Create your first cold email campaign

An Email campaign sends a short sequence of emails (a first email plus optional follow-ups) from your own Google account (Gmail or Google Workspace) to the people you choose. Everything is built on one page, saves automatically, and only starts sending when you click Send emails and confirm.

If you also use LinkedIn, Outreach → Campaigns lists every type of campaign together: Email, LinkedIn and Email + LinkedIn. This page covers Email campaigns. To compare the types, see Which campaign type should I use?

Before you start

You need three things in place:

• A connected sender. Connect your Google account in Outreach → Sending accounts. See Connect your Google account.
• Some contacts. You can import them while building the campaign, or beforehand in Outreach → People. See Import prospects with a CSV.
• A plan for volume. If the mailbox is new to cold email, read How to prepare a new sending account first.

The launch checklist covers the rest.

Build the campaign

1. Go to Outreach → Campaigns and click New campaign. If you also use LinkedIn, a chooser asks "How do you want to reach people?": pick Email. The campaign composer opens. Nothing is saved until you make your first edit; after that, changes save automatically and the header shows All changes saved.
2. Name it (optional). Until you type a name, the campaign uses the first email's subject as its name.
3. From. Pick the sender address. Your default sender is preselected. If you see Connect a Google account to send from, connect one in Sending accounts first.
4. To. Click Select recipients and choose how to add people:
   • Contact lists: pick any lists or tags you already have.
   • Import a CSV: upload a file with an email column (up to 5 MB). It becomes a new list.
   • Copy / paste: paste addresses, one per line.
   • Pick contacts: search and tick individual people.

   Click Use these recipients. The button in the To row then shows how many eligible recipients you have. People who unsubscribed or bounced are always skipped.

5. Subject and first email. Write the subject and body. Use Personalize in the editor toolbar to insert fields such as first name or company. You can also click or insert a template, or Write with AI to have Distro draft the whole sequence (see Generate a sequence with Distro).
6. Follow-ups. Click Add a follow-up email. Each follow-up has a trigger and a wait, for example "If no reply after 3 business days, send this email". See Understanding campaign sequences and follow-ups.
7. Settings (right-hand sidebar):
   • Schedule send: start now or at a later date and time.
   • Autopilot: sending days, hours, timezone, Max emails per day and the delay between emails.
   • Track emails: open and click tracking. It starts off on a new campaign, unless you turned on tracking by default in Outreach settings. See Open and click tracking explained.
   • Unsubscribe link: optional and off by default. Adds a small unsubscribe line to the end of every email, plus a one-click unsubscribe button in mail apps that support it.
   • Signature: one of your saved signatures, added to every email.

Preview and test

• Show preview renders every email exactly as a recipient will get it, with their details filled in. Switch between desktop and mobile, and step through recipients to spot missing fields.
• Send a test email (in the ⋮ menu of any email) sends that email to your own sender address with "[Test]" in the subject. It never goes to a recipient.

Send or schedule

1. Click Send emails (or Schedule emails if you set a start time). Distro saves your changes and checks the campaign.
2. If something needs fixing, you'll see A few things to fix first with a list of problems. Fix them and click Send emails again.
3. Otherwise you'll see a summary: how many recipients, how many emails each, the sender, when the first emails start, the sending hours and the daily limit. Click Send emails to confirm.
4. The first time you send, Distro asks you to accept its Responsible use of Distro Outreach policy (for example, that you have a lawful basis to contact everyone and will honour unsubscribes).

Sending does not mean everything goes out at once. Autopilot spaces emails out within your sending hours and stops at your daily limit, then continues the next sending day.

Common reasons a campaign can't be sent yet

After launch

The campaign's status changes to Active and its page becomes a report with Overview, Analytics, Delivery, Emails and Activity tabs. The Overview shows when the next email is due and where each recipient is in the sequence.

A launched campaign's emails and settings can't be edited. To change them, use ⋮ → Duplicate as new draft. You can Pause and Resume at any time: see Pause, resume or end a campaign.