Cold Mailing Campaigns

12 min read Last updated: June 23, 2026

Creating a Campaign

A campaign in ProperSend is a collection of configured sequences, leads, and sending settings. You define what message to send, to whom, when, and how often — the system handles everything else.

To create a new campaign:

  1. Navigate to app.propersend.pl/campaigns
  2. Click New Campaign
  3. Fill in the basic information:
    • Campaign name — e.g., "Outbound Q3 – IT", "Warsaw – Accounting", "Subject Line A/B Test"
    • Sending mailbox — select a configured mailbox (you can add several for rotation)
    • Timezone — default is Europe/Warsaw
  4. Click Create

You'll need at least one connected mailbox and a list of leads (either from Lead Finder or imported).

When to use campaigns: You have a list of prospects and want to automate personalized follow-ups over days or weeks without manual work.

Campaign Statuses

Each campaign goes through a lifecycle. Understanding these statuses helps you manage your outreach pipeline:

Draft → Running → Paused → Completed
                 ↘ Failed
                 ↘ Archived

| Status | Description | Possible Actions | |--------|-------------|------------------| | Draft | Campaign in preparation — not sending yet | Edit, add leads and sequence, launch | | Running | Active — system sends messages per schedule | Pause, view stats, edit (some settings) | | Paused | Paused — resume anytime without losing progress | Resume (back to Running) or complete | | Completed | Finished — all messages sent to all leads | Archive, duplicate, review stats | | Failed | Error — campaign stopped due to technical issue | Check Troubleshooting, fix, restart | | Archived | Archived — hidden from main view, data preserved | Restore (back to Completed) |

Tip: Campaigns in Failed status usually indicate one of the following: a mailbox disconnected, SPF/DKIM authentication broke, or the bounce rate exceeded the auto-pause threshold. Check Domain Health and Mailboxes first.

Multi-Step Sequences

A campaign can contain multiple steps. Each step is a separate message sent after a configured delay. You design the sequence in the Sequence Editor, which supports rich formatting, personalization variables, and attachments.

A typical B2B sequence follows this pattern:

| Step | Day | Type | Goal | |------|-----|------|------| | 1 | 1 | EMAIL | Introduction — present value | | 2 | 4 | EMAIL | Follow-up #1 — additional value, case study | | 3 | 8 | EMAIL/VOICE | Follow-up #2 — social proof, reference | | 4 | 14 | EMAIL | Last attempt — polite closing, channel switch |

Multi-Channel Sequence Example

Day 1: EMAIL  →  Day 4: EMAIL  →  Day 8: VOICE  →  Day 14: EMAIL

⚠️ Note: Overly aggressive sequences (daily emails) can trigger spam complaints and domain blocks. Maintain minimum 2-3 day gaps. Longer gaps (3-5 days) often produce better results because recipients have time to read and consider your message.

Practical example

A digital agency targeting e-commerce stores might build their sequence: 📈

Each step can also have message variants — A/B test different subject lines or body copy to see what resonates best.

Sending Schedule

Control exactly when your emails go out to maximize open and reply rates:

  • Send window start/end – e.g., send only between 8:00 and 16:00
  • Days of the week – skip weekends and holidays
  • Timezone – match your recipients' local time (especially important for cross-border campaigns)

Best Practice: Most B2B cold emails perform best when sent Tuesday through Thursday, between 8:00–11:00 AM recipient local time. Monday mornings and Friday afternoons typically see lower engagement.

Sending Limits

ProperSend distributes your daily quota across all connected mailboxes automatically. Start conservatively and increase as your domain reputation grows:

| Limit | Recommendation for New Domains | Recommendation for Warmed-Up Domains | |-------|-------------------------------|--------------------------------------| | Daily limit per mailbox | 30-50 | 80-120 | | Hourly limit per mailbox | 5-10 | 15-25 | | Min delay between sends | 60 seconds | 30 seconds | | Max delay between sends | 180 seconds | 300 seconds |

Tip: These limits apply per mailbox, not per campaign. If you have 5 mailboxes each set to 50/day, your total daily capacity is 250 emails across all campaigns.

Auto-Enrollment Rules

You don't have to manually add leads to campaigns. ProperSend can automatically enroll leads from Lead Finder based on criteria you define:

  1. Go to the Enrollment Rules tab in your campaign
  2. Click Add Rule
  3. Configure the criteria:
    • PKD includes — PKD codes to target (e.g., 62.01Z — software development)
    • City includes — specific cities
    • Voivodeship includes — provinces
    • Requires email — whether we require an email address (recommended: yes)
    • Exclude domains — skip domains (e.g., competitors, your own company)
    • Exclude suppressed — skip those who have unsubscribed

Example Rule

Name: "IT Wroclaw"
PKD includes: 62.01Z, 62.02Z, 62.09Z
City includes: Wrocław
Requires email: ✅
Exclude suppressed: ✅
Daily enroll: 20

Campaign Statistics

The Campaign Dashboard provides a real-time snapshot of performance:

  • Funnel – sent → delivered → opened → clicked → replied
  • Metrics tracked: open rate, reply rate, bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR), unsubscribe rate
  • Per-step breakdown – see which steps perform best and refine accordingly

Benchmark: A healthy B2B cold email campaign typically achieves 40–60% open rate and 3–8% reply rate. Bounce rates should stay under 3% — anything above 5% warrants a review of your lead sources and Email Verification settings.

| Metric | Poor | Average | Good | Great | |--------|------|---------|------|-------| | Open rate | < 30% | 30-40% | 40-60% | > 60% | | Reply rate | < 2% | 2-5% | 5-10% | > 10% | | Bounce rate | > 5% | 2-5% | < 2% | < 1% | | Click rate | < 2% | 2-5% | 5-15% | > 15% | | Unsubscribe | > 1% | 0.5-1% | < 0.5% | < 0.1% |

💡 Tip: If open rate drops below 30%, check Domain Health — emails may be landing in spam. If reply rate is below 2%, work on your value proposition and personalization.

Auto-Pause

ProperSend monitors your campaign health continuously and automatically pauses when it detects problems. This protects your domain reputation and prevents wasted sends:

  • Bounce rate exceeds threshold (default: 10%, configurable in Settings)
  • Domain authentication issues – SPF, DKIM, or DMARC failures detected
  • Mailbox in cooldown – provider rate-limited or blocked the connection
  • Low engagement – excessive unsubscribes or spam complaints

When a campaign auto-pauses, you'll receive a notification in-app and via email (if configured in Notifications). Fix the underlying issue and click Resume to continue.

Best Practice: Review Domain Health weekly to catch authentication issues before they trigger auto-pause.

Campaign Tags

Tag campaigns to organize and filter them easily:

  1. Go to campaign settings
  2. Click Add Tag
  3. Choose a color and name (e.g., "IT", "E-commerce", "A/B Test", "Q3")

Tags are visible on the campaign list and you can filter by them.

Duplicating Campaigns

Clone an existing campaign — useful when you want to:

  • Test different sequence variants (campaign-level A/B testing)
  • Run the same campaign for a different audience group
  • Create variants with different sending limits

Duplication copies all settings except leads — the new campaign starts as Draft.

Best Practices

  1. One campaign = one target group — don't mix industries in one campaign, it makes analysis harder
  2. Give campaigns descriptive names — "Outbound IT Wroclaw Q3" says more than "Campaign 1"
  3. Test on a small group — send to 10-20 leads before launching full volume
  4. Monitor the first 48 hours — if bounce rate is high, pause the campaign and check your list
  5. Use tags for categorization — makes filtering and reporting easier