Campaigns
Send targeted email campaigns to your affiliates to drive engagement and referral activity.
Campaigns let you send email messages to your affiliates — whether it's a newsletter update, a new promotion announcement, or a reminder to share their referral links.
What Are Campaigns?
A campaign is a one-time email sent to a selected group of your affiliates. Unlike automated transactional emails (like reward notifications), campaigns are messages you compose and send on your schedule.
Common uses:
- Announce a new bounty or challenge
- Share tips for promoting your business
- Remind inactive affiliates about their referral link
- Celebrate milestones (e.g., "We just hit 100 referrals!")
- Seasonal promotions ("Share your link for a bonus this holiday season")
Creating a Campaign
- Navigate to Campaigns in the sidebar
- Click New Campaign
- Fill in the campaign details:
- Subject line — The email subject your affiliates will see
- Content — The body of your email message
- Audience — Who should receive this campaign
Audience Targeting
You can target your campaign to specific groups of affiliates:
| Audience Type | Who Receives It |
|---|---|
| All Affiliates | Every affiliate in your program |
| Active Affiliates | Only affiliates with ACTIVE status |
| Inactive Affiliates | Affiliates who haven't generated activity recently |
| Specific Group | A single affiliate group you've created |
| Custom | A manually selected list of affiliates |
Before sending, the campaign form shows you the recipient count so you know exactly how many people will receive your message.
Campaign Workflow
Campaigns follow this lifecycle:
- Draft — Created but not sent. You can edit freely.
- Sending — The campaign is being delivered to recipients.
- Sent — All emails have been delivered.
- Failed — Something went wrong during sending. Check the error details.
Previewing Before Sending
Before you send, use the Preview button to see exactly what your affiliates will receive. The preview shows the rendered email with your organization branding.
Duplicating Campaigns
If you want to send a similar message again (e.g., a monthly update), you can duplicate an existing campaign. This copies the subject, content, and audience settings into a new draft that you can edit before sending.
Best Practices
- Keep it short — Affiliates are busy. A few sentences with a clear call to action works better than a long newsletter.
- Include their referral link — Remind them where to find it or include a direct link to the portal.
- Time it right — Send campaigns when your affiliates are most likely to act (e.g., before a busy weekend).
- Don't over-send — One or two campaigns per month is plenty. Too many emails lead to unsubscribes.
- Celebrate wins — Share success stories. "Sarah referred 12 customers this month" motivates everyone else.
Affiliates who have opted out of marketing emails won't receive campaigns, even if they're in the selected audience. ViralRef automatically handles email preferences and unsubscribe compliance.