Campaigns and audiences: build, approve, and send safely

A campaign is a one-time send to a segment of your book, a price change notice, an event invite, a newsletter. Audiences are how you build that segment: a live, stackable filter over your PSA data, shared by campaigns and AI sequences alike. This article covers building the audience and getting a manual campaign through approval and out the door. If you want the AI to draft the message itself, see "AI sequences and campaigns". That article covers the full filter list and AI drafting in depth.

Once the list gets long, group it with folders: click New folder, then drag campaigns in by the handle on the left, or use Move to folder in any campaign's ⋯ menu. That menu can also make a new folder and file the campaign into it in one step. Folders cover the working list. Approvals and Templates stay flat, because both are meant to show you everything at once. See "Import contacts by CSV" for the full folder rules, which are the same on Lists, Campaigns and Sequences.

Open the composer for a new campaign and you'll land on the audience builder. Every filter you add stacks with AND, adding more filters always narrows the list, never widens it. You can filter by relationship, company status (current vs former partner), company type, account owner, location (state and city), industry, classification, contract type, offerings (and offering coverage gaps), tags, saved lists, minimum MRR, whether the company has an open opportunity, your workspace's own company fields, and whether to scope to primary or active contacts only. A live count updates as you add filters, with a sample of matching contacts so you can sanity-check before you commit.

• Company type filters on your PSA's own company type picklist, Customer, Prospect, Vendor, Partner, and whatever else your instance defines. The list of types fills itself in from your PSA: both the types your companies already carry and any type you added over there, so a new one is pickable before a single company has been moved onto it. Company type is a different question from the two filters either side of it: relationship asks whether a company holds an active contract, company status asks whether your PSA still counts it as active, and a company typed Vendor can be both.
• Company status reaches current partners only. It filters on whether a company is still active in your PSA (Autotask, ConnectWise, HaloPSA, Syncro, Rev.io, or SuperOps), so a service notice skips companies you've offboarded even if they still carry a lingering contract. Pair Active with Customers to reach current partners who also hold an active contract. A company whose status hasn't synced yet counts as active, so nobody is dropped by surprise.
• Filters with more than fifteen options come as a search box rather than a row of chips. Type to find what you want, tick as many as you like, and what you have picked sits under the box as chips you can remove one at a time. A value you saved months ago that no longer exists in your PSA still shows up there, so a filter is never narrowing your audience out of sight.
• Account Executives only see their own book when filtering by owner. You can't accidentally pull another AE's companies into your send.
• Save a combination of filters as a segment so you don't rebuild it next quarter.
• The same audience builder appears in the sequence composer and behind a dynamic list's rules, so a segment you like works for a one-time campaign, a multi-step sequence, and a list that keeps itself up to date.

A static list no longer has to be built one person at a time. Open any static list and click Add contacts: the dialog has three tabs. Pick by hand searches and ticks people. By filter opens the same audience builder you use here, stack the filters, read the count, and click Add, and everyone who matches at that moment joins the list in one go. From a CSV takes a spreadsheet and puts everyone in it on that list, matching the people you already have and creating the ones you do not. Creating a list works the same way: choose Static, switch on Start from a filter, and the list is created already filled.

• It is a snapshot. The list does not remember the filter and does not update itself later. That is what a dynamic list is for. Run a filter again on the same list whenever you like, and only the newcomers are added; people already on it are counted, not duplicated.
• The same engine that previews the audience writes the members, so the builder's Primary contact only and Include inactive contacts switches and the need for an email address apply exactly as they would to a send. One difference to expect: a list keeps one person per email address, the way a send does, so when several contacts share an address the number added comes in a little under the preview count. The confirmation tells you the number that actually landed.
• An Account Executive fills a list from their own book only, the same as everywhere else in the builder. Sales leadership can fill any list; an AE can fill the lists they created.
• If nobody matches, nothing is added and the dialog stays open so you can widen the filter.

Two of the filters read things the rest of the builder can't reach. Open opportunity asks whether the company has an opportunity still in play (any stage before won or lost, in any pipeline), so a first-touch message can skip every account your team is already working, and a nudge can go only to the ones sitting in the pipeline. It has three settings: Any, In an open opportunity, and Not in an open opportunity, and Any is no filter at all, so an audience you built before this existed keeps its exact reach.

