Fountain Pool campaigns are how you’ll engage with your talent pool (applicants, workers, and prospects), whether you are messaging them to nurture the relationship, are looking for applicants for a new job Opening, or want to invite them to an event. Campaigns can be created via email or SMS, can be scheduled to send immediately or at a later date and time, and can contain one or multiple messages delivered over time at the cadence you define.
Before You Start
You need a saved audience, a configured Reply-To address, and a role that can activate campaigns.
Create an Email Campaign
Ask Cue to Draft a Campaign
Describe the message and the audience you want and Cue drafts the campaign for you. It is created as a draft: nothing sends until you review it and activate it yourself. The steps below remain available and work exactly as described.
To create a new email campaign, follow the steps below:
Click Pool in the left side panel and then Campaigns.
Click Create campaign in the top right corner. Choose email in the dropdown.
You can also start from an audience: open it from Pool > Audiences, click Send campaign at the top right, and choose Email campaign. The audience is filled in for you.
In the next pop-up, complete all fields:
Name: Type an internal name for the campaign. Ensure this is specific enough to be identifiable to your Pool users.
Reply-To: Select the address that receives any reply a recipient sends. Emails appear to come from Fountain, with your brand name as the display name. Addresses are configured in Fountain Settings. Review this article for more information.
To: Select the previously created audience that this campaign will be sent to. Review this article to learn the steps to create an audience in Pool.
Audience mode: Select whether to send to a fixed list of your current audience, or continue reaching new members as they qualify.
Dynamic — Automatically includes new members as they qualify and removes them when they no longer match your audience criteria. Use this mode for ongoing outreach where you want to continuously reach everyone who qualifies.
Static — Sends to a fixed list of members who matched your audience criteria at the time of campaign creation. New members added later won't be included.
Tip: Static campaigns are useful when you need a controlled, auditable recipient list — for example, following up with attendees from a specific hiring event, re-engaging a curated shortlist, or running A/B messaging tests where a stable denominator matters for reporting accuracy.
Category: Categories are tags. They make your campaign list easier to scan and have no functional effect on how a campaign runs.
Application — A targeted message encouraging qualified candidates to apply.
Event — A specific invitation for recipients to attend a scheduled gathering.
Nurture — Communication designed to maintain relationships with your audience.
Recipient Journey: Choose when individual recipients stop receiving follow-up messages.
Stop after CTA click — When an individual recipient clicks any CTA, their campaign journey ends and they will not receive any further messages.
Send all messages — Each recipient will receive all messages in the sequence regardless of their individual interactions.
Stop after message open — When an individual recipient opens any message, their campaign journey ends and they will not receive any further messages.
Click Create. You’ll be brought to the campaign message creation screen. Here you can craft your email message and add additional messages to create a campaign journey.
Click Button to add a Call-to-Action button to your email.
You can customize the text and color, and alignment of the button in the message in the Style tab.
Customize what the button does when clicked in the Settings tab. It can collect data, link to something, or even connect to a third-party system via webhook. You’ll also be able to add a confirmation message.
If Recipient Journey is set to Stop after CTA click, a recipient who clicks any CTA receives no further messages in that campaign. Take that into account when a sequence has a button in its first message.
Click Generate to use AI to help generate the message.
Click Shorten to shorten the email message.
To save the email as a template to be used for future email campaigns, click the Templates button and then Save as Template. These will then be accessible via the Templates button during later email campaigns that are created.
To add more emails to the campaign, click the + icon towards the bottom left.
Above the Subject line, you can change the time the email will be sent. This is only customizable for additional emails. The first email will be sent at the time of activation. The time displayed is in your time zone.
To adjust the order of the emails, click the Day # above the subject line within an email. This is not available on the initial email, as the initial email corresponds to “the first day of the campaign” by definition.
When finished creating all your emails, click Next in the top right corner.
Under When should this campaign start? choose Now to send immediately, or Later to schedule it for a specific date and time.
Under When should this campaign end? choose Never, which keeps the campaign active until you mark it as complete, or Later, which ends it on an exact date and time. An end date must fall after the current audience finishes its message sequence.
Click Activate for [X] recipients to publish, Send a test to check the message first, or Save as draft to come back to it later.
Static Campaign Recipients Are Fixed at Creation
For Static campaigns, the recipient list is the set of members who matched the audience criteria at the time the campaign was created. Newly qualifying talent will not be added, and talent who exit the audience remain excluded and cannot rejoin.
Send a Test Before You Activate
A test send is the only way to see a message as a recipient will see it, with dynamic fields resolved and links live. Click Send a test on the activation step and enter the address the test should go to, then check the delivered message for resolved dynamic fields, working links, and the sender line.
A test send does not count toward campaign metrics and does not enter anyone into the campaign.
