Documentation

Everything you need to know to get started with Outboxly — from your first email campaign to your first scheduled LinkedIn post, plus the research, brand voice, and approval workflow that powers both.

Getting Started

Go from zero to your first sent campaign in five steps. Each step takes just a few minutes.

1

Create your account

Sign up with your email address. You'll receive a confirmation link — click it to verify your account and access your dashboard.

2

Set up your brand profile

Go to Settings → Branding and enter your product name, sender name, sender email, tone of voice, and audience description. This powers AI-generated content throughout the app.

3

Authenticate your domain

In Settings → Domain, add your sending domain and configure the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records shown. This ensures your emails land in inboxes, not spam.

4

Import your subscribers

Head to Subscribers and click Import CSV to bring in your existing list, or add subscribers manually. Tag them during import for easy segmentation later.

5

Send your first campaign

Click Create Campaign, write your email (or let AI generate it), choose your audience, and hit Send. Congratulations — you're live!

Campaigns

Campaigns are the core of Outboxly — each one is a single email sent to a targeted audience. You can draft, schedule, A/B test, and track performance all from one place.

Create & send

Write your email with the visual editor or let AI generate copy from a brief. Choose your audience (all subscribers or a saved segment), then send immediately or schedule for later.

A/B testing

Test up to four subject line variants. Outboxly splits your audience evenly and tracks open rates per variant so you can see what resonates.

Audience targeting

Send to all subscribers, filter by tags or status, or select a saved segment. You can also build a one-off filter directly from the campaign editor.

Scheduling & smart send

Pick an exact date and time, or enable Smart Send to let the system choose the optimal time based on your audience's past engagement patterns.

How to use campaigns

  1. 1.Click Create Campaign from the Campaigns page.
  2. 2.Enter a campaign name, subject line, and compose your email body.
  3. 3.Optionally click Generate with AI to have Claude write your copy.
  4. 4.Select your audience — all subscribers, a tag filter, or a saved segment.
  5. 5.Preview your email, send a test to yourself, then click Send or Schedule.

Templates

Templates save you time by letting you reuse proven email layouts. Browse built-in templates or create your own from scratch, with AI, or by customizing an existing one.

System templates

A curated library of professional email templates — welcome emails, newsletters, promotions, and more. Use them as-is or customize with AI.

AI generation

Describe the email you want and AI builds a complete template with subject line and body copy tailored to your brand profile.

How to use templates

  1. 1.Go to Templates and browse the System Templates tab or your My Templates tab.
  2. 2.Click Create Template to start from scratch, or click Customize on any system template.
  3. 3.Edit the name, subject, and body. Use the AI Customize button to adjust tone or audience.
  4. 4.Save your template — it's now available when creating any campaign.

Subscribers

Your subscriber list is the heart of your email marketing. Outboxly tracks each subscriber's status, tags, engagement score, and activity timeline.

Add & import

Add subscribers one by one or import thousands via CSV. During import, map columns to fields and apply tags automatically.

Tags & attributes

Organize subscribers with tags (e.g. "vip", "trial", "webinar-attendee"). Store custom attributes as key-value pairs for advanced personalization.

Engagement scoring

Every subscriber receives an engagement tier — Hot, Warm, Cool, Cold, or Frozen — based on their open and click activity. Use tiers to target your most engaged readers or re-engage inactive ones.

How to use subscribers

  1. 1.Navigate to Subscribers in the sidebar.
  2. 2.Click Add Subscriber for a single entry, or Import CSV for bulk upload.
  3. 3.For CSV imports: upload your file, map the columns, and optionally assign tags.
  4. 4.Click any subscriber row to view their profile, engagement history, and manage tags.
  5. 5.Use the status filter tabs (Active, Unsubscribed, Bounced) to find specific groups.

Segments

Segments let you define reusable audience groups based on conditions like tags, status, signup date, or custom attributes. Use them to target the right people with the right message.

Condition builder

Combine multiple conditions with AND logic — e.g. tag equals "customer" AND created after January 2026 AND status equals "active".

Live preview

See the subscriber count update in real time as you add or remove conditions, so you know exactly how many people will receive your campaign.

How to use segments

  1. 1.Go to Segments and click Create Segment.
  2. 2.Name your segment and add conditions using the visual builder.
  3. 3.Preview the matching subscriber count.
  4. 4.Save — the segment is now available as a targeting option in any campaign.

