Campaigner

What Campaigner is

Campaigner is an email marketing automation platform for businesses that have outgrown basic newsletters and want workflows, segmentation and conversion tracking. It sends email campaigns and automated sequences, runs SMS and MMS alongside them, offers transactional email through an SMTP relay add-on, and has a REST API. The footer names the company behind it as J2 Global Canada, Inc., "a Ziff Davis company," and the home page says Campaigner is part of "the Ziff Davis Martech division."

The home page claims "20+ years of email marketing experience" and says "Thousands of customers trust our platform." The trust center repeats that "Thousands of companies around the world trust Campaigner as their email service provider." Its headline promise is to "Turn email into revenue with advanced email marketing automation."

Building campaigns

Campaigns can be built in a drag-and-drop editor or in HTML, either typed into the editor or imported. You can also pull content in from an HTML file or a URL, include RSS feed content, and save reusable content blocks. The feature list says "All Campaigner templates are built to be fully responsive," and pre-built templates are there to start from. An AI subject line generator suggests subject lines.

Campaigns go out once, on a schedule, or on a recurring cadence such as "weekly on Tuesday." Experiments cover A/B testing and multivariate testing. Personalization runs through merge fields, dynamic content delivered "at time of email open," and conditional content that switches the message, call to action or design based on contact data such as past conversions. Other options include custom From and Reply-To addresses, a plain text version, social sharing, forward-to-a-friend, autoreplies for unmonitored mailboxes, editing tracked links after sending, custom URL parameters, Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics link tracking, and removal of the "Sent by Campaigner" footer. The media library stores up to 50MB of images.

Automation and SMS

The workflow builder handles "simple, straight-line or complex workflows with multiple paths." Triggers can be time-based, rules-based (a form submission or other action), conditional (based on an action or non-action), or custom. Delay nodes set the wait between steps, and workflows can update contact fields and list memberships as people move through them. One-time and recurring autoresponders cover signup replies and birthday emails, and confirmation emails handle address verification. A validation tool "will quickly check your newly built workflow for errors prior to activation."

SMS customers can "create workflows that incorporate SMS triggers," or send standalone SMS campaigns. The home page cites "a 98% read rate" for SMS.

Segments, lists and forms

Segments can be static or dynamic, with dynamic segments picking up new contacts that match when a campaign is sent. You can segment by campaign activity (for example everyone who opened a campaign), form submissions, contact fields, workflow membership, geolocation by IP, region or time zone, and transactional email activity. Custom fields come in text, number, date, single and multi-select, and boolean types, and computed fields update through rule-based logic. Suppression and exclusion lists keep contacts out of a send without deleting them, and a "Clean Contacts" tool clears unsubscribed, hard-bounced and old pending contacts.

Sign-up forms support single and double opt-in, and a preference center lets contacts choose which newsletters they receive. Landing pages are built into the platform for email and other campaigns.

Ecommerce and integrations

The ecommerce section lists abandoned cart emails, plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce, back-in-stock messages, contact sync to your store, purchase history on each contact and segments built on purchase activity. Conversion tracking shows how many conversions each campaign produced.

The integrations page lists pre-built connections with Zapier, Google Sheets, Facebook Lead Ads, HubSpot Marketing, Typeform, Google Forms, Gravity Forms, Salesforce CRM, JotForm, Eventbrite, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, Survey Monkey, Ninja Forms and Adobe Analytics. For developers there is a REST API, scheduled SFTP imports and exports, and webhooks for contact, list, SFTP and campaign activity.

Plans and prices

Pricing is shown in US or Canadian dollars. With the number of contacts set to 1,000, the pricing page lists:

• Essentials at $14 a month, "Great for those wanting the basics": drag-and-drop editor, email templates and detailed campaign reporting.
• Advanced at $35 a month, "Great for experienced users with advanced needs": simple and multi-path automation workflows, advanced segmentation and advanced personalization.
• Custom, quoted by sales, "Great for those sending at scale": the full feature set, dedicated account management and deliverability consulting.

Add-ons cost extra. Reputation Defender, which suppresses poor-quality addresses to protect your sending reputation, is "available on all plans at 20% of your plan cost." Capture turns anonymous website visitors into subscribers and is available to US-based customers only. AI Insight Builder answers plain-language questions about your contacts. Transactional email via SMTP relay is also an add-on.

The FAQ says "You can use Campaigner free for 30 days with full access to every feature." There are no setup fees on the standard plans, though custom plans may carry them for integrations or extended training, and "you may cancel at any time." Professional services such as template creation, workflow setup and campaign management are quoted separately.

Compliance, security and agencies

The pricing page states that "Campaigner meets SOC2 requirements" and "adheres to all" CAN-SPAM, GDPR, CASL and CCPA requirements. Under data sovereignty it says "Your data can be hosted in your country or region." The trust center links a Data Protection Addendum, a data retention policy and an anti-spam policy. Accounts support user roles, two-factor authentication and sub-accounts.

Resellers and agencies get a white-label edition: their own logo and colors in the interface, custom application and tracking domains, single sign-on, an admin console, activity reports across sub-accounts, shared templates and image hosting, IP management that assigns specific IPs to sub-accounts, and deliverability as a service. The compare page adds that custom domains for "both your emails and your landing pages" are encouraged.

Support is by phone, chat and email, "included with all plans," plus a knowledge base, webinars, tutorials and a system status page. A dedicated account manager comes with the higher tier, and there is a non-profit program.

Who it suits

Campaigner fits an ecommerce business or marketing team that wants multi-path automation, SMS in the same workflows, store plugins and detailed segmentation, and is comfortable starting at 1,000 contacts. The SOC 2, GDPR, CASL and CCPA statements and the data sovereignty option will matter to regulated or Canadian senders. Agencies and resellers get a white-label edition with sub-accounts, their own branding and IP management.

A solo newsletter writer with a small list will find far more tooling than needed, and several useful extras, such as Reputation Defender address filtering and transactional email, are paid add-ons on top of the plan.