1. Getting started

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Contents

1. The one idea you need first
2. Venue or Enterprise — pick before you start
3. The Marketing home screen
4. Your first campaign, in fifteen minutes
5. What happens after you press Send
6. Good habits from day one

The one idea you need first

An email needs three things: a design, a subject line, and a group of people. In NX those are three separate objects, and you assemble them into a campaign.

That separation is what makes the module quick once you're set up. The design is reusable (a template). The group of people is reusable and can be a rule rather than a fixed list — "everyone who hasn't visited in 60 days" recalculates itself every time you send. The campaign is the disposable thing that pulls them together and goes out the door.

The most common beginner mistake is building a beautiful email and then discovering there's nobody to send it to. Sort out your audience first. Ten minutes in Lists & segments will tell you whether you already have a sendable audience sitting in your POS data (most venues do).

Venue or Enterprise — pick before you start

At the top of the portal you choose a venue or your Enterprise. Marketing pays close attention to that choice, and it isn't cosmetic:

Practical advice: guest data lives at the Enterprise level, so build Customer Query lists at the Enterprise even if you only have one location. Build campaigns wherever the sender identity belongs — a single-location restaurant is simplest run entirely at the Enterprise level.

If you switch venue or Enterprise while a Marketing page is open, the page reloads for the new selection. Anything unsaved in an editor is lost.

The Marketing home screen

Open Marketing and you get:

• Four counters — Templates, Campaigns, Active (scheduled or currently sending), and Domains (Enterprise only).
• Recent Campaigns — your last five, with status and sent/delivered/opened counts.
• Tools — the buttons that take you everywhere else:

Your first campaign, in fifteen minutes

We'll send a real campaign to a small test list so you can see the whole loop safely.

Step 1 — Make a test list (3 min)

1. Contacts → New. Enter your own email address, your first name, save.
2. Repeat for one or two colleagues who won't mind.
3. Lists & Segments → New List. Name it Team test, type Static, Create.
4. NX drops you straight into the members panel. Add Contacts, tick yourself and your colleagues, Add Selected.

You now have a real audience of two or three people. Every campaign you build from now on should go here first.

Step 2 — Build the email (7 min)

1. Campaigns → New Campaign.
2. Type a name in the toolbar — Test — hello world. This name is internal; recipients never see it.
3. Click the ✨ sparkles icon and describe what you want, e.g. "A friendly email from a neighborhood Italian restaurant thanking the guest for visiting, with a 10% off coupon for their next visit." Wait for it to load into the editor, then edit anything you don't like. (Or click the images icon to start from a saved template, or just build it by hand — see §4.)
4. Click the gear icon to open Campaign Settings and fill in:
   • From Name — what guests see in their inbox, e.g. Tony's Trattoria
   • From Address — e.g. hello@tonystrattoria.com. Watch the little chip that appears underneath: it tells you whether that address will send natively or route through NX's shared sender. Either is fine for a test. §7 explains it.
   • Subject Line — e.g. Thanks for visiting, {{firstName}}
   • Preview Text — the grey line inboxes show next to the subject. Optional, always worth it.
   • Recipients — tick Team test.
5. Done, then Save.

Save refuses if Campaign Name, From Name, From Address or Subject are missing — it tells you which and re-opens Settings.

Step 3 — Send it and look at your own inbox (5 min)

1. Back on the Campaigns list, find your row and use the paper-plane action → Send Now → confirm.
2. Check your inbox. Look for:
   • the From name you chose (and whether it says "via NX")
   • your first name where {{firstName}} was
   • the footer NX added for you — sender attribution, your venue's postal address, and an Unsubscribe link
   • your mail app's own unsubscribe button, at the top of the message
3. Click a link in the email. Then open Campaigns → View Stats on that row and press Load under Recipient Activity. You should see yourself listed as CLICKED.

That's the entire loop. Everything else in these guides is variations on it.

What happens after you press Send

Worth knowing so nothing looks broken:

1. The campaign flips to Sending and NX works out the recipient list — every list you ticked, with duplicate email addresses collapsed and anyone who has unsubscribed or hard-bounced removed.
2. That final count lands in the Sent column. This is why Sent is often lower than the member counts you were expecting — see §5.
3. Messages go out in the background, a few seconds to a few minutes for a big list.
4. The campaign flips to Sent as soon as the hand-off is done — not when every guest has received it. Delivery, opens and clicks trickle in for hours afterwards.

Good habits from day one

• Always send to Team test first. Every time. Typos in a live blast can't be recalled.
• Set up your own sending domain early. It takes a day or two of waiting, and until it's done your emails say "via NX". §7
• Name campaigns so future-you can scan them — 2026-03 Win-back 60d, not Campaign 4.
• Don't delete campaigns you might want to report on. Deleting a campaign deletes its per-recipient history with it.
• Duplicate instead of rebuilding. The Duplicate action copies the design, subject, sender and recipients into a fresh draft.
• Read §8 once. It's short, and email is one of the few areas of restaurant marketing with actual laws attached.

Next: §2 Your audience — contacts and customers