Sequences

Sequences are automated email workflows — drip campaigns that send a series of emails on a schedule after a trigger event. Perfect for onboarding, nurture series, and re-engagement.

Multi-step flows

Add as many email steps as you need, each with a configurable delay (e.g. 1 day, 3 days, 1 week after the previous step).

AI sequence generation

Describe your automation goal and AI builds a complete sequence — trigger, email steps, delays, and copy — all based on your brand profile.

Enrollment tracking

See which subscribers are enrolled, their current step, and completion status. Pause or resume sequences at any time.

How to use sequences

  1. 1.Go to Sequences and click Create Sequence.
  2. 2.Choose a trigger (e.g. subscriber added, tag applied).
  3. 3.Add email steps with delays between them. Write copy or use AI.
  4. 4.Activate the sequence — new subscribers matching the trigger will be enrolled automatically.
  5. 5.Monitor enrollment and completion rates from the sequence detail page.

Forms

Forms let you capture new subscribers directly from your website or a shareable link. Configure fields, enable double opt-in, and auto-tag new signups.

Form builder

Create signup forms with custom fields — name, email, and any additional fields you need. Enable double opt-in to require email confirmation.

Share & embed

Each form gets a unique public URL you can share anywhere. Copy the embed snippet to drop the form into your website.

Auto-tagging

Automatically tag new subscribers when they submit a form — e.g. tag "webinar-signup" for everyone who registers through your webinar form.

How to use forms

  1. 1.Navigate to Forms and click Create Form.
  2. 2.Name the form, configure fields, enable double opt-in if desired, and set auto-tags.
  3. 3.Save the form to get your shareable link.
  4. 4.Share the link directly or embed the form on your website.
  5. 5.Track submissions from the Forms list — new subscribers appear in your Subscribers list automatically.

Analytics

The Analytics dashboard gives you a full picture of your email performance — from high-level metrics to per-campaign breakdowns and deliverability health.

Performance overview

See total sends, average open rate, click rate, and bounce rate at a glance. View trends over 7, 30, or 90 days.

Campaign analytics

Drill into individual campaigns to see opens, clicks, bounces, and top-clicked links. Compare campaigns side by side.

Deliverability dashboard

Monitor your domain health, bounce rates, spam complaints, and ISP reputation. Get alerts when deliverability dips.

CSV export

Export any analytics view to CSV for reporting, sharing with your team, or importing into other tools.

How to use analytics

  1. 1.Go to Analytics in the sidebar.
  2. 2.Use the time range selector to view metrics for 7, 30, or 90 days (or all time).
  3. 3.Switch between the Overview, Campaign Analytics, and Deliverability tabs.
  4. 4.Click any campaign row to see its detailed performance breakdown.
  5. 5.Click Export CSV to download the data.

AI Agent

The AI Agent autonomously analyzes your campaign data, detects engagement shifts, and drafts campaigns for your approval. It learns from your brand and improves over time.

Autonomous insights

The agent runs on a schedule, analyzing open rates, click patterns, and subscriber engagement. It surfaces actionable recommendations with confidence scores.

Agent drafts

When the agent spots an opportunity (e.g. re-engage cold subscribers), it drafts a campaign and queues it for your approval. You review and send — or discard.

Cohort analysis

The agent groups subscribers into cohorts and compares engagement across them, helping you understand which segments are thriving or declining.

Segment suggestions

Based on behavior patterns, the agent recommends new segments you haven't created yet — like "highly engaged but never purchased".

How to use ai agent

  1. 1.Navigate to AI Agent in the sidebar.
  2. 2.Review the agent's latest insights and recommendations.
  3. 3.Check the Agent Drafts section for any campaigns awaiting your approval.
  4. 4.Approve a draft to move it to your Campaigns page, or discard it.
  5. 5.Configure agent permissions in Settings → Automation to control what it can do autonomously.

Social — Compose & Queue

Draft LinkedIn and Instagram posts manually or let the AI generate them from a brief. Posts move through a six-state approval queue with threaded comments and a full audit history.

Manual + AI compose

Write a caption yourself or hand the AI a brief and let it draft in your brand voice. Pick research chunks to ground the AI in real material — your own claims and data, not generic AI talking points.

AI image generation

One checkbox. Outboxly generates a brand-styled image (palette + mood pulled from your brand voice profile) and attaches it to the post. Regenerate any time you want a different render.

