Campaign best practices

Subject lines

• Keep it short — 40-50 characters is the sweet spot. Mobile clients truncate longer subjects.
• Be specific — "Your March product update" beats "Newsletter #47"
• Avoid spam triggers — ALL CAPS, excessive exclamation marks, and words like "FREE!!!" hurt deliverability
• Preview text matters — set it explicitly. If you don't, email clients pull the first line of your body, which is often awkward.

Content

• One goal per email — every campaign should have one primary call to action. Multiple CTAs dilute engagement.
• Put the important stuff first — many recipients only see the first few lines (especially on mobile)
• Use headings — break up long emails with headings so recipients can scan
• Link text should be descriptive — "Read the guide" is better than "Click here"

Sending

• Send test emails — always send a test to yourself (and ideally a colleague) before going live
• Time it right — Tuesday through Thursday, mid-morning tends to perform well, but test what works for your audience
• Don't over-send — sending too frequently leads to unsubscribes and spam complaints. Find a cadence that works for your audience.

List hygiene

• Clean your list regularly — remove contacts who haven't engaged in 90+ days
• Honor unsubscribes instantly — Sendra does this automatically, but don't re-add unsubscribed contacts
• Watch your bounce rate — if it exceeds 5%, stop and clean your list before sending again
• Warm up gradually — if you're sending to a new or large list, start with your most engaged contacts and scale up over days. See Building sender reputation.

Deliverability

• Authenticate your domain — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are table stakes. See Domain authentication.
• Use a subdomain — send from mail.yourcompany.com rather than yourcompany.com. See Subdomains.
• Monitor SES metrics — keep your bounce rate below 5% and complaint rate below 0.1%