# Campaigns

Reach your audience with a one-time send from a single editor. This page explains what a campaign is, which channels you can use, and the stages it goes through as you create, prepare and send it.

**Language:** en
**Audience:** platform
**TLDR:** A campaign is a one-time broadcast sent to a targeted audience over SMS or RCS (with automatic SMS fallback). Building one follows a fixed flow: choose the audience, compose the message in the message composer, then review and schedule or send. This collection covers campaign statuses, confirmation, and tracking links.
**Translation key:** platform.campaigns.overview
**Search keywords:** campaign, campaigns, broadcast, send, sending, one-time send, bulk send, multichannel campaign, sms campaign, rcs campaign, sms fallback, fallback, message editor, schedule, scheduling, draft, preparing, scheduled, sending, sent, canceled, cancelled, unpaid, campaign status, campaign stage, campaign lifecycle, automatic confirmation, auto-confirm, confirm campaign, tracking links, campaign analytics
**Related pages:** /platform/es/campaigns, /platform/en/campaigns/creating-a-campaign, /platform/en/campaigns/audience-targeting, /platform/en/campaigns/test-sends, /platform/en/campaigns/delivery-settings, /platform/en/campaigns/compliance-policies, /platform/en/campaigns/managing-campaigns, /platform/en/campaigns/campaign-analytics
**Docs index (every page):** https://docs.instasent.com/llms.txt
**This zone's index:** https://docs.instasent.com/platform/en/llms.txt
**This page:** https://docs.instasent.com/platform/en/campaigns/ (HTML) · https://docs.instasent.com/platform/en/campaigns.md (Markdown)
**Other language (es):** https://docs.instasent.com/platform/es/campaigns.md

A campaign is a one-time send to a chosen audience. You pick a **channel** when
you create it — **SMS** or **RCS** — write the message once in the message
composer, and decide when it goes out: send it now or schedule it for later. This
page explains what a campaign is, which channels you can use, and the stages it
goes through as you create, prepare and send it.

## What a campaign is

Each campaign goes out over **one channel**, chosen when you create it:

| Channel             | What it's for                                                                                                                                                                                         |
| ------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **SMS**             | Text messages to mobile phones. The baseline — available in every project.                                                                                                                            |
| **RCS**             | Branded messaging from your verified sender — text plus up to four **Quick actions**, with an optional **SMS fallback** for contacts who can't receive RCS. Rich cards and carousels are coming soon. |
| **WhatsApp** (Soon) | Shown when you create the campaign, marked *coming soon*. Not available yet.                                                                                                                          |

You don't create an "SMS campaign" and an "RCS campaign" as different products —
it's the same campaign, sent over the channel you choose.

An **RCS** campaign isn't cut off from contacts who can't receive RCS. While
creating the campaign, in the message step, you can turn on the **SMS fallback** —
with the **If RCS is undeliverable** connector — and write an SMS version for
those contacts. The audience panel then shows your **available audience for
RCS + SMS** and which channel will reach each contact. See
[SMS fallback](/platform/en/channels/rcs/sms-fallback).

Campaigns and automations share the same **message composer**: you write the
text, add personalization, and (for RCS) attach up to four **Quick actions**. The
step-by-step lives in
[Creating a campaign](/platform/en/campaigns/creating-a-campaign).

> **Note**: Campaigns are **one-time sends**. For messages that fire automatically in
> response to a contact's behaviour, use
> [Automations](/platform/en/automations) instead.

## The campaign lifecycle

Every campaign moves through a small set of stages, shown as a coloured status
badge on the campaign list and detail screen. Most campaigns follow the same
happy path — **Draft → Preparing → Scheduled → Sending → Sent** — and a few
stages handle cancellation or a blocked send.

```mermaid
stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Draft
    Draft --> Preparing: confirm
    Preparing --> Scheduled: deferred send
    Preparing --> Sending: immediate send
    Scheduled --> Sending: send time reached
    Sending --> Sent: all messages sent
    Scheduled --> Canceled: cancel before it starts
    Sending --> Unpaid: balance runs out
    Unpaid --> Sending: top up balance
    Sent --> [*]
    Canceled --> [*]
    class Sent success
    class Canceled destructive
    class Unpaid destructive
```