Six-state approval queue

Draft → Pending Approval → Approved → Scheduled → Published. Plus Failed and Rejected. Race-guarded transitions, threaded comments per post, and a full audit history of every state change.

Bulk operations

Select multiple posts in the queue and approve or delete them in one action. Failed-only filter to spot delivery problems quickly.

How to use social — compose & queue

  1. 1.Sidebar → Social → Compose. Pick LinkedIn or Instagram.
  2. 2.Type a brief in the AI panel, or paste a caption manually.
  3. 3.(Optional) Click Pick chunks to ground the AI in research material.
  4. 4.(Optional) Tick "Also generate an image".
  5. 5.Click Generate. The draft auto-opens in the queue.
  6. 6.Edit if needed → Send for approval.
  7. 7.An admin or approver clicks Approve → schedule a time.
  8. 8.Outboxly publishes at the scheduled minute via signed webhook.

Social — Brand Voice

One settings page that controls how every AI-generated caption and image sounds and looks. The single biggest lever on output quality.

Tone & style

Pick from professional / casual / playful / bold / minimal / authoritative. Set reading level (grade 8 / 12 / expert), hashtag strategy (none / minimal / aggressive), and emoji policy.

Forbidden + signature phrases

List buzzwords or competitor language the AI must never use. Add brand-specific phrases the AI should lean into when natural. Both lists are passed to the model on every generation.

Example posts

Paste 3–10 actual posts that sound like you. Single highest-leverage input — the AI matches cadence, sentence length, and rhythm rather than producing generic LinkedIn-coach prose.

Visual palette + mood

Free-form fields that steer image generation. "Warm earth tones, terracotta and cream / editorial, photo-real, no text overlay" produces very different output than the default.

How to use social — brand voice

  1. 1.Sidebar → Social → Brand voice.
  2. 2.Set tone, reading level, hashtag strategy, and emoji policy.
  3. 3.Add 3–5 forbidden phrases and 1–2 signature phrases.
  4. 4.Paste 3–10 example posts that sound like your brand.
  5. 5.Set visual palette + mood for image generation.
  6. 6.Save. Every future AI generation uses this profile.

Social — Research & Insights

Crawl your own site, competitor sites, or upload PDFs. Outboxly produces a chunk library, per-source AI audits, and competitive gap reports. The AI uses this material as factual grounding for every post — and tells you exactly what's missing.

Site + competitor crawling

Powered by Firecrawl. Crawl up to 100 pages per source. Outboxly classifies every chunk by type (paragraph / quote / stat / claim / heading), tags topics, and writes a one-line summary.

Document uploads

PDF, DOCX, TXT, Markdown — same chunking pipeline. Upload customer interviews, product briefs, sales decks. Outboxly turns them into searchable, taggable raw material for AI captions.

Per-source AI audits

One Sonnet pass produces a structured report per source: topic coverage map, messaging tone, CTA strategy, depth analysis, content gaps, and specific page-level recommendations. Stale-flagged on recrawl.

Competitive gap analysis

Pick your sources + competitor sources. Outboxly returns topic gaps, missing claims, tone gaps, depth gaps, CTA/pricing/objection gaps, unique angles to own, and concrete suggested headlines.

How to use social — research & insights

  1. 1.Sidebar → Social → Research → Add source.
  2. 2.Pick My site / Competitor / Upload tab.
  3. 3.For sites: paste URL + max page count. For uploads: pick file (max 25 MB).
  4. 4.Wait ~30s–3min for crawl + chunk classification.
  5. 5.Click View chunks to inspect, or open the AI audit tab to run a per-source audit.
  6. 6.For competitive comparison: Sidebar → Social → Research → Competitive gap. Pick tenant + competitor sources → Run analysis.
  7. 7.Use the Pick chunks button on Compose to ground individual posts in selected research material.

Social — Schedule & Publish

Approved posts go to a queue. At the scheduled minute, Outboxly fires a signed JSON payload at LinkedIn / Instagram via your master Zapier (or Make) workflow. Full retry logic, audit log, and manual retry-now.

Scheduled publishing

Pick a date and time on any approved post. Outboxly's queue worker checks every minute and fires due posts. Or click Publish now to schedule for the next tick.

HMAC-signed delivery

Every webhook fires with X-Outboxly-Signature (sha256 hmac of timestamp + body). Receivers verify the signature to reject fake payloads. Signing secrets are rotatable, with in-flight retries continuing on captured-secret snapshots.

