Email Campaigns
A campaign is the unit of work in MergeMail. It ties together a dataset, an optional document template, your SMTP configuration, and the email content, then dispatches a personalized email to each recipient.
Campaign Modes
- Mode A — Email + Generated Document: MergeMail generates a DOCX or PDF from a template for each recipient and attaches it.
- Mode B — Email + Existing Documents (ZIP): You upload pre-made files; MergeMail matches and attaches them.
- Mode C — Email Only: No attachment. The personalized email body is the complete message.
Email Composition
Subject Line
The subject line supports {{placeholder}} syntax and all formatters.
Keep subject lines under 60 characters for best display in email clients.
Your certificate for {{course_title|title}} is ready, {{first_name|title}}!Body — HTML Mode
HTML mode enables rich formatting: bold, italic, links, tables, and images (via external URL). Write raw HTML in the editor or use the toolbar for common formatting.
<p>Dear <strong>{{full_name|title}}</strong>,</p>
<p>Congratulations on completing <em>{{course_title}}</em>.</p>
<p>Please find your certificate attached.</p>Body — Plain Text Mode
Plain text is useful for notifications, transactional messages, and recipients whose mail clients block HTML. Line breaks are preserved.
Dear {{full_name|title}},
Congratulations on completing {{course_title}}.
Your certificate is attached.
Best regards,
The Training TeamEmail Templates
Save frequently used email subjects and bodies as Email Templates in the Email Templates library. Select a saved template when creating a campaign to pre-fill the subject and body. Changes made in the campaign editor do not affect the saved template.
From Name and Reply-To
The sender name and reply-to address are configured in Settings → SMTP. All campaigns from your account use the same from name and reply-to address as configured in your SMTP settings.
Campaign Lifecycle
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| draft | Campaign is being configured. No emails have been sent. |
| ready | Campaign is fully configured and ready to launch. |
| queued | Campaign is waiting in the dispatch queue. |
| processing | Emails are actively being sent. |
| paused | Sending has been manually paused. Resume to continue. |
| completed | All recipients processed. Delivery report is final. |
| failed | A fatal error prevented the campaign from completing. |
| cancelled | Campaign was manually cancelled. Pending credits released. |
Reading the Campaign Report
After a campaign starts, the report page shows aggregate stats and per-recipient status.
- Sent: Email accepted by the SMTP server. 1 credit deducted.
- Failed: All retry attempts exhausted. 1 credit refunded.
- Pending: Not yet processed. Credits still reserved.
- Skipped: Row was intentionally excluded (e.g. missing email address).
Click a row to expand the SMTP response or error message for that recipient.
Retrying Failed Deliveries
Automatic retries happen up to 3 times with exponential backoff (5 min → 20 min → 60 min). After all retries are exhausted, the recipient is marked Failed and the credit is refunded. You can re-run a campaign for only the failed recipients by duplicating it with a filtered dataset.