Company fields builds conditions over three kinds of field: the fields your workspace added to companies (EBITDA, annual revenue, % recurring, whatever your team tracks), the user-defined fields synced from your PSA, and a set of standard company fields. Market segment, lead source, country, postal code, website, phone, LinkedIn, current IT provider, prospect stack, employee count, potential MRR, prospect contract end, last activity, created date, plus yes/no facts such as customer or prospect, active in your PSA, has an open opportunity, has an account manager, and churn risk. The picker groups them under Your fields, your PSA's fields, and Standard fields. Add a row, choose the field, choose how to compare it, and pick or type the value. Every row must hold, the same as the rest of the builder, and you can stack up to eight.

• A dropdown field (Lost Reason, Lead Source, Partner Rating, anything with a fixed list) opens with is any of: tick as many values as you like in one row, and the condition matches a company carrying any one of them. Is none of is the mirror: it leaves out every company carrying one of the ticked values, and a company with nothing stored for the field stays in.
• A text field gets the same two rows, offering the values already stored on your companies as checkboxes (the most common first); type a value that is not listed and press Enter to add it. Contains, is, and is not are still there for a single value. Is not needs a stored value to compare, so a company with nothing on file does not match it. Is none of is the row that keeps those companies.
• A multi-choice field matches with is any of when the company carries at least one of the ticked values, and is none of when it carries none.
• A money, number, or percent field compares with is over, is under, equals, or is not.
• A date field compares with is after, is before, or is on.
• Any field can also ask for has a value or is empty, which take no value of their own.
• Change a row's field and the comparison re-checks itself: an operator the new kind of field can't use is swapped for one it can, rather than being left to be dropped later.

Every filter that takes a list of values (classification, company type, state, city, industry, contract type, tags, contact tags, and saved lists) can now leave people out as well as pick them. Under the filter, choose Exclude and pick the values to keep out; they appear beneath the include row as "And not". Include and exclude stack with everything else: a filter that says classification is Customer and not Vendor reaches customers who aren't also typed Vendor. A value you already included can't be picked as an exclude, so the two rows never cancel each other out. A company with nothing on file for a field is kept by an exclude, because "none of these" is true of an empty value.

With ZeroBounce connected (Settings › Integrations, a Tenant Admin action), the campaign wizard carries a Verify button that reads the audience's state at a glance: green Verified when the list is checked and healthy, amber Verify recommended when enough of it is stale or never-checked to matter, neutral Verify otherwise. Click it and Current runs verification, and opens a pre-send report you can actually work from.

• Every address in the audience with its verdict (valid, accepts-all, unknown, or flagged) plus ZeroBounce's suggested correction where one exists (usually a typo fix).
• Filter chips to cut the report to one verdict, and a search box to find a specific address or partner.
• Large audiences show the first 2,000 rows, and the count at the top is the whole audience, not just what's on screen.
• Flagged addresses are excluded from every send automatically. That's the suppression list doing its job; the report just lets you see it before the send instead of after.

A service-notice campaign (a maintenance window, a policy change, an outage update) can include a Live data block: a small snapshot of each recipient's own account, filled in per-partner at send time so everyone sees their own numbers rather than a generic paragraph. It's available on service notices only, never on marketing campaigns, and it's fully configurable.

• Choose whether to show the partner's open projects, and how many to list (1–10), optionally with each project's due date or % complete.
• Optionally show their next renewal and their account manager.
• Add an optional custom heading for the block, or leave the default.
• It stays partner-safe by design: the Live data block never includes any financial data (no rates, budgets, margins, or money figures) exactly like the partner portal.

The body is a stack of blocks, and two of them carry files: Picture and PDF. Add either one wherever you want it to appear, and move it up or down like any other block.

Pictures are resized and compressed in your browser before they upload, so a six-megabyte photo straight off a phone becomes roughly 300 KB at a size that suits email. You don't have to prepare anything first. JPG, PNG and WebP are accepted, up to 10 MB before compression, and up to ten pictures in one email. Give each picture a short description. Many mail clients block images until the reader clicks, and the description is what they see in the meantime.

A PDF works differently: it sends as a download button rather than an attachment, and that's deliberate. Bulk email carrying attachments is one of the more reliable ways to land in a spam folder, and when a workspace sends through a Microsoft 365 mailbox the mail server caps the entire message at a few megabytes, so a real attachment would work from one workspace and quietly fail from another. A button behaves the same everywhere. If you send on your own Resend key, you can also see who clicked it.

Files belong to the campaign you added them to. Delete the campaign and its files go with it. Add a picture, change your mind and delete the block, and the file is tidied up automatically about a week later. There is nothing to clean up by hand and no storage limit to manage.

Sequence emails can carry files too, one picture and one PDF per step, sent below your message and above your signature. See "AI sequences and campaigns" for that.