Exponential-backoff retry

5xx and network errors retry on 1m → 5m → 30m → 2h → 12h. 4xx terminal failures stop retrying (your receiver has a bug). Full per-attempt audit log on every post — status, HTTP code, response excerpt, error message.

Setup guide

Step-by-step Zapier walkthrough lives at /docs/social-webhooks — payload shape, Code-by-Zapier signature verification snippet, Make module recipe, troubleshooting.

How to use social — schedule & publish

  1. 1.(Operator) Configure a master webhook in /admin/social-webhooks.
  2. 2.(Operator) Add tenant→Zapier-account mapping in /admin/tenant-accounts.
  3. 3.(Tenant) Approve a post → pick a time → click Schedule.
  4. 4.Status flips to Scheduled. The Deliveries tab shows the queued delivery.
  5. 5.At the scheduled time (within ~1 min), Outboxly fires the webhook.
  6. 6.Successful = post flips to Published. Failed = check Deliveries tab → click Retry now.
  7. 7.For full setup details, see /docs/social-webhooks.

Operator Admin

Outboxly's multi-tenancy ships with operator-managed publishing — you (the platform operator) own one master Zap, all tenants route through it. Tenants never see Zapier. The /admin section is gated by the SUPER_ADMIN_EMAILS environment variable.

Operator webhooks

/admin/social-webhooks. Create platform-wide webhook entries pointed at your master Zap. One-time signing secret reveal, rotate, send-test, pause/resume. Tenants never see this UI.

Tenant publishing accounts

/admin/tenant-accounts. Map each tenant ID → the Zapier-side account_id used by your master Zap to route to their LinkedIn / Instagram. Single mapping per tenant per platform.

Failed posts view

/admin/failed-posts. Last 7 days of posts with at least one failed delivery. Tenant ID, platform, status, last error, last attempt time — your dashboard for spotting Zap outages or systemic delivery problems.

Social usage & cost

/admin/social-usage. Per-tenant aggregates: posts generated, AI spend (caption + image), tokens used, cache reads, models, research source / document / chunk counts. Used for billing, quota enforcement, or just visibility.

How to use operator admin

  1. 1.Set SUPER_ADMIN_EMAILS env var (comma-separated emails).
  2. 2.Set AGENT_CRON_SECRET env var (32+ char hex) for cron auth.
  3. 3.Configure two cron jobs (publish + research processors) — see docs/deployment-cron.md.
  4. 4./admin/social-webhooks → create your master operator webhook(s).
  5. 5./admin/tenant-accounts → add a routing entry for each tenant.
  6. 6.Monitor /admin/failed-posts and /admin/social-usage as needed.

RSS Feeds

Connect an RSS feed to automatically send new content to your subscribers. Perfect for blogs, podcasts, and news sites that want to turn every post into an email.

Auto-campaigns

When a new item appears in your feed, Outboxly creates and sends a campaign automatically — no manual work required.

Check interval

Configure how often the system polls your feed — from every hour to once a day. Duplicate items are automatically skipped.

How to use rss feeds

  1. 1.Go to RSS Feeds and click Add Feed.
  2. 2.Paste your RSS feed URL and set a check interval.
  3. 3.Optionally configure auto-tags for subscribers who receive RSS campaigns.
  4. 4.Activate the feed — new items will be sent as campaigns automatically.

Settings

Configure your account, brand, domain, team, billing, and automation preferences — everything that controls how Outboxly works for you.

Branding

Set your product name, sender name, sender email, brand tone, audience description, and logo. These settings power AI content generation across the app.

Domain authentication

Add your sending domain and configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. Monitor domain health and resolve deliverability issues.

Team management

Invite team members with role-based access — Owner, Admin, Editor, or Viewer. Control who can send campaigns, manage subscribers, or change settings.

Billing

View your current plan (Free, Pro, or Business), subscriber limits, email sending limits, and manage your Stripe subscription.

Automation & Agent

Control what the AI Agent can do autonomously — enable or disable auto-enrollment, configure agent schedules, and review agent permissions.

How to use settings

  1. 1.Click Settings in the sidebar.
  2. 2.Select the section you want to configure (Branding, Domain, Team, Billing, etc.).
  3. 3.Make your changes and save.

Ready to get started?

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