Create & send campaigns
Distribute your stories and communications with multiple recipients via email campaigns
Sharing stories, press releases, and announcements with multiple contacts is a core part of the Prezly workflow. This is where campaigns come in.
Step 1. Compose your campaign
The campaign composer is where you write and design your email. To open it, go to Campaigns in the left navigation and click Create campaign.
In step 1 of the campaign composter, you can define who the campaign is from, add its content, and send a test to yourself or a colleague.
Select sender address
Use the From dropdown to choose your sender address. By default, you’ll have a Prezly address (e.g., name@domain.prezlymail.com) ready for Campaigns and Pitches, and replies will still go to your usual inbox.
You can add a custom email address (e.g. name@company.com) and set it as your default sender. See the Help article below more more information.
Add email content
Type or paste your email content into the composer to build your message, then personalize it using the available options.
Personalization options
Type "%" to insert dynamic fields like first name, last name, or full name. For first name, you can set a fallback to use when the contact doesn’t have a first name.
Add multimedia
To embed multimedia in your campaign – such as images, videos, PDFs, and more – start a new line in the composer and click the [+] button to choose the media type you want to add.
You can also type a shortcut with a forward slash, e.g. /video.
Embed online content
You can also embed online content into your campaign – for example, a YouTube video, social media post, or web bookmark. To do this, simply copy the URL of the content you want to embed, and paste this onto a new line in the campaign composer. Prezly will automatically pull that content into the body of your email.
Add a button or CTA
To add a button (CTA) in your campaign, click the [+] button (or type /button) in the editor and choose Button. Then add a label and a link (the button won’t appear without a link), and adjust styling and alignment under styling options.
Add a signature
You can add an email signature by embedding a site contact into your email body by clicking the [+] button (or type /contact) in the editor and choose Site contact. Then pick you contact, and select Signature as the card layout option.
Add a Prezly story
At the bottom of the campaign composer, click the Add a story to your campaign button to insert a story that you have published on a Prezly site.
When you click the button, a dropdown opens where you can search and select the story to add.
- Site: By default, you’ll see stories from all sites, but you can filter to a specific site
- Search: You can search by your story title
- Stories: Click a story card to add it to your campaign
- Create/manage stories: These quick links let you open the story editor or go to the stories grid
After you add the story, you can choose how it displays in your campaign. Click on the story and use the settings panel that opens to adjust its display and options.
- Content: Choose whether to show the full story or an introduction with a “Read more” button that links to your site
- Site header / footer: Add a header and/or footer to your story embed
- None: Shows only you story content, no site logo, no extra links
- Standard (default): Shows the site logo above the story, and a footer below it with latest stories, media galleries, search, and social links
- Full: Shows a full header with logo and a link to latest stories, plus a footer with the site about information, contacts, latest stories, media galleries, search, and social links
- Story alignment: This aligns your story to the left, center (default), or the right of your recipients email client
Colors and alignment follow your site branding, with further customization and setup available in Branding settings.
Unsubscribe links and GDPR compliance
All campaigns must include an unsubscribe link to comply with the GDPR.
- When a story is attached attached to the campaign: the unsubscribe link is added automatically and unsubscribes only from that newsroom’s emails
- When there is no story attached to the campaign: you can manually add an unsubscribe link, which unsubscribes from all emails sent from your Prezly account. To do this, highlight the text you want to add your unsubscribe link to, click on the hyperlink button, and select Link to unsubscribe under Common links
Send a test campaign
You can see how your campaign will look in inboxes by sending a test of it to yourself or a colleague. Fill in the email you want to send your test campaign to in Step 1 of the campaign composer, and click Send test.
Test emails normally contain the "TEST" word before the subject, so avoid sending it to your contacts. If you need to send a 1-to-1 pitch, just use our Pitch feature.
Step 2. Select recipients
The campaign step 2 is all about picking the contacts you want to send your campaign to.
Select contacts individually
You can use search and filters to find a specific contact to add to your campaign, and select it by checking the checkbox on the left (1) then clicking the + Add to campaign button (2).
Select multiple contacts at once
You can also multi-select contacts by clicking on multiple checkboxes on the left (1), or by selecting all the contacts by clicking the checkbox on the table header (2), followed by a click on + Add to campaign button (3).
Contact "Views" can be a game changer on speed. If you have saved views, you can pick it at the bottom of the table (1), multi-select contacts by checking the checkbox on the table header (2) and click + Add to campaign (3) to add a pre-selected group of contacts to a campaign at once.
Once you selected your contacts, and added them as recipients, click the Review recipients button at the top-right of the page.
Step 3. Review your recipients
This step flags any potential issues with your recipient list, such as:
- Bounced or unsubscribed contacts
- Contacts missing email addresses
- Duplicates
Reviewing this list and updating the affected contacts will help you avoid delivery errors.
You can proceed to the next step and send the campaign even if it includes bounced contacts as Prezly will automatically remove them.
Bounced contacts are automatically reviewed by Prezly once per day, so you always get a clear picture of who is likely to receive your campaign.
Step 4. Send or schedule
This is the last step before your campaign is scheduled or sent. At the top of the page you'll possibly see a block with any possible error that you campaign might have.
- Purple/Indigo → Informational only, no actions needed from your side
- Yellow/Red → Something is blocking your campaign from being sent, there're probably some fixes you need to do.
Send options
Once everything looks good, you can:
- Send immediately: Send the campaign right after you click the button
- Schedule for later: Allows you to pick the date and time when the campaign should be sent, and then sends it automatically on that date
You can have an overview of the campaign at the right side of the screen where you can confirm the campaign subject (and a link to edit it), the total number of recipients (and the ability to add or review them).
Configure campaign reporting
In this final step you also have the ability to enable or disable tracking for the campaign. This will directly impact on your campaign report.
- Track open rates: This option allows you to see/know when a recipient has opened the campaign on their email client
- Track clicks: Toggling this on allows you to know if a recipient has clicked any link inside the sent campaign
These options can't be changed after the campaign is sent.
FAQs
Can I add a recipient to a sent campaign?
Unfortunately, at this time, you can't add contacts to a campaign that has already been sent – but you can easily duplicate your sent campaign and send that to additional recipients from your campaign report page or from the campaigns page.
Access both options using the [···] menu on any sent campaign preview in your campaigns grid, or the Send again dropdown in the top-right of the campaign report page.
If you're sending your campaign to just one additional person, you might want to select the send pitch option instead.
Can I delete an email Campaign from my dashboard?
Sent Campaigns that were already sent from the platform aren't possible to be removed as we need to keep those records to reflect the correct information for both our customers and their stakeholders.
Draft campaigns can be removed by going to the Campaigns page, clicking on the "•••" button that appears on the right-hand side of the campaign, there click on "Delete Campaign" to remove the draft campaign.