Marketing Hub
Build a follow-up sequence of emails and text messages, pick the exact clients or leads who should get it, and turn it on. Joby then sends each step in order, only inside the hours you allow.
What it is
Marketing is where you build a campaign — a short series of emails and text messages that go out one after another — and choose who receives it. You open it from the left menu: More›Marketing. The page heading reads Marketing, with the line "Build a simple Email and SMS sequence, then add the right clients or leads." underneath it.
Video walkthrough — coming soon
A short screen recording of the Marketing page (creating a campaign, adding an email and an SMS step, choosing contacts and turning the campaign on) is being filmed and will appear here. Until then, the steps below cover the same ground.
The page has three tabs across the top. Whichever one you are on, the Create new campaign button stays at the top right.
Overview
Your numbers: how much was sent, how many people engaged, and a list of what is running or coming up.
Campaigns
One row per campaign, each with an on/off switch. This is where you turn a campaign on, pause it, duplicate it or delete it.
Templates
Reusable wording for emails and texts, so you are not retyping the same message into every campaign.
A campaign always targets one kind of person — either your Clients or your Leads. You choose that when you create the campaign and it cannot be mixed.
When to use it
- Chasing estimates that were sent but never answered, with two or three polite nudges.
- A seasonal reminder to past customers — a tune-up, a service check, an annual visit.
- Winning back clients you have not heard from in months.
- Welcoming new clients with a short introduction over a few days.
- Any message that needs to be repeated on a delay, rather than sent once.
Use Bulk SMS instead when you have a list of phone numbers to text once and you do not need any follow-up. Use the Email Inbox or SMS & Conversations when you are writing to one person. Use Visual Workflows when the message should be triggered by something happening on a job, rather than by a list of people you picked yourself.
Before you start
- Marketing has to be switched on for your company. It is a beta module, turned on by a Joby Super Admin. If it is off, the menu item is missing and any attempt to save shows "Marketing is not enabled for this organization. Ask a Super Admin to enable the Marketing Beta module."
- Your role needs the Marketing permission. An owner or admin turns this on under Settings›People›Team Roles; it sits in the Communication group and is simply called Marketing. Without it the menu item is hidden. (The same permission controls Bulk SMS.)
- You need at least one active email account to send emails. Set it up under Settings›Channels›Email Accounts. If there is none, the email step shows "No active email account is available. Connect or activate an email sender in Settings > Email Accounts before this campaign can send."
- You need at least one active phone number to send texts. Check Settings›Channels›Phone Numbers. Only active numbers appear in the From number list; otherwise you see "No active SMS sender is available."
- Your clients and leads should already be in Joby. The contact picker reads your existing Clients and Leads lists — there is no paste-a-list or upload option here. Load people in first with Import Leads if you need to.
- There is no cap on how many contacts a campaign holds. Large audiences still go out at your plan's daily sending rate, so a big list drains over several days rather than all at once.
- Your company may use different words. "Lead" can be renamed for your account, so the audience choice and the filters may read "Job" or something else on your screen.
Step-by-step
1. Create the campaign
- Open More›Marketing from the left menu.
- Click Create new campaign at the top right. A window opens titled Create a new campaign.
- Answer Who is this campaign for? — Clients ("People already in your Clients list") or Leads ("People in your Leads pipeline"). Pick carefully: once contacts are added this choice locks.
- Type a Campaign name. It is required — leaving it blank shows "Campaign name is required." Add a Description if your team needs the context.
- Under Sending schedule, choose when Joby is allowed to send: Normal business hours (Monday–Friday, 8:00 AM–5:00 PM), Morning hours (8:00 AM–12:00 PM), Extended business hours (7:00 AM–7:00 PM) or Custom schedule. Click Edit hours to tick individual days and set start and end times; days you untick read No sending.
- Open Advanced settings if you want to change the Campaign timezone (Eastern, Central, Mountain or Pacific Time), or the two switches: Use each contact's local time and Stop sequence when a contact replies. Both start switched on.