### Stages

| Stage         | What it means                                                                                                                                 | Editable?                   |
| ------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------- |
| **Draft**     | Being built or revised. Audience, message and cost estimate are still open.                                                                   | Yes                         |
| **Preparing** | Confirmed — Instasent is building each message and its tracking links. Takes a few minutes; a progress bar shows how many contacts are ready. | No                          |
| **Scheduled** | Prepared and waiting for its send time.                                                                                                       | No — cancel to make changes |
| **Sending**   | Messages are going out. A progress bar shows how far along it is.                                                                             | No                          |
| **Sent**      | The send finished. Analytics keep updating as delivery and click data arrive.                                                                 | No                          |
| **Canceled**  | Stopped by you before it could finish. Terminal.                                                                                              | No                          |
| **Unpaid**    | Paused mid-send because the project ran out of balance. Top up and it resumes.                                                                | No                          |

> **Note**: While a campaign is processing — estimating its audience or quoting its cost — the
> badge may briefly show a working state such as **Estimating** or **Quoting**.
> These are transient and need no action from you.

### Preparing the send

When you confirm a campaign the messages aren't sent immediately — it enters
**Preparing**. Instasent builds each contact's message individually and generates
all the tracking links, which can take a few minutes for a large audience; a
progress bar shows how many contacts are ready. When preparation finishes, the
campaign moves to **Sending** for an immediate send, or **Scheduled** for one set
for later.

By default a campaign **confirms automatically** the moment it's prepared and
carries on. While it's preparing you can **cancel that automatic confirmation** —
a **Cancel** link on the preparation block — so it waits as prepared instead. You
then review it and press **Confirm campaign** when you're ready. This is useful
when you want a last look once the final recipient count and cost are settled.

Once a campaign is prepared or scheduled, **changing its message or audience
un-prepares it**: it returns to **Draft**, the prepared messages and tracking
links are cleared, and it must be prepared again before it can send. This is
because each message is built with its final content — its length and number of
parts, each contact's personalization, the estimated cost and the tracked links —
so any change to the message or the audience means recalculating all of it. The
composer warns you before this happens.

### What you can do at each stage

Each stage allows a different set of actions:

- **Draft** — the only fully editable stage. You change audience, message and
  delivery settings freely.
- **Scheduled** — can be cancelled before its send time. To change its content,
  cancel it, edit the draft, then schedule it again.
- **Sending** — can be cancelled to stop the messages that haven't gone out yet.
- **Sent** — no longer editable; you only read its analytics.

Managing campaigns across these stages — cloning, cancelling and finding them —
is covered in [Managing campaigns](/platform/en/campaigns/managing-campaigns).

![The campaigns list showing campaigns with Draft, Scheduled and Sent status badges](/platform/en/campaigns/images/campaigns--1-list.png)
*The campaigns list, with each campaign's current stage.*

## Cost and confirmation

Before a campaign sends, Instasent gives an **upfront estimate** of its cost:
roughly the number of recipients multiplied by the per-country price and the
number of message parts. You see this estimate and confirm it before the send is
scheduled — no message is sent until you confirm the campaign. Delivery timing,
send speed and local-time sending are covered in
[Delivery settings](/platform/en/campaigns/delivery-settings).

## Explore the collection

- [Creating a campaign](/platform/en/campaigns/creating-a-campaign) - Build a campaign step by step: channel, message and live preview.
- [Audience & targeting](/platform/en/campaigns/audience-targeting) - Choose who receives it — segments, exclusions and estimated reach.
- [Test sends & preview](/platform/en/campaigns/test-sends) - Check your message on a real device before the full send.
- [Delivery settings](/platform/en/campaigns/delivery-settings) - Schedule, send speed and local-time delivery.
- [Compliance policies](/platform/en/campaigns/compliance-policies) - Decide who's reachable and what happens on opt-out.
- [Managing campaigns](/platform/en/campaigns/managing-campaigns) - Clone, cancel and find your campaigns.
- [Campaign analytics](/platform/en/campaigns/campaign-analytics) - Delivery, clicks and conversions after a campaign sends.

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This is one page of the Instasent documentation. For the complete machine-readable index of every guide and API reference, fetch https://docs.instasent.com/llms.txt — start there for full context.