Send a bulk email campaign

Where a sequence is a per-person cadence, a campaign is one message sent to a whole audience at once — a product update, an offer, a newsletter. In KudosCRM you design it in a drag-and-drop MJML builder that renders responsively and survives Outlook, then send it through SendGrid, Gmail, or your own SMTP.

This guide covers picking the audience, composing the body, sending a test, and reading the analytics afterward. Just as importantly, it covers how unsubscribes and the suppression list keep you compliant — because a bulk send that ignores opt-outs is a deliverability problem waiting to happen.

Who this is for

Marketers and growth-minded reps sending one-to-many email, and admins who care about deliverability and compliance.

Before you start

• A sending channel connected — SendGrid, Gmail, or SMTP.
• An audience to send to (see 'How to build an audience segment'). Campaigns send to a lead audience.
• Your unsubscribe and sender details set, so the footer and one-click header are correct.

What the analytics really measure — and what we don't do
Open, click, and bounce tracking are real and computed from actual events — and opens are privacy-aware: opens that Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) pre-fetches are excluded, so your open rate isn't inflated by proxy loads. Every send includes an RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe header plus a suppression list, so anyone who opts out is honored automatically across future sends. There is no SMS channel — campaigns are email only. AI assist can draft copy with Claude, but you review before sending.

Compose, test, and send

1. Choose your audience
   Pick the lead audience the campaign goes to. Audiences resolve to a live segment of leads from your filters, so the recipient list reflects who matches right now — not a stale export from last month.
2. Build the email in the drag-and-drop builder
   Lay out the message in the MJML builder — blocks, images, buttons, columns. It renders responsively on mobile and is built to survive Outlook's quirks. A send-time sanitizer preserves your responsive styling when the email actually goes out.
3. Write the copy (with AI assist if you want)
   Write your subject and body, or use AI assist to draft a first version with Claude and edit from there. Personalization tokens drop in the recipient's name and other fields so a bulk send still reads personally.
4. Send a test to yourself
   Fire a test send to your own inbox to check rendering and that personalization resolves. This is the moment to catch a broken merge field or an image that doesn't load before it reaches the whole audience.
5. Send the campaign
   Send now or schedule it. The campaign goes out through your connected channel (SendGrid, Gmail, or SMTP). Every message carries the one-click unsubscribe header and footer automatically, and anyone already on the suppression list is skipped.
6. Read the analytics
   After it sends, the campaign shows real computed analytics — delivered, opens (with Apple MPP opens excluded), clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. Use them to judge subject lines and content, and to clean bounced addresses out of future sends.

What you get

• One responsive, Outlook-safe email sent to a live lead audience in a few clicks.
• Honest open, click, and bounce numbers — with Apple MPP opens excluded so your open rate isn't inflated.
• One-click unsubscribe and a suppression list that keep you compliant automatically.
• A reusable design you can clone for the next send.

Frequently asked questions

How does KudosCRM actually send the email?

Through the channel you connect — SendGrid, Gmail, or your own SMTP. The send is real, and so is the tracking: delivered, opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes are all computed from actual events, not estimates.

Are the open rates accurate given Apple Mail Privacy Protection?

Yes — they're privacy-aware. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection pre-fetches tracking pixels for many users, which inflates naive open counts. KudosCRM excludes those MPP-driven opens, so the open rate you see reflects real human opens rather than proxy loads.

How are unsubscribes handled?

Every campaign includes an RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe header and footer, so a recipient can opt out in a single click. Opt-outs go onto a suppression list that's honored automatically on all future sends — you don't have to scrub them by hand.

Who does a campaign send to?

A campaign sends to a lead audience — a segment of leads resolved from your audience filters. Build the audience first, then point the campaign at it; the recipient list reflects who matches at send time.

Can I send a bulk text message instead of email?

No. KudosCRM has no SMS channel — campaigns are email only, sent via SendGrid, Gmail, or SMTP. If you need a text touch, you'd handle that outside the product today.

Learn more

• Email campaigns (feature) — Everything bulk campaigns and analytics do, on the feature page.
• Email builder (feature) — The drag-and-drop MJML builder, responsive and Outlook-safe by design.