails**. 4. **Start the campaign** shows up once you approve. A grey button always says why, right beside it, with a link to the fix. IMAP? Never a blocker. You get a tip instead: Gmail and Microsoft 365 inboxes deliver best and show replies straight away, so connect one if you can. Approving records who approved and when, and locks each person's emails exactly as you saw them, so a deal you change tomorrow leaves them alone. Change the wording or the schedule after that and you'll need to approve again. Emails already sent stay as they were. ## Review every email before it sends Starting a campaign sends nothing by itself. Every lead's emails wait for your yes first, and that goes for every campaign. Open **Review the emails** on the campaign's page, or from the line on Today that says how many emails are waiting. - **See it as it sends.** Each lead shows its whole sequence, one email after another. You see the subject, the body and the opt-out line at the bottom, exactly as the person will read it. **Where each fact came from** opens the page or field behind each line the writer wrote. - **Change anything.** Press **Edit** (the E key does the same), type, and save. What you save sends word for word, and we never write over it. Your edit keeps the same rules as every email. There is always one opt-out line, so if you delete it we put it back and tell you. No tracking links, and no link in the first email unless the campaign includes your website link. **Reset to the original** puts the writer's version back. - **Approve fast.** **Approve this lead** (the A key does the same) says yes to the lead's whole sequence, follow-ups included. **Approve the ones on screen** does a batch. **Approve all remaining** shows how many leads that is and asks you to confirm. If more leads arrived since you looked, it stops and asks you to look again. The J key moves to the next lead and K to the one before. **Skip this lead** (the S key) leaves that person out. - **Undo.** Approving or skipping shows a short message with **Undo**. Undo on an approve takes the yes back, and the lead waits in the list again. Undo on a skip brings them back. After each one the next lead opens, and when none are left it says **All reviewed**. - **Pull back.** Under the list, **Approved, first email still to send** names the leads you approved whose first email hasn't gone. Press **Pull back** to take the yes back. Once their first email has gone it can't be pulled back, and Undo says so. - **Skip after they've started.** A lead already sending (say a follow-up was rewritten after a reply) asks before it's skipped, because stopping their emails can't be undone. - **Write one again.** **Write this one again** asks the writer for fresh wording. A lead you already approved comes back to the list, because the new words are words you haven't read. - **Needs a look.** The first email opens on something real from the person's own content. If we can't check a piece of theirs, or find only its title, the lead is marked **Needs a look**. One line says why. A plain yes never reaches it, not even **Approve all remaining**. You have three choices. Write the first line yourself with **Edit**. Press **Send anyway** to send it as it is. Or skip the lead. The campaign page's list and the emails picker carry the same label. - **Follow-ups come back too.** If a reply means a follow-up has to change, the new version waits in the list with a note saying why. The old one doesn't go out. Nothing sends for a lead you haven't approved. The sender checks this itself at the moment of sending, so it holds even if you never open the list. An approved lead is scheduled from the day you approve it, inside your daily limit. The campaign's page shows how many emails are waiting, how many leads are approved and edited, and how many have sent. ## What stops it - **A reply** stops that person's emails and moves them to **Replied**. RecruitAffiliates.ai never answers for you. - **A bounce** stops their emails and marks the address bad. - **An unsubscribe** stops every RecruitAffiliates.ai email to them, for good. - **An out-of-office** pauses them until the date they give. ## Pause, resume, stop - **Pause** holds every email that hasn't gone yet. Everything already sent is kept. - **Resume** runs every check again first. If your inbox disconnected, reconnect it, then resume. - **Stop for good** ends it. People who weren't emailed yet never are, and you can't restart it. If your inbox disconnects, or your plan stops allowing sending, the campaign pauses itself and the page says why. ## Add someone to a running campaign You don't have to wait for the next campaign. Press **Add to campaign** from any of these, and pick a running, paused or finished one: - A row on **Discover**. - A bulk selection on **Discover** or on **Saved**. - A lead's own profile. - A card on **Pipeline**. They start fresh. The person you add gets email one on the day they're added, never partway through and never backdated to when the campaign started. RecruitAffiliates.ai checks the same things it checks when you first build a campaign's list, so nobody gets added twice or against their wishes: - They haven't unsubscribed, and you haven't marked them **Do not contact**. - They're not on a suppression list. - If the campaign only takes verified emails, theirs is one. - Nobody on your account has emailed them already. - They're not in another running or paused campaign. - The campaign has room. A campaign holds up to 300 people. Then the daily limit applies. Each inbox sends to at most 30 new people a day, across every campaign and the composer. On a busy day, they wait their turn. A **stopped** campaign isn't in the list at all. A campaign past its end date says so and adds nobody. So does one with changes you haven't approved yet. Approve them first. A draft takes people on its own **Leads** step instead. ### New leads to review Someone you add doesn't go straight into the send queue, because every lead's emails wait for your yes (see **Review every email before it sends**). With **Review new leads before they're emailed** on, they also land in **New leads to review** on the campaign's page, with their emails already written. Read them, then press **Approve** to send them as written, or **Skip** to leave them out. Turn that setting off and an added lead