Skip to main content
A one-off campaign is a single message to a defined group of contacts, sent once at a time you choose. There’s no separate “make this one-off” switch — the inbox you pick decides it.

​
The inbox decides the type

Choose an SMS, Twilio SMS, or WhatsApp inbox and the campaign is one-off, automatically. Choose a Website inbox and it becomes an ongoing campaign instead — the two features don’t overlap on the same inbox.

​
Audience

The audience is built from labels, not a saved filter: tag the contacts you want to reach, then select those labels when you build the campaign. A contact matches if it carries any of the labels you picked — not all of them.
Audience membership is resolved when the campaign actually sends, not when you save it. Adding or removing a label between now and send time changes who’s included.
See Labels and custom attributes for how labels work and how renaming one is handled.

​
The message

What you’re allowed to send depends on the channel:
Free-form text, with Liquid available: {{ contact.name }}, {{ agent.name }} (the campaign’s sender), {{ inbox.name }}, and {{ account.name }} all resolve at send time.

​
Scheduling

Pick a send time, or leave it blank — a blank schedule is backfilled to right now. Either way, sending isn’t instant: a cron runs every five minutes to pick up due campaigns, so expect up to a five-minute delay even for a “send now” campaign. Tied will still pick up a delayed one for up to three days past its scheduled time — a campaign that couldn’t send exactly on time doesn’t just silently expire.
The SMS campaign form marks the schedule field required — “leave it blank” only applies where the form itself allows a blank value.

​
Active → completed

A one-off campaign sends exactly once, but when it flips from active to completed depends on the channel:
The moment the campaign starts processing, it flips to completed and won’t run again.
Once completed, the campaign record itself is locked against further edits. If you need to send it again, create a new one.
A failure sending to one contact doesn’t stop the rest, on SMS and WhatsApp — delivery problems are logged per contact and the campaign keeps going. The Twilio path is narrower: it only rescues Twilio’s own error classes, so a timeout or a network error there aborts the remaining contacts rather than logging and continuing.

​
Next

WhatsApp campaigns

Template rules, opt-in, and per-message cost on top of everything here.

Ongoing campaigns

The other type — for a Website inbox, running continuously instead.

Labels and custom attributes

Building the labels a one-off campaign’s audience is made of.

Channel fees

What each send actually costs, per channel.