Getting started: send your first email
This guide takes you from a brand-new RadarSend workspace to your first campaign. RadarSend blocks sending until a few essentials are in place — this is the order to do them in. You’ll find the same steps on your home page under Finish setting up.
First: your workspace#
When you first sign in, a short setup wizard asks for:
- Workspace — your account name.
- Regional — time zone, date format, and which day the week starts on.
- Your website — your website domain (RadarSend checks it’s reachable).
Click Enter RadarSend to finish. Everything below happens after this.
The setup checklist (Finish setting up)#
Your home page shows a Finish setting up card with a Required to send section and a Recommended section. Work through the required steps top to bottom — each opens a guided wizard.
Required to send#
- Connect a sending service — the provider that actually delivers your email (Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, and more). → Provider setup guides
- Set up email tracking — add a branded tracking domain (one DNS setup, RadarSend verifies it) so you can measure opens and clicks. → Set up your tracking domain
- Set up email categories & types — how recipients subscribe and unsubscribe. → Email types & subscriptions
- Turn on website tracking — powers click-to-visit and bot filtering (needs email tracking first).
- Add a sender — your from-name, from-address, and reply-to, confirmed with a real test send (needs a sending service and tracking first). → Add and confirm a sender
Along the way you’ll also want to authenticate your sending domain (SPF/DKIM at your provider, DMARC verified by RadarSend) — this is what gets your mail to the inbox.
Recommended#
- Brand your preference center — your logo, colors, and copy on the unsubscribe page.
- Set up first-party tracking — an advanced option to run tracking links through your primary domain.
Once the required steps are done, the checklist hides itself and sending is unblocked.
Send your first broadcast#
With a confirmed sender in place, you’re ready to send. In the main sidebar, open Broadcasts to create and send a one-off campaign. → Create and send a broadcast
Before your first real send, add some contacts and (optionally) a segment to send to:
- Audience → Contacts — import your contacts
- Audience → Segments — build a segment to target part of your audience
- Forms — collect signups with a form on your own site
Finding your way around#
The main sidebar, top to bottom:
- Home, Insights and Notifications
- Broadcasts, Sequences, Forms and Automations
- Audience — Contacts, Segments, Lists
- Content — Emails, Templates, Blocks
- Settings, at the bottom — sending services, senders, domains, subscriptions, deliverability, and developer tools
New to the terminology (sending service vs. sender vs. sending domain vs. tracking domain)? See Concepts & glossary.
Good to know#
- Sending stays blocked until the required checklist steps are complete — that’s by design, so you don’t send before your domain, tracking, and sender are ready.
- You can always return to any step later from Settings, or re-open the checklist items from your home page.