Sending your first email campaign

Email campaigns in SAGE work like this: SAGE drafts the message from a short prompt or Today's list item, you pick the audience, and you either send now or schedule for later. Delivery runs through SAGE's email rails, and every recipient gets a signed unsubscribe link plus Gmail's one-click unsubscribe header.

Draft the message

Open Campaigns → New campaign. Give SAGE a brief: "New arrivals from Image Comics this week," "Record Store Day pre-order heads-up," whatever's happening. SAGE drafts a subject line, preheader, and body grounded in your catalog, customers, and recent dashboard context. Edit freely; the draft is a starting point, not a final word.

Pick your audience

The audience picker shows your SAGE customer list, plus any tag filters you've set up (see Import your customers). You can send to everyone, narrow to a tag like pull-list or recent-buyer, or use a Mailchimp-imported audience after it syncs into SAGE. SAGE shows the expected recipient count before you send.

What about Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is no longer the default campaign sender. Connect Mailchimp if you want SAGE to import contacts, tags, unsubscribe status, cleaned addresses, and audience activity. SAGE can then send the campaign itself, which lets shops stop paying for Mailchimp if they only needed it for basic email delivery.

Send now or schedule

You have two choices: Send now fires immediately, or Schedule send lets you pick a date and time. SAGE's server-side scheduler queues the campaign and sends it at the moment you picked, whether your browser is open or not.

Review and test sends

You do not have to send a test email before sending to customers. Import your customers, review the draft, check the recipient count, and press Send now when you're ready. That Send click is the approval step for the first few campaigns.

Send test to me is there when you want to see the email in your own inbox first. It is optional, and it never contacts the customer list.

After sending

SAGE tracks sent count, bounces (hard bounces mark the customer unsubscribed automatically), unsubscribes, and basic engagement. A hashed copy of every sent campaign is retained for 90 days so you can review what went out.