Email Campaigns

What is an Email Campaign?

An email campaign is a message you send to a group of subscribers. Unlike social media, email goes directly to people who asked to hear from you.

Common email campaigns for authors:

• New release announcements — Your book is out!
• Sale alerts — Price drops and promotions
• Newsletter updates — Personal updates and content
• Cover reveals — Show off new covers
• Free book offers — Reader magnets

Before You Start

To send email campaigns, you need:

1. An SMTP provider connected — Amazon SES, Resend, Postmark, or any SMTP service, set up in Settings
2. Subscribers — People who opted in to your list
3. A verified sending domain — Configured with your SMTP provider

Amazon SES: Bounce and Complaint Reporting

If you send through your own Amazon SES account, connect SES's bounce and complaint reports to StorytellerOS. When an email bounces for good, or a reader marks it as spam, we stop sending to that address and let you know. Without this, StorytellerOS can't see those reports, and readers who complained keep getting your emails, which hurts your SES account standing.

Your personal reporting address appears in Settings → Email Sending, under your SMTP settings, once you save an Amazon SES sender. Copy it, then in the AWS console:

1. Open Simple Notification Service in the same region as your SES account (the region is part of your SMTP host, for example us-east-1). Choose Topics → Create topic, pick Standard, and give it any name.
2. On the topic's Access policy (choose Advanced), add a statement that lets Amazon SES send to the topic, using your topic's ARN and your 12-digit AWS account ID. Settings shows the exact statement with a copy button:

   {"Sid":"AllowSESPublish","Effect":"Allow","Principal":{"Service":"ses.amazonaws.com"},"Action":"SNS:Publish","Resource":"YOUR_TOPIC_ARN","Condition":{"StringEquals":{"aws:SourceAccount":"YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID"}}}

   Without it the subscription still confirms, but no reports arrive.
3. Open the topic and choose Create subscription. Set Protocol to HTTPS and paste your reporting address as the Endpoint. Leave Enable raw message delivery off. The subscription confirms itself within a minute.
4. Open Amazon SES → Identities. For each domain or email address you send from, open the Notifications tab, choose Edit under Feedback notifications, and pick your new topic for Bounce feedback and Complaint feedback. Ticking Include original email headers helps us match each report to the right email.

Back in Settings, the status changes from Not set up yet to Connected, and shows when the last report arrived.

Creating a Campaign

1. Go to Email Studio → Campaigns
2. Click + New Campaign
3. Enter a campaign name (for your reference)
4. Select the email type
5. Choose your recipients
6. Write your email content
7. Preview and send

Campaign Settings

Choosing Recipients

Select who receives your email:

• By list: everyone subscribed on a list
• By tag: only readers with specific tags
• By segment: a saved group from Email Studio → Segments, such as readers with no opens or clicks in the last 90 days. Choose it in the campaign's Settings.

You can mix all three. Each subscribed reader who is on any of them gets one copy. A segment is checked again when the campaign sends, so a scheduled campaign reaches whoever matches at that moment. See Email activity for how opens and clicks are counted.

Writing Your Email

Subject Lines

Your subject line determines if people open your email:

• Keep it short (under 50 characters)
• Create curiosity or urgency
• Be clear about the content
• Avoid spam trigger words (FREE!!!, Act Now)
• Test different styles

Email Body

The editor supports:

• Rich text formatting (bold, italic, links)
• Images (book covers, author photos)
• Buttons (buy links, website links)
• Personalization (Dear {first_name})

Merge tags

Merge tags fill in for each reader when the email goes out. Type them with double curly braces:

• {{first_name}}, {{last_name}}, {{full_name}} and {{email}}
• {{unsubscribe_url}}, the reader's own unsubscribe link
• {{view_in_browser_url}}, a link to a web copy of the email
• {{sender_name}}, {{current_year}} and {{current_date}}

If your email has no unsubscribe link, we add one at the bottom when it goes out.

Emails you bring from another email service

An email you copy in from your old email service still has that service's tags, such as {$unsubscribe} or *|FNAME|*. When you go to send, the checks list each one with the StorytellerOS tag we think it matches. Confirm or change each choice, or remove the tag, then click Update my email. Until you do, we still convert the tags we recognise when the email goes out, so your readers' unsubscribe and view-in-browser links work.

Bringing in your past newsletters

Moving from another email service? You can bring your past issues with you, each with the date it was originally sent, its numbers (sent, opens, clicks, bounces and complaints) and where it came from. Ask Claude, connected to StorytellerOS, to import them from your old service, one issue at a time. Importing the same issue twice is safe: the second time it is recognized and nothing changes.

Imported issues show on your campaigns list with an Imported label and their original send date, and the Imported filter shows only them. They also appear in your public archive by date unless you choose to hide them. An imported issue is a record of a send that already happened, so it can never be sent, scheduled or start an automation, and its numbers come from your old service's report. To reuse one, click Duplicate and you get a fresh draft you can edit and send.

Best Practices for Email Content

• Keep it scannable — Use short paragraphs and bullet points
• One clear call to action — What should they do?
• Personal tone — Write like you are talking to a friend
• Include book links — Make it easy to buy
• Add your personality — Readers subscribed to hear from you

Preview and Test

Before sending to your list:

1. Click Preview to see how it looks
2. Send a Test Email to yourself
3. Check it on mobile (most people read email on phones)
4. Click all links to make sure they work. In a test, the unsubscribe link opens a page saying it was a test, and the links use the same domain your real send will
5. Proofread one more time

Sending Options

Choose when to send:

• Send now — Immediately
• Schedule — Pick a specific date and time
• Optimal time — Let the system choose (if supported)

Best Times to Send

General guidelines (test what works for your audience):

• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday typically perform best
• Morning (9-10am) or early afternoon (1-2pm)
• Avoid weekends and holidays
• Consider your readers' time zones

Campaign Results

After sending, track how your campaign performed:

Email Templates

Save time with reusable templates:

• New release template — Cover, blurb, buy links
• Newsletter template — Personal update format
• Sale announcement — Price, duration, links

Create templates from successful campaigns to reuse the structure.

Best Practices

• Be consistent — Send regularly so readers expect you
• Provide value — Not every email should be "buy my book"
• Respect unsubscribes — Make it easy to opt out
• Segment your list — Send relevant content to relevant people
• Test and learn — Try different subject lines and content