- Click Create campaign. The message builder opens.
2. Build the steps
- You land on the Steps tab, under the heading Build your campaign. A marker reads Campaign starts.
- Click First step and choose a message type: Email ("Subject, rich message, image or button") or SMS ("Simple text with dynamic variables").
- Fill the step in. For an email that means From name, From email, Subject and the message. For a text it means From number and the message. Pick the sender from the drop-down — typing one in is not allowed.
- Use the Send row at the top of the open step to say when it goes: Immediately or After a delay with a number and Minutes / Hours / Days. The line next to it reminds you it still only sends within your chosen hours.
- Optionally give the step a Step name (for example "Day 3 text"). It replaces "Step 2" in your list and recipients never see it.
- Click Done, then Next step underneath to add the follow-up. Repeat until the sequence is complete. Only one step stays open at a time.
- When the steps are ready, click Continue to contacts.
3. Choose who receives it
- On the Contacts tab, the Add contacts panel is locked to the audience you chose — a badge reads Clients audience or Leads audience.
- Narrow the list with the search box and the drop-downs. For clients those are city, customer type and source; for leads they are status, service type and ad source. More filters adds contact details, created date, and — for leads — service area, assigned agent, call group and a date field choice.
- Tick the people you want, or use the tick box in the heading to take the whole page.
- At the bottom right choose what the button should add: Selected rows, Current page or All filtered results.
- Click Add N to campaign. Rows already in the campaign show an Added badge.
4. Save it
- Click Save paused campaign at the bottom of the Contacts tab, or Save campaign in the header. Both do the same thing.
- You get "Campaign saved as Paused" — "Turn it on from Campaigns when you are ready. Nothing has been sent." Saving always leaves the campaign paused, on purpose.
5. Turn it on
- Go to the Campaigns tab.
- Find your campaign. Under its name it says either Ready to activate in green or Finish setup to activate in amber.
- Flick the switch in the Activate column. You get "Campaign activated" — "Eligible contacts will begin at the next allowed sending window."
Tip: build the whole thing against a handful of contacts you know personally first. Turn it on, watch the first step arrive on your own phone or inbox, then pause it, add the real list, and turn it back on.
How to check it worked
- The campaign saved: you are returned to the Campaigns list and your campaign is in it, with a Paused badge, the number of steps under its name, and the contact count in the Audience column.
- The steps are complete: each step card shows a green Ready tick instead of Needs content or Needs attention.
- The contacts landed: the Contacts tab counter goes up, a green "N added to this campaign" appears, and the people are listed under Campaign contacts.
- It is really running: on the Campaigns tab the switch is green and the status badge reads Active or Sending.
- Messages are going out: the Delivery column counts up ("120 of 400"), and the Result column shows an open rate for email campaigns or a reply rate for text campaigns.
- Person by person: once a campaign has run, open it and look at the Campaign contacts table. It gains a Step column ("Step 2 of 4", "Replied — stopped", "Finished", "Unsubscribed") and an Engagement column with sent, Opened, Clicked and Replied badges.
- The Overview stops saying "Demo Data": until your first campaign sends, the Overview shows clearly-labelled sample numbers. Your own figures replace them automatically after the first real send.
Common mistakes
"I built it but nothing sent"
Saving never starts a campaign. Every save leaves it Paused. Go to the Campaigns tab and flick the switch in the Activate column.
Wrong audience, now locked
Clients and Leads cannot be swapped once the campaign has contacts. Remove them all first, or duplicate the campaign and start the copy with the other audience.
The variable jumped to the bottom
Dynamic variable and the toolbar buttons add their text to the end of the message, not where your cursor is. Insert first, then cut and paste it into place.
Editing a campaign that is live
An amber bar reads "This campaign is live." and changes cannot be saved. Use Pause to edit, make your changes, save, then turn it back on.
