✉Campaigns

A mass mailing to a selected group, in up to three stages: first mail, first follow-up, second follow-up. Aurora Hive Sales sends in a staggered way rather than everything at once, and logs every single message.

The most important difference from a mail merge letter from Word: the campaign has a memory. It knows who has already been written to, who has replied and who therefore drops out of the follow-up.

They describe in which attempt a mail goes out:

1. First mail — the first approach.
2. 1st follow-up — for everyone who has not replied to the first mail.
3. 2nd follow-up — the last attempt.

Each stage has its own template. Anyone who replies to the first mail does not receive a follow-up any more — that is the whole point of the split: you do not come across as a machine that keeps sending even though you are already in conversation.

Via the sending centre, not via the campaign list. There, “+ Contacts” leads into a wizard with three questions:

1. What is it about? — first contact, first or second follow-up. The stage decides which template is used and who is still eligible at all.
2. Which contacts? — click on categories; several are possible. The large number below them updates as you go.
3. What should it say? — name of the campaign, sender mailbox and template.

At the end, the wizard summarises in one sentence who gets what, and shows the first recipients. The result is a draft — nothing is sent yet.

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Via the categories in the second step of the wizard. They come from the tags on your contacts; several can be combined — anyone in at least one of them is written to.

The large number below them is the reliable figure. It already deducts:

• unsubscribed contacts,
• contacts without an email address,
• contacts already in a running campaign.

That is why it is almost always smaller than the number of contacts in the category. If the displayed recipient list is wrong, the category is wrong.

Then Aurora Hive Sales sends nothing. The wizard requires at least one category and says so: Please choose at least one category.

Anyone who really wants to write to all contacts has to do so explicitly — via the tick box below. That is the built-in safety switch, and it exists for a specific reason: in an older version, an empty selection meant not “nobody” but “everyone”, and a campaign meant to go to one category reached the entire database.

Even so, do not rely on the switch alone. The number of recipients in the confirmation question is the last and best check.

Not when creating the campaign — that only produces a draft. Sending is released in the campaign itself:

1. Open the campaign from the list.
2. In the “Prepare sending” area, read the mail.
3. Send a test mail to your own address and proofread it.
4. Press the button with the number of recipients on it.
5. Confirm the follow-up question — it names the campaign, the number of recipients and the stage, and says that it cannot be undone.

Before that, nothing goes out. After that, nobody can take it back.

In the campaign’s “Prepare sending” area there is a field for the test address. A single mail for proofreading goes there — the real recipient list remains untouched.

Check three things, ideally on a mobile phone:

• Is the salutation right? An empty placeholder stands out immediately.
• Is the subject line cut off?
• Is the unsubscribe link there?

Yes. Aurora Hive Sales asks for confirmation and says exactly what this means: Mails already started still go out, after that the campaign rests. You can carry on at any time.

So pausing stops further sending, but does not recall anything already on its way. If you notice something is wrong, pausing is still the right thing — it limits the damage to the mails that are already out.

With the button for carrying on sending. Here too a follow-up question appears, and it clearly distinguishes between two cases:

• “Carry on sending?” — it only goes to those still waiting. That is the normal case.
• “Write to everyone again?” — including those who already had the mail. That is almost never what is meant.

Read which of the two questions is on the screen.

In order, and quickly:

1. Pause the campaign. That stops everything that has not been started yet. With staggered sending, that is often by far the larger part.
2. Check how many are already out. The campaign shows it.
3. Decide whether a correction is needed. With the wrong audience, silence is often better than a second mail; with wrong content (figures, dates), a short correction to exactly the recipients affected is right.
4. Record the cause. Almost always it had been the category in the second step.

What you should not do: immediately send a second campaign after it. Two mails in five minutes harm the sender reputation more than the first wrong one.

They are shown in plain language:

• Draft — created, but nothing has ever been sent.
• Running — sending has been released and is working through the list.
• Paused — resting; you can carry on at any time.
• Completed — all recipients of this stage have been served.

Next to it is the stage: first mail, 1st follow-up, 2nd follow-up. Clicking the row opens the campaign.

