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Campaigns are one-time email broadcasts sent to a group of contacts. Use them for newsletters, product announcements, promotional offers, and any communication directed at a defined audience rather than a single recipient. Unlike transactional emails, campaigns are sent only to subscribed contacts. A contact who has unsubscribed will not receive campaign emails.

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Creating a campaign

1

Navigate to Campaigns in the dashboard

Open the Campaigns section and click Create Campaign.
2

Set the name and content

Give the campaign an internal name and write the email content:
  • Name — for your reference only, not shown to recipients
  • Description — optional internal notes
  • Subject — the email subject line
  • Body — HTML email content; supports {{variable}} substitution from contact data
  • From — must be from a verified domain
  • From name — optional display name
  • Reply-to — optional reply-to address
3

Choose your target audience

Select who receives the campaign:
  • All subscribed contacts — sends to every contact with subscribed: true
  • Segment — sends only to contacts in a specific saved segment
4

Send a test email (optional)

Before sending to your full list, use the Send Test option to deliver a preview to any email address. This sends a real email so you can verify formatting, links, and content.
5

Send or schedule

Choose to send immediately or schedule for a future date and time. Scheduled campaigns show a status of SCHEDULED until they are dispatched.

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Sending options

Send immediately

The campaign enters the send queue right away. Plunk processes it in the background using BullMQ, so large audiences are handled without blocking your dashboard.

Schedule for later

Provide an ISO 8601 timestamp for scheduledFor. The campaign stays in SCHEDULED state until that time arrives, then enters the queue automatically.

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Background queue processing

Campaigns are sent asynchronously via a background worker. After you send a campaign, Plunk:
  1. Resolves the audience (all subscribed contacts or a segment).
  2. Queues individual send jobs for each recipient.
  3. Processes the queue with retry logic and rate limiting.
Depending on your audience size, it can take several minutes to several hours for all emails to be dispatched. Monitor progress in the campaign detail page.
The campaign detail page shows a live count of sent, delivered, opened, clicked, and bounced emails as the queue is processed.

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Campaign analytics

Each campaign tracks the following metrics:
MetricDescription
Total recipientsNumber of contacts targeted
SentEmails successfully handed off to AWS SES
DeliveredEmails confirmed delivered to the recipient’s server
OpenedUnique contacts who opened the email
ClickedUnique contacts who clicked a link
BouncedEmails that bounced (hard or soft)
Contacts whose emails bounce will be automatically unsubscribed to protect your sender reputation. See List hygiene for details.

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Canceling a scheduled campaign

A campaign in SCHEDULED state can be canceled before it is dispatched. Canceling sets the status to CANCELLED and removes it from the send queue. You cannot cancel a campaign that is already in SENDING state — emails already enqueued will continue to be delivered. To cancel via the API: 
curl -X POST https://api.useplunk.com/campaigns/{id}/cancel \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..."

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Campaign statuses

StatusDescription
DRAFTCreated but not yet sent or scheduled
SCHEDULEDQueued for a future send time
SENDINGCurrently being processed and dispatched
SENTAll emails have been handed off to SES
CANCELLEDCanceled before sending completed

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API reference

See the full endpoint reference at Campaigns.

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