Setting up your first campaign

Not available yet

Email campaigns aren't available in Venuesmith yet. Today Venuesmith publishes to Instagram and Facebook. This page describes how email will work when it launches.

This walkthrough takes you from a blank workspace to a sent email campaign, end to end.

Step 1 - Link your audience

You need an audience before you can send anything. Two options:

Option A: CaptiFi WiFi guests

1. Go to Email → Sites
2. Click Sync from CaptiFi
3. Your CaptiFi venues appear with their subscriber counts
4. Each site links to a Venuesmith location automatically (match by name) - check the linkage on the site row

Option B: Mailchimp audience

Follow the Mailchimp integration guide to connect your API key. Your default audience is saved with the connection.

Step 2 - Create a template

1. Go to Email → Templates → New template
2. Fill in:
   • Name - internal label, e.g. "Weekly what's-on"
   • Subject - what recipients see, e.g. "This week at The Kings Arms"
   • From name / from email - e.g. "The Kings Arms" / hello@yourpub.co.uk
   • HTML body - the email content; the editor shows a live preview
3. Click Test send and check it in your own inbox before going further

Let the agent write it

Any draft created with the email channel enabled gets a matching email generated automatically - subject and HTML in your brand voice. Open the draft's Email tab to copy or refine it.

Step 3 - Create the campaign

1. Go to Email → Campaigns → New campaign
2. Pick your template (or write a one-off subject + body)
3. Choose the audience:
   • CaptiFi: tick the site(s) to target; "all guests" is the default audience type
   • Mailchimp: dispatch through dispatch-mailchimp (see below)
4. Either set a scheduled time or leave blank to send manually

Step 4 - Send

• CaptiFi route: click Dispatch on the campaign. CaptiFi builds the recipient list and sends; status moves queued → sending → sent
• Mailchimp route: call POST /api/email/campaigns/{id}/dispatch-mailchimp (UI button coming; the API is live). The campaign is created and sent inside your Mailchimp account

Step 5 - Check results

Open the campaign after a few hours:

Column	Meaning
Recipients	How many addresses were targeted
Sent	Successfully delivered
Opens / Clicks	Engagement counts, synced back periodically

Common pitfalls

• 0 recipients - the CaptiFi site has no opted-in guests yet, or the wrong site was selected
• Stuck in queued - the scheduled time is in the future; cancel and re-dispatch to send now
• From email rejected - use a domain you control; free webmail from-addresses often fail provider checks