Campaigns

Campaigns are automated, multi-step email sequences (often called drip campaigns). Once you enroll a contact in a campaign, the system automatically sends each email in the sequence at the configured intervals, requiring no manual work from you.

[SCREENSHOT PLACEHOLDER: The campaign details builder view showing email steps and timing settings]

Pro Plan Access & Workspace Feature Toggle

Campaigns is a Pro Plan feature ($99/mo). Workspace administrators can enable or disable the Campaigns module for their workspace in Workspace Settings → Workspaces.

[SCREENSHOT PLACEHOLDER: The Pro Plan upgrade landing page for Campaigns]

When Campaigns Is Disabled

If the Campaigns module is turned off for your workspace:

• Navigation & Links: A lock icon appears next to Campaigns in the main sidebar and mobile menu.
• Paywall Landing Page: Navigating directly to /campaigns or a campaign details page presents an upgrade landing page explaining Pro Plan drip sequence features with an Upgrade Workspace to Pro Plan action button.
• Dashboard Metrics: The Campaigns metric card on the main dashboard displays a Pro badge with an Upgrade to Unlock prompt.
• Contact Details: The Campaigns section and tab are hidden from Contact detail views.
• Automated Enrollments & Background Processing: Automated campaign enrollments from trigger rules are safely skipped. Background sending workers pause step dispatching while preserving existing contact positions so sequences resume cleanly when re-enabled.

Campaign Timing

Gordon CRM uses enrollment-relative evergreen timing. Steps are scheduled as a delay relative to when a contact was enrolled.

• Example:
  • Step 1: Sends immediately (0-hour delay) upon enrollment.
  • Step 2: Sends 3 days after enrollment.
  • Step 3: Sends 7 days after enrollment.

Every contact moves through the same sequence, starting from their unique enrollment timestamp.

Creating and Managing Steps

Each step in a campaign represents a single email in the sequence.

1. Navigate to Email → Campaigns and click New Campaign (or click an existing one).
2. Click Add Step to create a new email.
3. Configure the step settings:
   • Step Timing UI: The step editor features an intuitive natural-language sentence layout to configure when the email should send.
     • Toggle between immediately (sends upon enrollment) and after a delay (sends after a specified number of minutes, hours, or days).
     • Under the hood, the system ensures the timing is always saved as a delay.
     • Numeric delay inputs are automatically sanitized (stripping decimals, letters, and signs, and falling back to 1 on blur).
   • Subject & Body: Compose your email. You can use Merge Fields to personalize the content.
   • Sender: Select the sending identity for this step (defaults to the workspace default).
4. Click Save.

Timeline badges display enrollment-relative descriptions (e.g. Immediately upon enrollment or 3d after enrollment) for a clear preview of the sequence.

You can reorder steps, edit their contents, or delete steps from a campaign at any time. If you delete a step, the scheduling engine automatically recalculates the next send times for any contacts currently waiting on that step.

Step Card Actions

Each campaign step card displays management actions (Test, Edit, and Delete):

• Desktop Layout: Actions are displayed as clean icon buttons with accompanying text labels for consistent, clear identification.
• Responsive Mobile Layout: On small screens, action buttons stack vertically below the step content to optimize tap targets and prevent horizontal layout overflow.

Testing Steps

You can send a test email for any campaign step individually directly from the step editor card:

• Test Button: Click the inline Test button on any step card.
• Availability: The Test button is enabled as long as the step has a subject and body configured.
• Send Test Form: Renders the shared Send Test Email form, allowing you to select a preview contact for merge-tag resolution and configure the target recipient address.

The Campaigns List

The Campaigns dashboard (/email/campaigns) lists all campaigns configured in your workspace in a searchable table. Campaigns are represented by the Mails icon (representing email sequences) across the main navigation menu, dashboards, lists, metrics cards, and activity logs. The columns displayed are:

• Campaign Name: The title of the sequence.
• Steps: The number of email steps configured in the campaign.
• Category: Marketing (emerald-50 badge) or Transactional (sky-50 badge) category badges matching the broadcast list.
• Status: The active lifecycle state (Draft, Active, Paused, Archived).
• Enrolled: The total count of contacts enrolled in the campaign.

Enrolling Contacts

Contacts can enter a campaign in two ways:

• Manually: Open any Contact detail page, find the Campaigns card, click Enroll, and select the campaign.
• Automatically: Set up an auto-enrollment rule directly on the Campaign details page (which allows automatically enrolling contacts based on forms, products, tag changes, deal movements, product refunds, etc.) or configure a general-purpose rule on the Automations page.

Managing Campaign Status & Status Transparency

You can control the campaign lifecycle using its status:

• Draft: Used while configuring steps. No emails are sent.
• Active: The campaign is live. The background engine will process due steps and enrollments.
• Paused: Temporarily suspends sending. Enrollments are preserved in their exact state. When you resume the campaign by marking it Active, any steps that became due while paused are dispatched immediately, and future steps resume their normal schedule.
• Archived: Deactivates the campaign permanently.

Status Banners & Warning Badges

To prevent confusion when automation rules target inactive campaigns or disabled modules:

• Automation Rule Details: Opening an automation rule that enrolls contacts into a paused, draft, or archived campaign displays a prominent warning banner explaining that no emails are currently being sent and that enrolled contacts will resume once activated.
• Disabled Module Warnings: If an automation rule targets a campaign while the Campaigns module is disabled, a lock banner informs you that enrollments for that campaign are currently skipped.
• Dependency Drawer Badges: In component dependency lists (such as forms or tags linked to campaigns), items render inline status badges—including Campaigns Disabled (lock badge) and Campaign Paused (warning badge)—for clear visibility into active sequence health.

Campaign Enrollment Monitoring

When you view a Campaign's detail page, the Enrolled Contacts tab lists all contacts registered in the sequence along with their current status:

• Active: Currently moving through the campaign steps.
• Completed: Successfully finished all steps in the sequence.
• Skipped Unsubscribed (amber/gray badge): The contact was skipped during step execution due to active suppressions or marketing opt-outs.
• Cancelled: Manually removed or automatically unenrolled (e.g., due to a product refund or Eventbrite ticket cancellation).
• Failed: Sending failed (automatically retried up to 3 times before setting this status).

Permissions

All workspace members can create, configure, and manage campaigns. Deleting campaign records is restricted to Admins and Owners.

Related

• Automations — Enroll contacts automatically using triggers
• Merge Fields — Insert personalized contact and event tokens
• Sender Identities — Set up custom sending domains
• Technical Reference: Email — Database schemas, campaign timing calculations, and status codes