Email Campaigns: A Complete Guide

Email Campaigns are a new dashboard feature that lets you send beautifully designed emails to your members without leaving Memberstack. Newsletters, product announcements, re-engagement sequences, onboarding messages: you can build, target, send, and track them all from your dashboard.

To visit Email Campaigns in your Memberstack Dashboard just follow this link!

No need to export member lists, sync with a third-party platform, or manage multiple tools. Your member data is already in Memberstack, and now your email campaigns can live there too.

All images in this guide are sourced from the Memberstack Dashboard.

Before You Start

Email Campaigns has a few prerequisites before you can send:

A verified sender domain. You can use a dedicated campaign sender or your existing transactional email address. Set this up under Emails → Email Sender. We strongly recommend using a dedicated sender for campaigns. If your campaigns generate bounces or spam complaints, a shared sender means those issues can hurt the deliverability of your transactional emails too (password resets, login links, etc.). A dedicated campaign sender keeps that risk separate.

An active paid plan with available email quota. Campaigns are not available on free accounts or accounts with exhausted quota.

An account that is at least 7 days old. Brand new apps cannot send campaigns right away. This is an anti-abuse measure to prevent spam.

At least one member in your dashboard to send to.

A valid sender address. Free email providers (gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.) cannot be used as your "from" address. You need a custom domain.

Step 1: Create Your Campaign

In the left navigation, click Emails.

Click Create Campaign.

Give your campaign a Campaign Name (internal only, your members never see it) and a Subject Line (this is what lands in their inbox).

Click Create & Start Editing.

You can change both later from the Settings panel. This dialog is intentionally short so you can get to designing fast.

Step 2: Design Your Email

Memberstack uses a drag-and-drop email builder. You can:

Start from scratch. Drag in text, images, buttons, dividers, and columns.

Use a template. Click Use Template to browse the Choose a template gallery of pre-designed emails (newsletter, product launch, educational, etc.). Every template is fully editable.

Personalize with merge tags. Insert member email, member ID, app name, current year, or any of your custom fields so each member gets a personalized version. If you want first-name personalization, make sure you have a custom field for it.

Do not worry about an unsubscribe link. We automatically add a compliant footer with Unsubscribe and View in browser links to every campaign. This is automatic on every send, no exceptions.

Step 3: Configure Settings and Audience

Click the Settings button (top of the editor) to open the dialog.

Email details

Campaign Name and Subject Line Preview Text: the snippet shown next to your subject in inboxes. 

From Name: the sender name members see (e.g., "Sarah from Acme"). 

Reply-To Email: where replies are sent.

Audience filters: Choose who receives this campaign:

1. By plan. Target specific plans and statuses (Active, Trialing, Requires Payment, Canceled). You can also target "members with any plan" or "members with no plan."
2. By custom field. Build conditions using operators Equals, Contains, Starts with, or Not equals. Add as many conditions as you need.
3. By signup date, last login, or email verified status. Narrow your audience further using these built-in member properties.
4. All members. Leave filters empty to send to everyone.

As you adjust filters, the Audience Preview updates live, showing your estimated recipient count and a sample of matching members.

Campaigns are capped at 15,000 recipients per send. This covers the vast majority of use cases. If you need to go higher, reach out to support.

Step 4: Preview Before Sending

You have two ways to check your work:

Email preview. See exactly how the rendered email will look, with merge tags filled in.

Send Test. Sends a real copy to your own inbox (or a teammate's) so you can check it on mobile, in different email clients, etc. Available for Draft and Scheduled campaigns only.

Every email also includes a View in browser link so recipients can open it as a web page if their email client does not render it well.

Step 5: Send or Schedule

From the campaign detail page, you have three options:

Start Campaign (send now). A confirmation dialog shows your recipient count and current email quota. Click confirm and emails start going out immediately.

Schedule. Pick a date and time. The campaign sits in Scheduled state. You can Unschedule or Cancel it anytime before it goes out.

Send Test. Send one copy to yourself first. Always recommended.

You can also Pause, Resume, Cancel, or Duplicate any campaign at any point in its lifecycle.