A paragraph, heading or bullet can carry a link behind its own words, "We built Current at our MSP" with Current as the link, instead of a bare web address sitting in the sentence. Recipients' mail scanners rewrite bare addresses into long tracking strings, which is what made pasted links look like gibberish before.

1. 1
   Select the words

   In any body field, highlight the words you want people to click.
2. 2
   Press Link, or Cmd/Ctrl+K

   The Link button sits under the merge-tag chips. Paste the address (it has to start with https://) and press Add link.
3. 3
   Check the preview

   The field now reads [Current](https://current.day). That is the whole trick: the words in square brackets are what the reader sees, the address in parentheses is where they go. The preview on the right draws it as a real link.

You can also type the pattern yourself, and the AI writer uses it when your brief names a link. Only web addresses work (anything else stays plain text), and a subject line never carries a link, so the pattern typed there collapses to its words. Merge tags work inside a link too: [Book a time]({{booking_link}}) sends each person to the sender's booking page.

Bold works the same way. Select the words and press Bold (or Cmd/Ctrl+B): the field reads words and the email shows them in bold. Bold and a link can share the same words, a pair of stars with nothing between them stays as typed, and a subject line drops the stars. The Bold button sits beside Link in the campaign composer, the sequence step editor, the Outreach editor and the inline reply box.

Every campaign chooses a sender in the composer's "Who it's from" section. Everyone can send as your brand (your workspace name, or the from name you set in Integrations → Email), or as "«you» from «brand»". Sales leadership and tenant admins get two more options for sending as someone else, a leadership-only capability, enforced at the database, not just hidden in the UI.

• Each account manager. The email is sent per recipient from that company's own account manager. If the account manager's address is on your verified sending domain, it sends from their real address; if not, it still sends from your team's address but replies route back to them. A company with no account manager falls back to your brand.
• Someone else. The whole campaign is signed by one chosen person. Pick a teammate to fill their name and email automatically, or type a name and reply-to address by hand. Same domain rule: their real address when it's on your verified domain, otherwise replies route to them.
• The Review step shows a "Who each recipient hears from" breakdown before you send: one line per account manager with the recipient count, plus a fallback line for anyone with no account manager.

On the Review & send step, the Look card above the preview offers four designs for the same email. Your words and blocks never change; only the shell around them does, and the preview swaps as you click. The choice is saved with the campaign, a duplicate or a saved template keeps it, and every campaign that existed before this shipped stays on Classic.

• Plain text, reads like a personal email: no card, no header, the reader's own fonts. Links and bold do the work; a Button block becomes a text link with an arrow, a PDF becomes a text link with its size beside it, and your signature's Book time with me button becomes a text link too. No Powered by Current line on this one.
• Classic. The look campaigns have always had, tidied: a band in your brand colour with your logo across the top, filled buttons, the standard footer.
• Letter, a quiet white card with a small logo and a thin rule under it, today's date top right, larger text with more room, and an outlined button.
• Announcement, the first picture in the email becomes a full-width hero under a centred logo, the first heading becomes a big headline, and the first button spans the full width. Later headings and buttons look like Classic's.

Colours and logo come from your brand kit in Settings › General › Profile and branding: the header colour is your primary, adjusted so white text stays readable, and the band takes your dark-background logo while the white looks take the light one. A workspace with no Brand kit yet sends in Current purple with its own name in the header. Your saved email signature is added the same way in every look; only its fonts and logo size follow the design. A test send uses the look you picked, so what lands in your inbox is exactly what your audience gets.

Draft with AI has a Theme dropdown: what kind of email this is. General leaves the writer exactly as it was. The other eight change what the draft leads with and what it makes sure to include: a service notice states what changes and when and whether anything is needed of the reader; an outage notice opens with what is affected and its status and names the next update time; a price increase puts the new price and the effective date in the first paragraph; a newsletter is three to five short sections with headings; a new offering names who it is for and the one problem it solves; an event or webinar invite carries the date, time and time zone and one Save your seat; a security advisory gives numbered steps and how to tell a real message from a fake; a renewal reminder states what renews, when, and the date to act by.

Picking a theme also sets the message type it usually is (a newsletter, a new offering and an event invite are marketing; the others are service notices), which you can still change, and when the draft lands it suggests a look (a newsletter as Announcement, a price increase as Letter, an outage notice as Plain text) unless you had already picked one. The theme is saved with the campaign, so a duplicate or a template keeps the same instructions and re-drafting stays consistent.

Every campaign moves through a status: draft, then pending approval, then approved, then sending, then sent. Nothing skips a step. The send button simply isn't there until the campaign is approved. A campaign that is sending can also be paused, and resumed later.