waits in **Review the emails** instead. ### A finished campaign can start again Add someone to a campaign that's already **finished** and it starts running again, the same way a launch does. It takes one of your plan's campaign slots, and refuses if none is free. Nobody else on that campaign gets a new email. Only the person you just added does. ## What you see The campaign's page counts people. At the top are the two numbers you plan with: - **Positive replies**: "1 in 34 emailed". For every 34 people you email, one says yes or asks a question. - **Joins**: "1 in 53 emailed". For every 53 people you email, one joins your program. Under 100 people emailed, the page adds "Early numbers", because at that size one reply more or less moves either number by a third. Trust them later. Below that, it shows how many you emailed, and how many of them bounced, replied, replied positively, joined or unsubscribed from your mail. Positive means a yes, a question or a request about pay. Each counts once. Each person's line says which email they're on and when the next one goes, worked out from the emails themselves. Under the numbers, the page says them as sentences, with a range: - "4 positive replies from 30 people emailed." - "Likely somewhere between 2 and 9 for every 30 emailed." Why a range? Small numbers jump about. Let's say you email 30 people and 4 say yes. The next 30 might give you 2, or 9, by chance alone. The range is worked out with a standard method (the Wilson interval), so you can see how much to trust the number. It gets narrower as you email more people. You won't see percentages, open counts or a "winner": - **No percentages.** "13%" from 30 emails looks more certain than it is. - **No opens.** Apple opens every email itself to load it, so an open doesn't tell you who read it. - **No best or worst version until about 1,000 people.** Below that, a few replies either way flips which version looks best. Until then the page says it's too early, and past it, it says "too close to call" whenever the numbers overlap. Change one big thing per test, so you know what made the difference. ### Joins that never reply Plenty of creators read your email, skip the reply and sign up on your [program page](/program-page). Those count as joins too. A join is a creator on this campaign who: - applied on your program page, and you didn't decline them, or - has a deal you marked as active. Someone who does both is still one join. How do we know an application came from this campaign? We check, in this order: 1. **The join link.** Each campaign has its own link to your program page, ending in `?ref=` and a six-letter code. It's on the campaign's page once your program page is on. 2. **The code.** The same six letters. A creator can type it in the form's **Code** box. 3. **Their link.** The website or channel they gave is someone this campaign emailed. 4. **Their email address.** It's one this campaign emailed. 5. **Their company.** Their address is at the same company domain as one you emailed. Never Gmail, Outlook or another free mail service, because two strangers on gmail.com aren't the same person. The last three only count someone you actually emailed. Two campaigns emailed them? The most recent one gets the join. And a stranger who comes through your link, perhaps because a creator forwarded your email, still counts in the campaign's total. They just sit outside both versions of a test, since we never emailed them either version. ### Test two versions of email 1 On a draft, open **Test two versions of email 1** under the emails. Version B can change the subject, your own line, or the whole first email, and any box you leave empty keeps what version A says. If your offer has a free account, B can also swap the ask: try it free first, instead of join. - Half your leads, picked at random, get version B. Each person keeps theirs for good, and so does anyone you add later. - Only email 1 changes. - Set the test up before you start. Once the first email goes, B is fixed, because changing it halfway would mix two tests in one count. Want to try something new? Copy the campaign. Once it sends, the page puts the two versions side by side: emailed, replied, positive and joined, with the "1 in" numbers under each. Under 100 people emailed on a side, it says it's too early to call. ## When someone says yes Move them to **Agreed** on the pipeline and settle the terms on the deal. Then give them a link that tracks their sales, from whatever affiliate tool you use. No tool yet? The deal offers AffiliateRail, which tracks their sales and pays them from your own PayPal or Wise. It's optional. Any affiliate tool works, and **No thanks** closes the offer for good. ## Save the shape as a template Happy with how a campaign is set up? Press **Save as template** on its page. A template keeps the offer, the sending settings, the type, the wording style and the emails themselves. It never keeps who's in it: no audience, no inbox, no approval. On the campaigns list, press **New from template** and pick one. RecruitAffiliates.ai opens a fresh draft with that same shape, ready for you to pick who it goes to and which inbox sends it. Editing the template afterwards never changes a draft already made from it, and editing that draft never changes the template. ## Archive and copy a campaign On the campaigns list, press **Archive** on a campaign you're done with. It's hidden from the list, not deleted, and an **Undo** link shows for a few seconds. To see archived ones, press **Show archived**, and **Unarchive** puts one back. A campaign that's sending right now can't be archived, so its row shows **Pause to archive** instead, with a link to the campaign. A paused, stopped, finished or draft campaign can be archived. Press **Duplicate** to start a new draft called "Copy of" and the campaign's name. It keeps the offer, the emails, the schedule and the inbox. It leaves out the people, so nobody has been added and nothing has been sent. ## Which mailbox it sends from A campaign's page says **Sent from** and the address. If no mailbox is connected, it says **No mailbox connected** and links to **Inboxes** in Settings. ## Your setup checklist Your first email to any affiliate, from a campaign or from the composer, ticks **Send your first sequence** on the checklist. It ticks once and stays ticked.