Your first campaign

This guide follows the real Campaign Builder from creation through launch — the actual tabs, buttons, and states you'll see, not a simplified "write copy and click send" version.

Create the campaign

Open Campaigns. There's no multi-step creation wizard — the left sidebar has a single always-visible New campaign form: one field, a name, 2–120 characters.

Submitting opens the campaign in DRAFT status with zero steps and zero leads. Everything else — sequence, leads, schedule, sender pool, footer — is configured after creation, inside the tabs. Once you have more than one campaign, this same sidebar lists them as buttons showing {steps} steps · {leads} leads · {status}.

Build the sequence

The Sequence tab has two interchangeable views: List view (the default) and Canvas view. Both edit the same underlying steps.

List view

Each row expands in place — click it to preview whichever variant tab is selected; the pencil icon opens the real edit modal. The badge (A or A–B, A–C…) shows how many variants that step has.

The subject and body fields support merge tags with fallbacks — {firstName|there} falls back to "there" for any contact missing a first name. Each step supports up to five A–E variants for split-testing, and the score badge next to word count is a live spam/quality score, colored green (≥80), amber (≥60), or red below that. Preview opens per-recipient rendering with a lead picker and Gmail/Outlook client tabs, so you can check how the email actually renders before saving.

Sequence Copilot opens an AI generator: pick a goal (Book a meeting, Get a reply, Drive to a link, Re-engage cold leads) and a tone, optionally pull context from a company URL, and it drafts full steps for you to review and edit — it doesn't send anything on its own. Usage is metered per workspace per month; the panel shows {used} of {limit} AI generations used this month when a limit applies.

Canvas view

Canvas view is a visual, drag-and-drop flow builder (not just a linear list) for the same sequence, useful once you want branching logic.

Add leads

Open the Leads tab.

1. Choose a list under Add leads from list.
2. Click Review leads.
3. Read the eligibility summary — ForgeSend checks current eligibility before enrolling anyone, it doesn't add every record blindly.
4. Confirm to add the eligible contacts.

Risky and unverified contacts can still be added — this review doesn't block them, it just tells you they're there. Whether they actually get sent to is decided later by your campaign's send policy and the preflight check.

Track sends in Jobs

The Jobs tab (between Leads and Schedule) is where you watch a campaign actually work once it's live — a paginated, filterable table of every send job for this campaign, plus a preview of jobs about to be created.

Five statuses: PENDING (queued), SENT, FAILED, SKIPPED (contact excluded by policy or state), and HELD — held jobs sit here waiting on a manual approve/reject if you've turned on Pre-send review in Compliance (see below). You can filter by status, by step, and search by lead.

Schedule and sender pool

Open the Schedule tab. This is where sending days, hours, sender inboxes, and risk policy live.

Sender pool defaults to Automatic — every connected, healthy workspace inbox. Switching to a selected pool locks in specific inboxes; once the campaign has launched, the sender pool can no longer be changed. Send pacing (a random delay range between individual sends) is also configured here, alongside the daily cap.

Compliance and footer

Open the Compliance tab.

The {{unsubscribe_url}} placeholder is required in any custom footer — ForgeSend cannot remove the unsubscribe link. Leaving this on Use workspace default falls back to whatever's set on the workspace's own footer.

Check preflight

A persistent Pre-send guardrails strip sits above the tabs, showing a live verdict as you configure the campaign.

The check list is real and covers your domain (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC records), your inboxes (connected, daily capacity, OAuth token health), and the campaign itself (at least one step, active leads present, no invalid leads, risky/unverified lead counts, list verification, the automatic unsubscribe footer, suppression-list conflicts, duplicate emails in the active send pool, and merge-variable coverage). Three verdicts:

• READY — no blockers or warnings; Start is fully enabled.
• WARNING — non-fatal issues found; Start still works, but you'll be asked to confirm.
• BLOCKED — Start is disabled outright until every blocker clears.

Launch review

When preflight isn't BLOCKED, click Start in the campaign header. ForgeSend opens a Review before launch modal before any send job is created — this is the same gate every campaign goes through, not something you can skip.

The button reads Start campaign on a clean READY verdict, or Start campaign anyway if you're launching past warnings — there's no way to reach this screen at all while the verdict is BLOCKED. Confirming moves the campaign to ACTIVE and begins creating real send jobs inside your configured schedule. From there, Pause and Resume appear in the same header spot Start occupied.

Where to go next

Next: Workspaces overview

• Campaigns overview
• Sequences and steps
• Scheduling
• Deliverability overview
• Pre-send preflight