Because that would be the most reliable way to end up in the spam folder. Mail providers judge a sender’s reputation partly by how suddenly volumes appear. A thousand mails in one minute from an address that previously sent twenty a day looks like a hijacked account.

Aurora Hive Sales therefore spreads the sending over time. With new sender addresses, a volume brake is added — in the wizard it appears as an upper limit: Of X matching contacts, Y go into this campaign. The rest are left for the next one.

Because an upper limit applies. The wizard shows it in plain language: of the matching contacts, only some go into this campaign; the rest are left for the next one.

This is a brake for the start: new sender addresses should not start with thousands of mails, that costs deliverability. Once your address has been warmed up and delivery is running stably, the limit can be raised.

Four groups, automatically:

• Unsubscribed contacts. Anyone who has unsubscribed is never written to again. This is checked with every mailing, in every campaign.
• Contacts without an email address. There is no destination.
• Contacts in a running campaign. Otherwise someone would receive two different letters at the same time.
• Anyone who replied to an earlier stage — for follow-ups.

If the number of recipients is smaller than expected, the explanation is almost always in this list.

Exactly that: for the chosen combination of category and stage, the list is empty. The notice reads There is nobody in this selection who has not been written to yet. Choose a different category or a different stage.

Two typical causes:

• You chose the First mail, but this group has already received it — what you meant was the follow-up.
• The category is narrower than it looks, because unsubscribed contacts and contacts without an email address have been deducted.

Then the text is missing. Each stage has its own template; without text, the best audience is of no use.

Under Templates, create one for the stage you want. You choose the stage at the top there before pressing “+ New” — otherwise the template is created under the wrong stage and again does not appear in the wizard.

No — Aurora Hive Sales adds it to every promotional mail itself. You do not have to insert it and should not remove it.

It is not a courtesy but an obligation: a promotional mail without a working way to object can lead to a formal warning (Abmahnung). And it takes effect immediately and permanently — anyone who unsubscribes stays out of all future campaigns, not just this one.

In the inbox in Aurora Hive Sales — provided that collection has been set up for your sender mailbox.

Aurora Hive Sales automatically assigns incoming mails to the right contact by sender address and subject; you see the history on the contact without searching in the mailbox. Anything that cannot be assigned is listed under “New” and waits for you.

Yes, the name is only for recognising it in your list — the recipient never sees it. Renaming changes nothing about the sending or the mails already sent.

A note from the past: in an older version, renaming broke off with an error message. That has been fixed; if it still occurs for you, your instance is running an older version.

A Draft, yes, without consequences — nothing has happened yet.

A campaign from which mails have already gone out should be left in place. It is the proof of who received what and when, and that is exactly what gets asked when someone complains about a mail or when you have to answer an access request. Paused or completed, it bothers nobody; deleted, it is missing precisely when you need it.

In two ways, depending on the question:

• From the campaign: the detail page shows, for each recipient, what has happened to their mail — sent, waiting, bounced.
• From the contact: the contact’s detail view shows every mail sent to them in the history.

Together, both answer the question asked when it matters: what exactly did this person receive from us, and when?

In this order:

1. Is the person in the campaign’s recipient list at all? Often they have dropped out through one of the exclusion rules — unsubscribed, no email address, already in another campaign.
2. Is the mail logged as sent? If it is still shown as waiting, its turn simply has not come yet.
3. Has there been a bounce? A hard bounce means: the address does not exist.
4. Is your instance running in protected sending mode? Then no mail leaves the system — the notice is shown in the header.
5. Spam folder. If everything else is right, that is the most likely explanation — and then it is about SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

Yes, in the “Prepare sending” area you can attach files that go out with every message of this campaign.

Two warnings that belong together: large attachments harm deliverability — they increase the likelihood of ending up in the spam folder, and some receiving servers reject them entirely. A link in the text is therefore often the better choice, especially for a first contact.

A placeholder could not be filled because the value is missing for the contact — usually the salutation or the last name.

Two solutions, both sensible:

• Safeguard the template: every placeholder can be given fallback wording that applies if the value is missing. Then a neutral salutation appears instead of a gap.
• Complete the data: if the same detail is missing for many contacts, that points to an incomplete column mapping during the import.

You only find this mistake in the test mail — in the editor, the placeholder always looks fine.

