✍️Building a Campaign
Step-by-step: start a marketing campaign, build it with blocks (including live Event blocks), choose your audience, send a test, and send it for real.
This guide walks through building and sending a marketing campaign — a newsletter, promotion, or show or class announcement. You'll find email tools in the Emails section of your Dashboard sidebar.
Sending a service message instead? Operational notices like roster changes or venue updates use the Transactional type, which reaches every targeted patron and is composed in a simple rich-text editor. See Email Marketing for the difference between the two lanes.
Step 1: Start a new campaign
In the Emails section, go to Campaigns and choose New Campaign. You'll pick one of three starting points:
Marketing — newsletters, promotions, and announcements (this guide)
Transactional — operational service messages
Use Template — begin from one of your saved templates or a starter layout, then customize it — see Templates & the Asset Library
Choose Marketing to open the block builder.
The type is set once per campaign. You can't switch a draft between Marketing and Transactional later — to swap, just create a new draft.
Step 2: Set the basics
Every campaign needs a few details before it can go out:
Subject line — what patrons see in their inbox
From name — the sender name your campaign appears to come from
Reply-to — the address that receives replies
Step 3: Build with blocks
Marketing campaigns are built from stackable blocks. To add one, click a + insertion point between blocks (or at the top or bottom of the email) and pick from the Add a block menu. To rearrange, drag a block by its handle — dragging reorders what's already there.
Heading
A title or section header
Text
A paragraph of rich text
Image
A picture from your Asset Library or a new upload
Button
A tappable call-to-action linking anywhere you choose
Divider
A horizontal line to separate sections
Spacer
Adjustable vertical spacing
Event
A live card for a single show or class
Event Group
Live cards for a set of upcoming shows or classes
Your work saves automatically as you build — watch for the Saved indicator in the builder.
The Event and Event Group blocks
The Event and Event Group blocks are the heart of a marketing campaign — they pull live details straight from your shows and classes, so you don't have to copy and paste anything by hand. Each card can show the event poster, its next upcoming date, the venue, a "starting from" price, and the event's public description, with a tracked call-to-action button that links patrons straight to tickets or registration.
Use the Include toggles to control what each card shows:
Poster, Date, Venue, and Price — on by default
Description — off by default; turn it on when the extra context earns its space
An Event block features one show or class you pick. An Event Group block builds its list dynamically: choose a tag, a window of upcoming days, and a maximum number of events, and the block fills itself with matching cards. A new Event Group starts at events in the next 30 days, showing up to 5 — raise the limit if you want more (it can show up to 100). Handy for a "what's on this month" roundup that assembles itself.
Because the details are pulled live, the cards re-render when the campaign actually sends — a draft sent later ships the latest pricing and dates.
Step 4: Choose your audience
When your content is ready, choose who receives the campaign. You can pick a Saved Segment or build a Custom Filter on the spot; a live recipient count updates as you refine it, and Preview Recipients shows the actual list.
Your count is often smaller than your full patron list. Marketing campaigns only reach patrons who opted in to your newsletter, minus anyone on your suppression list, with duplicates removed. See Choosing Your Audience for the full breakdown.
Step 5: Send a test
Before sending for real, proof the layout, links, and event cards in a real inbox. Open Send Test Email, enter one or more addresses (comma-separated), tick the Acceptable Use Policy confirmation, and send.
Test sends have sensible limits: up to 5 addresses per test, 12 test emails per draft, and 50 test emails per theatre per day.
Step 6: Send now
When you're happy with the test, choose Send Now, confirm the checkbox — "I confirm this email complies with and I agree to CrowdWork's Acceptable Use Policy" — and send. CrowdWork resolves your final recipient list at this moment and the campaign goes out.
Don't see the option to send? Sending becomes available once your theatre has an established sales history, which protects deliverability for everyone on CrowdWork. You can keep building and saving in the meantime. If your theatre has been selling and sending still isn't enabled, contact support.
Previewing your campaign
The built-in preview shows your campaign at desktop and mobile widths, including the footer at the bottom of the email. Marketing campaigns end with a note that the patron subscribed to updates from your theatre, your theatre's mailing address, an Unsubscribe link, and a "Sent via CrowdWork" line.
Your mailing address has to be complete. Anti-spam law requires a physical postal address in every marketing email, so a marketing campaign can't send until your theatre's street address, city, state, and ZIP are filled in under your theatre settings. Transactional campaigns aren't affected.
After you send
Once a campaign is sent, its delivery stats, opens, clicks, and attributed revenue appear in its report — open the campaign from the Campaigns list. See Campaign Reports & Revenue for a tour of everything in it.
Two more tools on the Campaigns list worth knowing:
Duplicate — copies any campaign into a fresh draft, perfect for a recurring newsletter
Delete — removes a draft you no longer need (sent campaigns can't be deleted, so your reporting history stays intact)
Related Tasks
Understand the two campaign types
Target the right patrons
Read a campaign's report and revenue
Reuse layouts and images
Manage unsubscribes and bounces
Need Help?
If you run into a situation this guide doesn't cover, contact our support team from your Dashboard. We're here to help!
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