Campaigns

A campaign is a bulk send of an approved template to a list of contacts. This guide walks through running one end-to-end — from CSV upload to interpreting the delivery report.

Before you start

You need:

• A connected WhatsApp number (WhatsApp Setup)
• At least one approved template (Templates)
• A list of phone numbers in international format (+91…, +1…, etc.)
• The recipients' opt-in. This is non-negotiable — sending to people who didn't opt in burns your sender reputation and risks getting your number suspended.

Step 1 — Upload your contacts

Go to Contacts → Import. You can:

• Upload a CSV (most common)
• Paste numbers directly into the textarea (for small batches)
• Sync from an integration (when available — Shopify, HubSpot etc. coming soon)

CSV format

phone,name,city,order_id
+919876543210,Riya Sharma,Mumbai,ORD-1042
+447700900456,Tom Hodge,London,ORD-1043

• The phone column is required. Numbers must be in E.164 format (+ then country code then number, no spaces or dashes).
• Other columns become contact attributes you can use as template variables ({{name}}, {{city}}, {{order_id}}).
• Maximum 100,000 rows per upload. Larger lists should be split.

Validation

Lynkist validates every row on upload:

• Invalid phone formats are flagged and skipped
• Duplicates within the file are merged
• Numbers that already exist in your contact list are updated, not duplicated

You'll see a preview of the first 10 rows before confirming. Fix issues, re-upload, then confirm.

Step 2 — Segment your audience

Most campaigns are not sent to every contact. Use segments to narrow the list.

Go to Contacts → Segments → Create new and define filter rules:

• Attribute filters: city = Mumbai, total_orders > 5
• Behavior filters: last_message_received < 30 days ago, opted_in = true
• Tag filters: contacts tagged vip-customer or cart-abandoner

Segments are dynamic by default — when a contact's attributes change, they enter or leave the segment automatically.

Step 3 — Create the campaign

Go to Campaigns → New campaign and fill in:

1. Name — internal label, recipients never see this
2. Template — pick from your approved templates
3. Variable mapping — tell Lynkist which contact attribute fills which template variable ({{1}} → name, {{2}} → order_id, etc.)
4. Audience — pick a segment, or the full contact list
5. Send window — when to send

Preview before you send

Always preview. The preview pane renders the template with actual variable values from a few sample contacts in the audience. Catch typos here, not after 10,000 messages have shipped.

Step 4 — Schedule or send

You have three send options:

• Send now — kick off immediately
• Schedule — pick a date and time (your workspace timezone)
• Send at recipient's local time — Lynkist staggers the send so each person receives the message at, say, 10am their time

Step 5 — Monitor delivery

Open the campaign detail page to see live counts:

Refresh after a few minutes — final counts usually stabilise within 10 minutes for sends under 10,000.

Step 6 — Read the report

The campaign report shows:

• Delivery rate — should be 95%+ for a healthy list. Lower means many bad numbers; clean the list before next time.
• Read rate — varies by segment and template quality.
• Reply rate — useful for marketing campaigns to gauge engagement.
• Opt-out rate — anything above 1% means the audience didn't expect the message.
• Cost — the WhatsApp conversation charges for this campaign.

You can export the per-message log to CSV for offline analysis.

Common pitfalls

What's not covered (yet)

• Recurring campaigns — currently every campaign is a one-off. Recurring sends are on the roadmap.
• A/B testing — also coming.
• Multi-channel campaigns — WhatsApp + SMS fallback is in design.

Next steps