When creating it, you choose the sender mailbox; it determines the sender name, signature and reply address.

As long as the campaign is still a draft, it can be changed. With a running campaign you should not do it: recipients in the first half would get the follow-up from a different address than the first mail — to the recipient that looks like two different senders, and replies go nowhere.

Aurora Hive Sales provides three stages, and that is also the practical upper limit: anyone who has not replied after two follow-ups will not reply the third time either — they will just be annoyed.

There is no technical setting for the interval, because it depends on the occasion. As a rule of thumb from practice: one week until the first, two to three weeks until the second follow-up. Shorter feels pushy; much longer and the connection has been lost.

Only one thing matters: each stage needs its own, shorter text. Sending the same mail twice is the most common cause of unsubscribes.

Almost always because of one of four things, checked in this order:

1. The three DNS entries are missing or wrong. SPF, DKIM and DMARC decide more about the spam folder than anything else. That is by far the most common reason.
2. The sender address is new and suddenly sends a lot. Hence the volume brake.
3. Hard bounces are piling up — non-existent addresses ruin the reputation quickly.
4. The content. Large attachments, many links, trigger words in the subject, a text consisting only of an image.

Point 1 is a one-off job on your domain and works permanently. Everything else is fine-tuning.

Yes. The preview shows the template with the data of a real contact, not with sample values. That is the quickest way to find a wrong salutation.

The difference from the test mail: the preview shows it in the browser, the test mail shows it in the recipient’s mail program. Both are needed — the browser reveals nothing about how Outlook takes the formatting apart.

Technically at any time — in practice there are two rules that are confirmed again and again:

• Not on Friday afternoon and not at the weekend. Whatever arrives on Friday lies under everything else on Monday.
• Tuesday to Thursday, in the morning, is the unobtrusively best time for business mail.

More important than the time, however, is that you are there when the replies come in. A campaign that runs while nobody looks at the mailbox throws away exactly the replies it has been made for.

Small. Twenty to fifty recipients are enough for the first run.

The reason is not caution but learning: after fifty mails you know whether the salutation is right, whether replies are assigned correctly, how many bounces come back and whether the text triggers the questions you expected. These insights are the same with five hundred recipients — only then you have used up four hundred and fifty addresses on the weaker version.

With cold business outreach, the reply rate is usually in the low single-digit percentage range, and a large share of the replies are rejections. That is not a sign of a bad text, but the normal case.

What makes the difference is less the text than the fit of the list. Fifty well-chosen recipients beat five hundred random ones, and by a clear margin.

Expect a noticeable boost from the follow-up: a large share of replies only comes in response to the second mail.

No, Aurora Hive Sales prevents that: contacts already in a running campaign are deducted from a new one.

That is why the number of recipients is sometimes smaller than expected, and why it is worth completing a campaign before the next one goes to the same group.

From the inbox: incoming mails are assigned to the contact by sender address and subject. Anyone who has replied drops out of the follow-up.

This leads to an important prerequisite: without a configured inbox, Aurora Hive Sales does not recognise any replies — then even someone who replied long ago gets the follow-up. That is the most embarrassing mishap this area has to offer, and it has a simple cause.

With a mass mailing, that is the wrong question — and in the worst case a data protection incident. A campaign sends individual mails to each recipient, precisely so that nobody sees the others’ addresses.

If a colleague is to read along, two ways are right: add them to the mailing list, or send them the test mail. Both are unobtrusive; a distribution list in copy is not.

As personal as it can honestly be. Salutation and company name go without saying; a sentence that recognisably fits the recipient has more effect than three paragraphs of platitudes.

What does not work is feigned closeness: “I have looked closely at your company” in a mail that goes to four hundred companies is recognised by every recipient, and after that the sender is burnt.

The honest middle way: choose a good audience and base the connection on what is true for everyone in this group.

To that of the sender mailbox — it determines sender name, signature and reply address.

That is why a mailbox nobody reads makes a bad sender mailbox: the replies land there, not in your personal mailbox. If you use a shared address, make sure that Aurora Hive Sales syncs it — then the replies appear in the inbox.

Sending is released and then runs in a staggered way — scheduling for a future day does not exist in this form.

