A campaign lets you email a batch of coaches at once instead of one at a time. You pick who to contact, choose a template, personalize what needs personalizing, and ProductiveRecruit paces the sends out so they don't look like a blast. Campaigns are a Pro feature, available during your trial and on a paid plan.
1. Select coaches to email
Start from Select coaches to email. Filter by sport, division (NCAA D1/D2/D3, NAIA, junior college), conference, or state, or search by name. Flip on target list only to stick to schools already on your target list, or narrow further with up to three tags. Picking a tag automatically switches the scope to target-list-only.
You can select up to 50 coaches per campaign. If you try to go over, the list clamps and you'll see a reminder that 50 is the max. Your selection is also capped by however many emails you have left to send — see deliverability & limits.
2. Choose a template and name your campaign
Pick an existing email template. Every athlete starts with a default Introduction Email, and you can build more with the AI template generator. ProductiveRecruit names the campaign after the template and today's date, and you can rename it. A preview tab shows the raw {{tags}} next to what they'll actually look like once filled in with real coach and college info.
3. Personalize and send
This is where you fine-tune each message before it goes out. The left side lists your selected recipients; the right side shows the rendered subject and body for whoever's selected, with the coach's name and college already filled in.
Edit any recipient's subject or body and it's saved as a personal touch just for them. The rest of the batch keeps the template as-is. Went too far or want to start over? Reset brings that recipient back to the template's default wording. Any attachment on your template rides along automatically on every email in the campaign. You can also send yourself a test copy of the currently-selected message before committing to the real batch.
One thing campaigns don't do: cc or bcc. Campaign emails go to the coach only. If you want a parent or club coach copied on an email, send it as a single email, which supports both.
When you're ready, confirm the send count in the popup and you're off. Once a campaign is sending, you can't start a second one until it finishes, or you pause or cancel it. This keeps the pacing predictable and avoids tripping Gmail's spam filters.
Email coaches about an athlete
Organization staff can run a campaign about one of their athletes, sent from your own inbox, without logging in as the athlete. At the top of step 1, Who is this campaign about? starts on Nobody in particular. Pick an athlete you manage and the rest of the wizard works for them:
- Step 1 searches the athlete's sports, and target list only and tags use the athlete's target list. Your own sending limits still apply, since the emails go out from your inbox.
- Step 2 offers only your own templates, with athlete pitches listed first. Templates shared with your athletes aren't offered here, because they're written in the athlete's voice.
- Step 3 warns about any athlete details the template uses that will be blank, like "Maya hasn't filled in GPA." A note confirms the athlete's profile link will be included below your signature. Staff emails about an athlete always include it.
Super admins can pick any athlete in the organization. Admins and coaches can pick the athletes in their spaces, and a coach limited to their teams sees only those athletes. Team managers don't get the picker.
The quickest way in is the athlete's target list: Email coaches on this list opens a campaign with the athlete already picked.
Once it sends, the campaign shows a For Maya Williams badge, and you can filter the Campaigns list by athlete. The athlete's target list updates for every school you emailed, the same way it does when they send themselves (see What happens when you send), and each row shows Emailed by with your name. Your own list isn't touched. Profile views from the link count for the athlete, and coach replies come back to your inbox.
How sending is paced
ProductiveRecruit doesn't fire all your emails at once. The first email goes out right away, and each one after that follows with a random gap of roughly one to two minutes. For a full 50-coach campaign, that spreads sending out over about an hour to an hour and a half — well inside the range that keeps your Gmail account looking like a real person, not a bot. Track progress on the campaign review screen, which updates live and gives you an estimated time remaining.
Managing campaigns
A campaign moves through Draft, Sending, and Sent. You can pause it along the way, and it ends as Cancelled if you stop it for good. If you leave the wizard partway through step 3, your progress is saved as a Draft you can pick back up later. Only Draft campaigns can be deleted. Once a campaign starts sending, it's kept permanently so you have a record of what went out and how it performed.
Pausing or cancelling a campaign
Spotted a mistake after you hit send, or heard back from a coach before the rest went out? Because emails go out a minute or two apart, you can stop the ones that haven't sent yet.
Pause sending holds every email that hasn't gone out. Click it on the campaign's review page, or use the pause icon on the Campaigns list. Nothing else sends until you click Resume sending, and then the rest pick back up at the same pace. A paused campaign stays paused until you resume or cancel it. You can start a new campaign while one is paused, but you can't resume the paused one while another campaign is sending.
Cancel remaining sends stops them for good, whether the campaign is sending or paused. Emails that haven't gone out are marked Cancelled and never sent. There's no undo, so once you've fixed the problem, start a new campaign for the coaches who didn't get it.
Either way, emails that already went out can't be recalled, and an email that's in the middle of sending when you pause or cancel may still go through.
Paused emails still count against your daily sending limit because they're waiting to go out. Cancelled emails are given back, so you can resend the same day. If you resume on a later day, the remaining emails need to fit in that day's limit.
What's next
- Fine-tune your messages in Reviewing & personalizing once your campaign is underway.
- Check your daily and lifetime sending caps in Deliverability & sending limits.
- Build a template built for campaigns in Email templates & variables or generate one in AI email template generator.