Quick start

This is the shortest path from an empty CRM to email going out. Each step links to the page that covers it in full. The same steps appear in the Finish setting up checklist in the CRM’s sidebar, which ticks itself off as you go.

1. Set your business details and sending defaults

Every marketing email needs a real sender and a postal address in its footer.

1. Go to Settings → Business profile and fill in your business name and address.
2. Go to Settings → Email defaults and set the From name and From address. Use an address on your own domain — Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook reject or junk bulk mail sent as a free mailbox address from another server.
3. Under Mailer, check that a mailer plugin is connected. If none is, install the recommended one, then use Send a test email to see how your messages arrive.

More: Email defaults.

2. Add your contacts

Choose one:

• Import a CSV. Go to Contacts → Import, drop in your file, match its columns to contact fields and start the import. It runs in the background. See Import contacts.
• Add people by hand. Go to Contacts and choose New contact. See Contacts.

Consent

Only import people as Subscribed if they agreed to receive your email. Everyone else should come in as Transactional or Pending.

3. Create a list

Lists are what people subscribe to, and what an unsubscribe removes them from.

1. Go to Contacts → Lists and choose New list.
2. Give it a name, such as Newsletter. Turn on Show on the preference page if subscribers should be able to join or leave it themselves.
3. Add contacts to it — during an import with Add to lists, or from the contacts table with the bulk action Add to lists.

More: Lists.

4. Send your first campaign

1. Go to Emails → Campaigns and choose New campaign.
2. In To, choose the list you made. Only contacts whose status is Subscribed receive a campaign; the composer shows how many can be emailed.
3. Write a subject line and the email.
4. Open Review, fix anything marked in red, then Slide to send. To send later, choose Schedule first and pick a date and time.

More: Campaigns.

5. Start an automation from a recipe

Automations look after one contact at a time, unattended.

1. Go to Automations and choose New automation.
2. Under Or start from a recipe, pick one — Welcome series, for example, sends three emails over a week to everyone who joins a list.
3. On the canvas, open the trigger and choose which list starts it. Read each email step and make the words yours.
4. Slide to activate. An automation with a required setting left empty will not turn on until you fill it in.

More: Automations.

Nothing sending?

Campaigns and automations run on WordPress cron. On a quiet site that can run late — the Dashboard warns you when it does, and Settings → Tools has the server cron lines that fix it.