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This guide walks you through everything from creating your SendWhale account to reviewing the report after your first campaign lands in inboxes. Follow each step in order — later steps depend on the setup completed in earlier ones. The whole process takes roughly 15–20 minutes on a first run.
Importing contacts into an audience does not automatically create marketing consent for those contacts. You are responsible for ensuring every contact on your list has given valid consent to receive marketing email before you send.
1

Register your account

Go to gosendwhale.com/signup (or /register) and create your account. Enter your name, email address, and a password of at least 12 characters, then accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You can also sign up with Google if you prefer not to set a password manually.After submitting, check your inbox for a confirmation email. Click the confirmation link or enter the code provided. If the email doesn’t appear within a few minutes, check your spam folder. Codes and links expire, so complete confirmation promptly — if yours expires, return to the sign-in page and request a new one.
2

Complete onboarding

After confirming your email, SendWhale starts a five-step onboarding flow:
  1. Business identity — Enter your business or brand name and primary category.
  2. Social & logo — Add your website URL, social handles, and upload a logo.
  3. Address — Provide a physical mailing address (required for CAN-SPAM / GDPR compliance footers).
  4. Team size — Select the size of your team so SendWhale can tailor defaults.
  5. Goals — Choose your primary email marketing goals (e.g., grow subscribers, promote products, nurture leads).
You must complete all five steps before accessing your workspace. You can update any of these details later from your workspace settings.
3

Select or create your workspace

Once onboarding is complete, SendWhale places you in your default workspace. If you were invited to an existing workspace, you may see a selector — choose the workspace you want to start in.Your workspace is the container for all your contacts, campaigns, templates, and brand settings. You can create additional workspaces later from the account menu.
4

Add your brand details

Open Brand Settings in the sidebar and fill in:
  • Brand name — The name Swell uses when writing copy.
  • Colors — Your primary and secondary brand colors (hex values).
  • Logo — Upload your logo in PNG or SVG format.
  • Brand voice — A short description of your tone (e.g., “friendly and concise”, “authoritative and data-driven”).
The more context you give Swell here, the more on-brand its first drafts will be. You can refine these settings at any time.
5

Create an audience and add a contact

Navigate to Audiences and click New audience. Give it a descriptive name (for example, “Newsletter subscribers — Jan 2025”).Then add at least one consented contact so you have a real recipient available for testing. You can:
  • Import a CSV — Map columns to fields such as email, first name, last name, and tags.
  • Add manually — Enter a single contact’s details by hand.
Importing contacts does not create marketing consent. Only add contacts who have explicitly opted in to receive email from you.
6

Open Swell and draft your campaign

Go to Campaigns and click New campaign. When the editor opens, launch the Swell panel on the right side.In the Swell chat input, describe your campaign goal in plain language — for example:
“Write a welcome email for new subscribers. Friendly tone, mention our 10% first-order discount, and end with a CTA to shop the new collection.”
Swell reads your brand context and returns a full draft including subject line, preheader, and body copy. Review the draft and iterate by typing follow-up instructions in the same chat — ask Swell to shorten the intro, change the CTA text, adjust the tone, or try a different subject line.When you’re satisfied with the content, apply the draft to the email canvas.
7

Review sender identity, subject, preheader, and footer

Before sending, verify the following fields in the campaign settings panel:
  • Sender name — The “From” name your recipients will see (e.g., “Alex at Acme Co”).
  • Sender email — Must be a verified domain address.
  • Subject line — Keep it under 60 characters for reliable display across clients.
  • Preheader — The preview text shown after the subject in inbox views; aim for 85–100 characters.
  • Footer — Confirm your mailing address and unsubscribe link are present and correct. These are legally required.
8

Send a test email to yourself

Click Send test and enter your own email address. Open the test email in your actual inbox and check:
  • Subject line and preheader render correctly.
  • Images load and are not distorted.
  • All links open to the correct destinations.
  • The unsubscribe link is functional.
  • The email looks correct on both desktop and mobile.
Fix any issues in the editor before continuing.
9

Run preflight checks

SendWhale’s preflight panel flags common issues before you send. Work through any warnings or errors:
  • ✅ Sender domain verified
  • ✅ Audience selected and not empty
  • ✅ Subject line present
  • ✅ Footer contains mailing address and unsubscribe link
  • ✅ No broken links detected in the email body
Resolve all errors before proceeding. Warnings are advisory but worth reviewing.
10

Choose recipients and schedule or send

In the Recipients panel, select the audience or segment you want to send to. You can choose:
  • Send now — Dispatch the campaign immediately after confirmation.
  • Schedule — Pick a future date and time (in your workspace’s configured timezone).
If you’re scheduling, double-check the date, time, and timezone before saving.
11

Confirm the send

A confirmation dialog summarizes your campaign: recipient count, subject line, sender identity, and send time. Review all details carefully — sent campaigns cannot be recalled.Click Confirm and send (or Confirm and schedule) to finalize.
12

Inspect the campaign report

Once the campaign has been sent (or is underway for scheduled sends), open its Report view from the Campaigns list. The report shows delivery status and engagement data as it becomes available.Use the report to understand what resonated with your audience and apply those insights when drafting your next campaign with Swell.

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What’s next

Brand Context API

Connect external tools to your brand knowledge with the Brand Context API.

MCP Server

Use SendWhale’s MCP server to drive campaigns from your AI coding environment.

Workspace roles

Invite teammates and assign owner, admin, editor, or viewer roles.

Support

Visit the support portal or email support@gosendwhale.com for help.