- Typing a sender instead of picking one. The From email and From number are drop-downs of accounts and numbers that are active right now. If a saved sender was later switched off you see "Choose an active from email from the list" or "Choose an active from number from the list" when you save.
- Expecting opens and clicks from a connected mailbox. When you send from your own connected mailbox, the campaign reports sends and replies only — opens, clicks, bounces and spam complaints are not reported back. The step editor says so in a blue note.
- Forgetting the sending window. "Immediately" still means "at the next moment inside your allowed hours". A campaign turned on at 9 PM with normal business hours starts the following morning.
- Untick every day and the campaign will not start. You get "Campaign is not ready to activate — Choose at least one sending day before activating."
- "Use template" did not add to my open campaign. On the Templates tab, Use template starts a new campaign from that wording. To drop a template into a step you are already editing, use Load template inside that step instead.
- Deleting a campaign that already sent. It is archived and hidden rather than erased, because its delivery and opt-out history has to be kept. Only a campaign that never sent anything is deleted outright.
More detail (9)
The Overview tab
Two drop-downs at the top control everything below them: a date range — Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, Last 30 days, This month, Last month or Custom dates (which reveals a from and to date) — and a campaign filter that starts on All campaigns.
Sent
How many campaign messages went out in the chosen period.
Engagement
Opens, clicks and replies as a share of what was sent.
Suppressed
Messages Joby held back — blocked by consent or safety rules.
Opt-out rate
How many people asked to stop hearing from you, across sent messages.
Below the tiles, Campaign performance charts delivered against engaged over the same period, and Active & upcoming lists what is sending, scheduled or paused. Click a row to open that campaign, or View all to jump to the Campaigns tab. With nothing built yet you see "No campaigns yet" and a Create your first campaign button.
The "Demo Data" banner
Before your first campaign sends, a dark banner explains that the statistics on screen are samples to show what the dashboard looks like, and the Active & upcoming list is marked Sample. Real figures take over automatically once you have sent something — it never switches back.
The Campaigns tab
A table of everything you have built, with a note at the top: "Turn a campaign on to start it, or off to pause it." Narrow it with the Search campaigns box, the channel drop-down (All channels / Email / SMS) and the status drop-down (All statuses / Scheduled / Active / Paused / Completed).
- Activate — the on/off switch. Completed, cancelled and closed campaigns cannot be switched on.
- Campaign — the name, whether it is an email campaign, an SMS campaign or an "Email + SMS sequence", and how many steps it has.
- Status — Active, Paused, Scheduled, Sending or Completed.
- Audience — the audience label and how many contacts are selected.
- Delivery — how many messages have gone out, of how many selected.
- Result — open rate for email, reply rate for text.
- Scheduled — the sending window, or "Runs during sending window".
- Two buttons at the end of the row: duplicate and delete.
Click anywhere else on the row to open the campaign. A "Opening campaign…" message appears for a moment while its contact list loads. With no campaigns at all you see "No campaigns here yet — Create one campaign and Joby will guide you through three simple steps."
Turning one on
Joby checks the campaign before it starts. If something is missing you get Campaign is not ready to activate plus the exact reason:
- "Choose at least one sending day before activating."
- "Every sending day needs a valid start and end time."
- "Add at least one Email or SMS step before activating."
- "Finish the sender, subject, and message for every campaign step before activating."
- "Add at least one client or lead before activating."
Switching a campaign off gives "Campaign paused" — future steps stop, but a message that has already left cannot be pulled back.
Duplicating
The copy button rebuilds the campaign under a new name and tells you "Duplicated as ..." — "The copy is paused with no recipients yet — add contacts and turn it on when ready." It is the quickest way to reuse a sequence for a different group of people.
Deleting
The bin button asks you to confirm, and the wording depends on the campaign. One that never sent anything is removed completely and cannot be recovered. One that has already sent is archived and hidden from the list instead, so its delivery and opt-out history survives. A campaign that is currently sending cannot be deleted at all — the button is disabled with "Pause the campaign before deleting it".
