# MailCamp Overview

> MailCamp is an email marketing platform built for organisations that want to send well-designed, well-targeted email to opted-in audiences. This document explains the product's conceptual model: the main entities, how they relate, and the typical user journey.

## What MailCamp is

MailCamp lets a business:

1. Collect email subscribers through embeddable forms.
2. Organise those subscribers into mailing lists with custom fields.
3. Design email content using a visual drag-and-drop editor.
4. Send campaigns — either one-off or as part of an automated flow.
5. Measure how each campaign performed and refine future sends.

The platform is designed for marketers and small teams. It does not require coding to send a campaign, but offers an API and webhooks for integrations.

## The conceptual model

The four entities at the centre of MailCamp are:

- **Contact** — a single subscriber, identified by email address. Belongs to exactly one mailing list; the same address on two lists is two separate records.
- **Mailing list (audience)** — the container for contacts. An account normally has one audience holding everyone; it carries the sender identity, custom fields, topics and subscription forms. Extra lists exist only for audiences that genuinely may not touch.
- **Campaign** — an email message sent to one mailing list, optionally narrowed to a segment, a tag or a topic.
- **Automation** — a triggered sequence of campaigns that runs in response to contact events (e.g. signup, inactivity).

Around these entities are supporting concepts: **templates** (reusable designs), **fields** (extra contact attributes), **segments** (saved filters over the audience), **tags** (labels you assign), **topics** (interests contacts manage themselves), **forms** (entry points for new contacts), **domains** (sender authentication), and **statistics** (per-send performance).

Segments, tags and topics are what replaced the old habit of creating a separate mailing list per purpose. Keeping everyone in one audience means one contact record per person, one unsubscribe that is respected everywhere, and one set of statistics — instead of paying for the same person several times and splitting their history across lists.

## Typical user journey

A first-time user usually goes through these steps:

1. Complete the company survey and sign the processing agreement — campaigns and forms stay inactive until this is done.
2. Add a sender address and authenticate its **domain** (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
3. Set up the **audience**: custom fields, and the **topics** contacts can choose from.
4. Build a subscribe **form** and embed it on a website, or import an existing opted-in audience.
5. Design an email in the **template** editor.
6. Send a one-off **campaign** to the audience, a segment, a tag or a topic — or wire it into an **automation**.
7. Review **statistics** to see opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes.

## Compliance posture

- MailCamp is GDPR-aware. New contacts must confirm their subscription before they become eligible to receive campaigns, supporting double-opt-in flows.
- Every campaign includes an unsubscribe link in its footer; recipients can leave a list at any time. Where the audience uses topics, they can also drop a single subject instead of leaving entirely.
- Topic preferences carry the recipient's own opt-in, which is what makes topic-targeted sending legitimate. Tags, being sender-assigned, carry no consent of their own.
- Bounced and unsubscribed contacts are retained but excluded from future sends.

## Related documents

- [Campaigns](/llms/campaigns.txt)
- [Contacts](/llms/contacts.txt)
- [Mailing lists](/llms/mailing-lists.txt)
- [Segments](/llms/segments.txt), [Tags](/llms/tags.txt), [Topics](/llms/topics.txt)
- [Automations](/llms/automations.txt)
- [Plan and usage](/llms/subscriptions.txt)