Pre-send checks

Before your campaign can go out, Memberstack runs a series of checks:

Eligibility. Active subscription, account in good standing, account at least 7 days old, monthly quota available, and within hourly/daily send rate limits. You can only send one campaign per hour.

Verified sender. Either your campaign sender or transactional sender has working DNS (one of them must be verified).

Spam and content checks. Your email content is reviewed before it is sent.

Recipient limit. Your audience is at or below 15,000 members.

Bounce and complaint monitoring. If bounce or complaint rates get too high mid-send, the campaign auto-stops to protect your sender reputation.

If any check fails, you will see a clear explanation and a one-click path to fix it (verify domain, buy more quota, contact support, etc.).

Campaign States

Campaigns move through these states:

Draft. Still being built, has not been sent. 

Scheduled. Queued to send at a future time. 

Sending. Actively delivering. 

Completed. All emails sent. 

Paused. Manually paused mid-send (you can resume). 

Canceled. Stopped before completion. 

Failed. Something went wrong (we will show you why).

You can edit campaign content and settings while it is in Draft or Failed state. Once it is Scheduled, Sending, or Completed, the content is locked.

Tracking Results

Once a campaign starts sending, the detail page shows real-time analytics:

Sent. Total queued. 

Delivered. Successfully reached the inbox (with delivery rate %). 

Opened. Count and open rate %. 

Clicked. Count and click rate %. 

Bounced. Invalid or unreachable addresses (with bounce rate %). 

Complained. Recipients who marked the email as spam. 

Unsubscribed. Recipients who opted out. 

Failed. Delivery errors.

Below the analytics, a Recipients table shows per-member detail: email, status, and timestamps for delivered, opened, and clicked events. You can drill into this list to see exactly who opened, clicked, bounced, or unsubscribed.

Email Quota and Buying More

Campaigns use a monthly email allowance, anchored to your billing cycle. You will see your current usage in the editor:

"2,400 / 5,000 emails this month · resets in 12 days"

It is color-coded. Green when you have more than 50% remaining, amber between 10% and 50%, red when less than 10% remains.

Running low? Click the usage tracker to jump to your billing settings, where you can buy a Campaign Email add-on for additional sending capacity:

Small Campaign: 20,000 emails for $25/mo 

Medium Campaign: 50,000 emails for $50/mo 

Large Campaign: 150,000 emails for $129/mo

If a send would exceed your quota, we will block it and prompt you to top up first. No surprise overages.

Unsubscribes

Every campaign email includes an automatic footer with:

Unsubscribe. Removes the member from future campaigns. Their account stays active, and they still receive transactional emails like password resets and login links.

View in browser. Lets them open the email as a web page.

This footer is automatic on every send for compliance. It is not optional.

Members who have unsubscribed are automatically skipped on future campaign sends. You do not need to manage this manually.

FAQs

Q. Can I send the same campaign twice? 

A. Yes. Use the Duplicate action on any campaign to copy it, then adjust and send to a new audience.

Q. Can I edit a campaign after it has been sent? 

A.  No. Once a campaign is Scheduled, Sending, or Completed, the content is locked. You can duplicate it, edit the copy, and resend. You can also unschedule a campaign from being sent as long as it has not been sent out.  

Q. Why is my Send button disabled? 

A. You are missing one of the prerequisites (verified sender, available quota, audience under 15,000, account at least 7 days old, or eligibility check). Open the pre-send checklist on the campaign detail page for specifics.

Q. What is the difference between transactional emails and campaigns? 

A. Transactional emails are automated one-to-one messages (password reset, welcome email). Campaigns are one-to-many broadcasts you compose and send yourself. They can use separate sender addresses, configured in the Emails section. We recommend using separate senders so campaign deliverability issues do not affect your transactional emails.

Q. How often can I send campaigns? 

A. You can send one campaign per hour. This rate limit helps protect deliverability and prevents accidental runaway sends.

Q. What happens if my bounce rate spikes during a send? 

A. Memberstack monitors bounce and complaint rates while your campaign is sending. If they get too high, the campaign auto-stops to protect your sender reputation. You will see an explanation on the campaign detail page.