Building the steps in detail
The builder opens with the campaign name and its status in the header, plus the schedule summary underneath (for example "Normal business hours · Monday–Friday, 8:00 AM–5:00 PM · Stops on reply"). Two tabs, Steps and Contacts, carry live counts. The header also holds Settings — which reopens the campaign settings window in Edit campaign settings mode — and Save campaign.
An email step
- From name — the name recipients see, usually your company.
- From email — chosen from your active email accounts.
- Reply-to — not editable. It reads Managed by Joby, because replies have to come back through Joby: that is what files the reply in Conversations and stops the sequence for that person.
- Subject — keep it under 200 characters or the campaign will not save.
- The message box, with a running character count.
Along the bottom of the message box: Edit HTML (which becomes Visual editor once you are in it), Load template and Dynamic variable. Switching between visual and HTML asks you to confirm, because the same text is treated very differently in each. In HTML mode you also get Bold, Italic, List, Add photo and Add link or button.
On the right, Contact preview shows the email as a sample recipient would see it, with desktop and mobile buttons to switch the width. Under the editor a note reminds you that unsubscribe details are added automatically when the campaign is activated.
An SMS step
- From number — chosen from your active numbers.
- SMS message — up to 1,600 characters.
- A counter under the box shows the character count "incl. required opt-out text", the estimated number of message segments, and whether it is being sent as plain or special characters. Joby appends " Reply STOP to opt out." for you unless your wording already says "reply stop".
- A phone mock-up on the right previews the text with sample values filled in.
A line under the box states that Joby checks SMS consent, quiet hours and opt-outs again before each message actually goes out. Opt-outs work exactly as described in Bulk SMS — someone replying STOP is recorded as opted out and stops receiving campaign messages.
Dynamic variables
Dynamic variable inserts a placeholder that fills in per person when the message is sent. The menu is grouped:
- Contact — First name, Last name, Full name, Their company.
- Your business — Your company, Your phone, Your email, Your website, Contact person.
- Links — Booking link (your default booking page). If you have extra booking forms, each active one is offered as its own direct link.
- Lead details — Lead number, Lead status, Service type, Service area, Job notes. Only offered when the whole audience is leads.
- Client details — Customer type, Client source. Only offered when the whole audience is clients.
Worth knowing: only variables that are guaranteed to have a value for every selected contact are offered. That is why the lead-only and client-only groups appear depending on your audience — a placeholder that came out blank for someone would stop the campaign from starting.
"Your company" and "Their company" are easy to mix up: Your company is your business as the sender, Their company is the recipient's business. The preview pane uses obvious sample values so you can tell them apart at a glance.
Timing between steps
Every step carries its own timing, shown on the collapsed card: At campaign start for the first one, then Immediately after previous step or After 3 days. Delays are counted from the previous step, and the message still waits for the next allowed hour in your schedule.
Choosing contacts in detail
The Contacts tab has two panels. Campaign contacts at the top is who is already in, and Add contacts below is where you find more.
Campaign contacts
- A search box, Find someone in this campaign…, plus View all N / Show fewer when the list is long. Only the first few are shown until you expand it.
- Columns: Contact, Email, Phone, Client / Lead, Added and an Action column with a bin button to take that person out.
- Remove all at the top right empties the list in one click.
- Once the campaign has run, two more columns appear: Step and Engagement.
Add contacts
- The search box matches name, email and phone — and for leads, the lead number too.
- More filters holds the rest, and shows a badge with how many are active. For clients: Contact details (has email, has phone, has both) and Created date (last 30 days, last 90 days, last 12 months or a custom range), plus any of your own per-company fields. For leads: Service area, Assigned agent, Call group, a Date field choice (created, schedule or closed date), Created date, and an Include unassigned leads tick box.
- A line above the table counts the matches, and Clear all filters resets them.