In practice this means: create the campaign (that is harmless, it only produces a draft) and release it on the day it is to run. The draft waits as long as you like.

By what Aurora Hive Sales actually measures — not by open rates:

• Delivered versus bounced: says something about the quality of the list.
• Replies: the only figure that counts. They appear in the inbox and on the contact.
• Unsubscribes: if they rise noticeably, something is wrong with the audience or the tone.

An honest fourth measure appears in no evaluation: how many conversations came of it. Record that on the contacts — otherwise in three months you will no longer know which campaign achieved something.

In order, and without delay:

1. Unsubscribe them. Immediately, without discussion — even if the approach had been permitted.
2. Reply briefly and factually. An apology in two sentences, no justification.
3. Check where the address came from. The Import history shows its origin.
4. Check whether more people are affected — did the address come from the same source as hundreds of others?

What you should not do: explain the legal position. Someone who complains does not want a lecture, and a dispute costs more than any single address is worth.

You can change the template — but consider what that means: half of the recipients will then have received a different mail from the other half. If you later ask why one group reacted differently, you will no longer know.

The clean way with a genuine mistake: pause the campaign, correct the template, let it carry on, and keep in mind where the cut lay.

With a small typo, it is usually better to leave it.

Four habits that together sustain the sender reputation:

• Do not ignore bounces. Aurora Hive Sales shuts down hard bounces; still check regularly whether a whole source produces a conspicuous number of them.
• Respect unsubscribes. Happens automatically — but do not import old lists over them.
• Maintain addresses rather than collect them. A well-kept list of five hundred is worth more than five thousand inherited ones.
• A spot check after every import. Open three contacts and check whether everything is in the right place.

Six points, in one minute:

1. The number of recipients in the follow-up question — the reliable figure.
2. The stage — first mail or follow-up?
3. The sender mailbox — does the reply go where someone looks?
4. The test mail read, ideally on a mobile phone.
5. Salutation checked — no empty placeholder.
6. The notice in the header — is protected sending mode on?

Point 1 is the most important and the one people skip the third time.

In its last step, the wizard shows the first recipients by name. Read this list — if the list is wrong, the category is wrong.

After creation, the campaign shows for each recipient what has happened to their mail. Until it is released, that is the second chance to notice.

Two kinds of names to watch out for: your own colleagues (they do not belong in mailing lists) and contacts with whom something else is currently going on.

Via the classification: change the category or tag on the contact so that they no longer fall into the audience — before creating the campaign.

If the campaign has already been created but not yet released, create it again with the corrected audience; deleting a draft has no consequences.

For a permanent “never write to again”, the unsubscribe is the right way — it applies in all campaigns.

Yes — with one restriction that protects: contacts already in a running campaign are deducted from a new one.

In practice this means that campaigns to overlapping audiences thin each other out. If the number of recipients is smaller than expected, a campaign running in parallel is one of the most common explanations.

It is cleaner to complete one campaign before the next goes to the same group.

Via Pause sending. Mails already started still go out, after that the campaign rests; you can carry on at any time.

Remember the other side: a paused campaign does not carry on by itself. Set yourself a task for the first working day afterwards — otherwise sending will still be at a standstill in February.

And the real reason for the pause: replies nobody reads are lost replies.

Three things, otherwise it runs into the void:

1. The sender mailbox — the replies land there. Anyone who cannot read it does not get them.
2. The follow-ups of the person handing over — they only appear for that person.
3. Agreeing who releases if stages are still outstanding.

Point 1 is the one most often overlooked — especially if a personal address had been used for sending.

Three steps that turn a campaign into business:

1. Work through the replies — in the inbox, from “Known” to “New”.
2. For each reply: a note and a follow-up on the contact. Without that, the reply has been read but not processed.
3. Plan the next stage — anyone who has not replied goes into the follow-up.

And look back once: delivered versus bounced, unsubscribes, replies. These are the figures from which the next campaign gets better.

Through naming. The name is only for recognition — so make use of it: “First approach trades Dresden 2026-03” says in one line what it had been about.

The list shows status and stage in plain language; completed campaigns do not get in the way there and are the proof of who received what and when.

So do not delete any campaign from which mails have gone out — it will be missing exactly when someone asks.