1. 1
   Write the campaign

   Subject, body, and the audience you built. Save as a draft any time.
2. 2
   Submit for approval

   Account Executives submit their draft for review. Sales leadership (a sales manager or tenant admin) can approve it, or, if the audience is small enough, you can approve your own.
3. 3
   Small sends can self-approve

   If your resolved audience is 25 recipients or fewer, you can approve and send your own campaign, no one else has to sign off. Anything larger needs a sales manager or tenant admin to approve.
4. 4
   Send now, or schedule it

   Once approved, sending kicks off in controlled batches rather than all at once, see guardrails below. On the confirm step you can also choose Schedule instead of Send now: pick Tomorrow 8 AM, Monday 8 AM, Tuesday 10 AM, or any date and time from five minutes to 60 days ahead. Times are in your own time zone, and the confirm box shows the zone so there is no guessing.

A scheduled campaign shows as Scheduled on the Campaigns list, with the day and time it goes out. Nothing has left: the recipients are built and held, and the send starts at the time you picked, sometimes a few minutes after it, since the sender checks for due campaigns every five minutes. Until then, the row menu has Cancel schedule. Canceling drops the held recipients and returns the campaign to Draft, and it clears the approval, so it needs approving again before it can be sent or scheduled. Sales leadership can cancel any scheduled campaign; an Account Executive can cancel one they scheduled themselves. Two minutes before the send time the option disappears, because the send may already be starting.

A campaign goes out in batches every few minutes, so a large send can take hours. While it is sending, its row on the Campaigns list has a Pause button. Pausing stops the next batches straight away and keeps every email that hasn't gone yet exactly where it was: nothing is deleted and the approval stays. The row then shows Paused, and the toast tells you how many emails are waiting. A batch that had already started when you clicked may still finish, so a few more emails can go out in the next minute or two.

To carry on, click Resume on the same row and confirm. The waiting emails start going out again within five minutes, at the usual pace, and anyone who unsubscribed while the campaign was paused is still skipped. Sales leadership and workspace admins can pause or resume any campaign; an Account Executive can pause or resume one they created. A campaign that is still scheduled for later has Cancel schedule instead, because nothing has gone out yet.

A paused campaign opens with Edit for the same people who can resume it. Change the words, the blocks, the subject and preview text, the look, the AI theme or the signature switch, send yourself a test, then click Resume sending on the Review step and confirm. Everyone still waiting gets the new version within five minutes; the emails that already went out are not changed and nobody is contacted twice. The audience, the sender and the message type are fixed while paused, because the waiting emails were built from them when the send started, to reach different people or send as someone else, duplicate the campaign instead. No fresh approval is needed: the approval given before the send still stands.

• Sends go out in small batches per workspace, so one large campaign can't crowd out every other tenant's mail, or blow through your own sending reputation in one burst.
• Every send re-checks opt-outs at the moment it goes out, not just when the audience was built. Someone who unsubscribed five minutes ago won't get the email.
• Every message carries a working unsubscribe link, both in a machine-readable header (so mail clients can show a one-click unsubscribe button) and in the message body as a fallback.
• If you have ZeroBounce connected, invalid, disposable and blocked addresses (spam traps, known complainers and do-not-mail addresses) are suppressed automatically before the send, and the wizard's Verify button (see above) shows you exactly which ones, before anything goes out. Full details in "ZeroBounce: verify email deliverability before you send".

A quarterly notice or a maintenance announcement rarely needs rebuilding from nothing. Open the menu on any campaign row and you get two ways to reuse it, both of which leave the original exactly as it is.

• Duplicate, makes a fresh draft called "Copy of «name»" carrying the audience, sender, subject, and body. Edit it and send it as its own campaign.
• Save as template, files a copy under the Templates tab on the Campaigns page. The campaign you saved from is untouched and stays where it was.
• Use template. Starts a new draft from a saved template, so the audience, layout, and copy are already in place.
• New campaign offers "Start from a template" whenever your workspace has one, alongside starting from scratch.

A copy carries the authoring work and nothing else. It never inherits recipients, send history, open and click results, or the approval stamp. It is born a plain draft with nothing sent.

Anyone who created a campaign can delete it, and so can sales leadership and a tenant admin. Open the … menu on the campaign row and choose Delete. A campaign can only be deleted while it is still a draft or waiting for approval, because nothing has been sent in either state.

Once a campaign has been approved it stays on the record for good. From that point the answer is Cancel schedule, Pause, or simply leaving it as sent history, so the numbers behind a send never disappear from your reporting.