Scheduling and Managing the Campaign Lifecycle

The campaign lifecycle

Every StretchMail campaign moves through a set of statuses. Knowing where a campaign is tells you what you can do to it:

Step 1 — Schedule a campaign

1. Open a draft campaign under Campaigns.
2. Confirm it has a subject, body, and an attached list.
3. Choose Schedule and set the date and time you want it to go out.
4. Save. The campaign holds as scheduled and will queue automatically at that time.

Step 2 — Edit a draft or scheduled campaign

While a campaign is a draft or scheduled, everything is editable through the campaign's lifecycle actions:

• Subject, preview, and body — refine the content.
• List — swap the audience (the new list must belong to your organization).
• Schedule — move the send time earlier or later.

Save your changes and the campaign keeps its status.

Step 3 — Send now

From either a draft or a scheduled campaign you can choose Send to queue it immediately. StretchMail queues one email per subscribed, non-suppressed recipient and moves the campaign to queued.

Step 4 — Reschedule or cancel

Need to change plans?

• Reschedule — edit the scheduled time to any future moment.
• Cancel a schedule — set it back to a draft so it won't auto-send, then send later when you're ready.

Step 5 — Delete a campaign

If a campaign is no longer needed, use Delete. It's removed (status deleted) and disappears from your active list. Deleting a draft is harmless; deleting a sent campaign removes it from your list but doesn't recall already-delivered mail.

Step 6 — Reuse a sent campaign

A sent campaign is locked — you can't edit or re-send it. To send something similar again, create a new campaign and copy the subject and body across. This keeps each campaign's report accurate to a single send.

Worked example

Acme Co. plans a product launch:

1. The team drafts the announcement on Monday and schedules it for Thursday 10:00 AM.
2. On Wednesday, marketing tweaks the subject line — allowed, because it's still scheduled.
3. Legal asks to push a day; they reschedule to Friday 10:00 AM.
4. Friday at 10:00 it auto-queues; status goes queued → sending → sent.
5. The following week they want a reminder, so they create a new campaign reusing the body rather than trying to re-send the locked original.

Tips

• Schedule for your audience's timezone, not necessarily yours — mid-morning local time usually performs best.
• Lock content early, schedule, then only tweak. Editing while scheduled is fine, but avoid last-minute rewrites that skip your test step.
• Duplicate rather than resend. A fresh campaign keeps each report clean and lets you change the subject for a re-send audience.
• Delete stale drafts so your Campaigns list stays readable.

FAQ

Can I stop a campaign that's already queued?
Once queued, recipients are already handed to the send route. Reach out to your administrator quickly if you must halt delivery; you can't edit a queued campaign from the list.

Does editing a scheduled campaign reset its schedule?
No — editing content keeps the scheduled time unless you change it.

Can I re-send to only the people who didn't open?
Create a new list of non-openers (using the send data from Reports) and send a fresh campaign to it.

Troubleshooting

• Scheduled campaign didn't go out. Confirm the schedule time is in the future and the campaign has a list attached; check the Engine card for sending status.
• Can't edit a campaign. It's probably sent (locked). Duplicate it instead.
• "Campaign not found" on an action. It may have been deleted, or belongs to a different context — refresh the Campaigns list.