- The table pages six at a time — use the arrows and the "Page 1 of 12" counter. With nothing matching you see "No contacts found — Try changing the search or filters."
- Very large accounts see "Showing the most recent 5,000 clients/leads — use search to find older contacts."
Adding people to a campaign that is already running
They are enrolled straight away and you see "N contacts added and starting". New contacts begin at step 1; everyone already in the campaign keeps their place. Some may be skipped — already in the campaign, opted out, or missing an email address or phone number — and the message tells you how many.
The Templates tab
Templates are saved wording you can drop into any campaign. Switch between Email and SMS with the toggle at the top left, and search with Search templates.
- Click New template.
- Fill in Template name, a Subject (emails only) and the Message. Missing pieces give "Add a template name and message" or "Add an email subject".
- Click Save template.
Each card shows the category, a preview of the wording, and how many times it has been used. Templates supplied by Joby carry a Joby template badge. A card whose wording contains placeholders notes that "{{variables}} fill in per contact."
Two ways to use one: Use template on a card starts a brand-new campaign with that wording already in the first step. Inside a step you are already editing, Load template replaces that step's subject and message instead. These are separate from the message templates under Communication Templates in Settings.
Editing a campaign that is already on
Open a live campaign and an amber bar appears across the top: "This campaign is live. Changes can't be saved while it's sending — pause it first to edit, then turn it back on when you're done. Contacts already queued keep their place."
- Click Pause to edit in that bar.
- You get "Campaign paused — You can edit it now. Turn it back on from Campaigns when you're done."
- Make your changes and click Save campaign.
- Go back to Campaigns and switch it on again. Nothing restarts from the beginning — people keep the position they had.
If you try to leave the builder with unsaved work, Joby asks "Discard unsaved campaign changes?" first.
Changing the schedule later
Use Settings in the builder header. The same window reopens as Edit campaign settings, and the button now reads Save settings. You still have to click Save campaign afterwards to keep the change — the window reminds you with "Click Save campaign to keep these changes."
What stops a message going out
They replied
With Stop sequence when a contact replies on, a real reply ends the sequence for that person. Their row reads Replied — stopped.
They opted out
Anyone who replied STOP, or used the unsubscribe link in an email, is skipped. These show as Unsubscribed or Blocked, and count towards Suppressed on the Overview.
It is outside your hours
Messages wait for the next allowed window rather than being dropped. With Use each contact's local time on, that window follows the contact's own timezone when it is known.
There is nowhere to send it
A contact with no email address gets no email step; one with no phone number gets no text step. Check the Email and Phone columns before you wonder why someone never heard from you.
Who can do what
- Seeing the page at all needs two things: the Marketing module switched on for your company, and the Marketing permission on your role under Settings›People›Team Roles. Miss either and the menu item simply is not there.
- Everyone who can open Marketing can build and send. There is no separate permission for creating, editing, activating or deleting a campaign — treat access to this page as permission to message your customers.
- Hiding the tab for yourself is possible under Settings›Account Settings, in the Sidebar tabs panel. That only affects your own menu, not anyone else's.
Decide who is allowed in
Because there is no finer-grained control, keep the Marketing permission on a small number of roles, and agree internally who signs off wording before a campaign is switched on.
If something looks wrong
- "Marketing data is not ready" in a red box at the top of the page means the campaign list could not be loaded. Refresh; if it persists, contact support.
- "Marketing is not enabled for this organization." The module is off for your company — ask a Joby Super Admin to enable the Marketing Beta module.
- "Campaign contacts could not be loaded" means the builder opened without its list of recipients. Close it and open the campaign again rather than saving, or you risk saving an empty audience.
- The From email or From number list is empty. Sort the sender out first under Settings›Channels›Email Accounts or Settings›Channels›Phone Numbers, then come back and reopen the step.
- A sender shows as "Unavailable sender". The account or number it was saved with is no longer active. Pick a current one from the list before saving.