Your first campaign

A campaign is one email sent to a group of your contacts. A new project opens on Get started, a checklist of the six steps to your first send. Each step ticks off by itself when it’s done, so work you do elsewhere in the app, or an agent does for you, shows up there too. Most can be done in any order. Adding a sender waits until you’ve chosen where sending runs, and sending waits for the rest.

On the first launch you can also pick Let my agent set it up. Rowsend shows a prompt to paste into Claude Code, Cursor or another agent, waits for you to allow it, and then opens the project the agent creates. See Onboard your agent.

1. Connect your database

Click Connect a database. Pick where your database runs, paste a connection string and follow the steps for your platform. Rowsend creates a read-only view of your users and syncs them. The step shows the count as contacts arrive.

Your platform’s page has the details: Supabase, Neon, PlanetScale, Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB or Firebase.

2. Choose where sending runs

Pick one of three:

• This computer: free, with nothing to set up. Recipients can’t open unsubscribe links, SMTP bounces aren’t caught, and scheduled sends need this computer awake. See This computer.
• Rowsend Cloud: working unsubscribe links, bounce tracking and image hosting, with no server to run. It’s a paid plan, and a license comes with a free month. The step is done once your Cloud account has its free month or a subscription. See Rowsend Cloud.
• Your own server: the same, on a server you run. See Self-hosting.

This applies to every project, so later projects start with this step done. You can change it in Settings → Companion.

3. Add your sender

Open Sending. Choose your provider, enter the from address and your provider’s key, click Save, then Verify. The step is done once Verify passes. See Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun or SMTP.

4. Add your brand and mailing address

Open Brand. Add your logo and colors, and your postal address. Marketing email must include a postal address, so Rowsend won’t send a campaign without one. See Brand.

5. Write your first email

Click Write your first email. Rowsend makes a draft with your logo and social links and opens it. Fill in the subject, choose who it goes to, and write the email. Type / in the body for blocks such as buttons and images. See Editor and blocks.

Then click Send test to see it in your own inbox. The step is done once a test goes through.

Every campaign has a topic: the kind of email it is, such as product updates or a newsletter. People can unsubscribe from one topic and keep getting the others. Every project starts with one topic named after it, so you can skip this until you need more. See Topics and unsubscribes.

6. Send it

Click Send to N contacts, check the recipient count, and send it now or schedule it. See Test, schedule and send.

Once it’s sent, the campaign page shows deliveries, bounces and unsubscribes as they come in, and Get started leaves the sidebar.

Hiding Get started

To set things up your own way, choose Hide this from the menu at the top of Get started. Project settings → General brings it back.