Campaign Editor
Insert Link
To insert or edit a link in your email, click on existing linked text or use the link tool in the editor.
This opens the Insert link modal, where you can select from a suggested opening link, choose a specific Opening, or enter a custom URL.
The modal also includes fields for link display text and optional UTM parameters (Source, Medium, and Campaign) for tracking. If you paste or type a URL directly in the email body, the display text will automatically prefill to match the URL.
Default Campaign Source
Even without setting a custom UTM Source, links in a Pool campaign automatically carry utm_source=FountainPool. This lets you track Pool-driven applications in Hire's Applicant Sources dashboard.
Dynamic Fields
To personalize your campaign with recipient-specific data, use dynamic fields. Dynamic fields pull values from talent contact attributes (including worker attributes, prospect attributes, and applicant record data) into your message at send time. Each field appears in the editor as a labelled chip, such as talent first name, and resolves to the recipient's value when the message sends.
Pool uses the most recently updated value found across all matching records for that contact.
A dynamic field that finds no value leaves a gap in the sentence around it. Write sentences that survive an empty field, and send a test to a contact who is missing the attribute as well as one who has it. The syntax for each attribute is shown on the Attributes tab of any Talent Profile.
Use the HTML Editor
When building an email message, you can switch between the standard visual editor and an HTML view. The HTML view lets you review the message's HTML directly or paste in your own HTML. This is useful if you maintain branded email templates elsewhere and want to bring them into Pool. You can save an HTML-based message as a template like any other message.
Custom HTML May Be Lost When Switching Back
If you switch from the HTML view back to the visual editor, custom HTML that the visual editor cannot represent may be lost. Fountain asks you to confirm first: click Cancel to keep editing in HTML, or Switch anyway to continue.
Create an SMS Campaign
To create a new SMS campaign, follow the steps below:
Click Pool in the left side panel and then Campaigns.
Click Create campaign in the top right corner. Choose SMS in the dropdown.
In the next pop-up, complete all fields:
Name: Type an internal name for the campaign. Ensure this is specific enough to be identifiable to your Pool users.
To: Select the previously created audience that this campaign will be sent to. Review this article to learn the steps to create an audience in Pool.
Audience mode: Select whether to send to a fixed list of your current audience, or continue reaching new members as they qualify.
Dynamic — Automatically includes new members as they qualify and removes them when they no longer match your audience criteria.
Static — Sends to a fixed list of members who matched your audience criteria at the time of campaign creation. New members added later won't be included.
Category: Categories are tags. They make your campaign list easier to scan and have no functional effect on how a campaign runs.
Application — A targeted message encouraging qualified candidates to apply.
Event — A specific invitation for recipients to attend a scheduled gathering.
Nurture — Communication designed to maintain relationships with your audience.
Click Create. You’ll be brought to the campaign message creation screen. Here you can craft your SMS message and add additional messages to create a campaign journey.
Click Generate to use AI to help generate the message.
Click Shorten to shorten the message.
To save the SMS message as a template to be used for future SMS campaigns, click the Templates button and then Save as Template. These will then be accessible via the Templates button for later SMS campaigns that are created.
To add more SMS messages to the campaign, click the + icon towards the bottom left.
Above the message section, you can change the time the SMS will be sent. This is only customizable for additional SMS messages. The first message will be sent at the time of activation. The time displayed is in your time zone.
To adjust the order of the SMS messages, click the Day # above the message section for any following SMS messages. This is not available on the first message.
When finished creating all your SMS messages, click Next in the top right corner.
Choose when the campaign should start and end, then click Activate for [X] recipients to publish, Send a test to check the message first, or Save as draft.
US SMS Requires 10DLC Brand Registration
Sending SMS campaigns to recipients in the United States requires 10DLC brand registration. Contact your Fountain Customer Success representative to start that process.
Manage Campaigns
All campaigns can be viewed on the Campaigns page. At the top of the page, five tiles display aggregate performance metrics across all campaigns: Delivery rate, Open rate (emails only), Click rate (emails only), Bounce rate (emails only), and Unsubscribe rate. Per-campaign performance statistics are visible in the columns of the list below.
Below the tiles, use the status tabs to filter the campaign list by status. The available tabs are All, Draft, Scheduled, Active, Completed, and Archived. You can also search for a specific campaign using the search bar — search results stay scoped to the active tab. Use the Filters button to further narrow the list, and Columns to change which columns appear.
Read Campaign Results
To view metrics for a specific campaign, click into that campaign. The same metric tiles appear scoped to that campaign, alongside three tabs: Overview, Message performance, and Click performance.
For what each metric counts, where to find it, and how audience mode and recipient journey change the way you read the numbers, see Read Pool Campaign Performance.
View Campaign Message Content
For active and completed campaigns, you can open the campaign and view the content of each message it contains. Click a message to see exactly what was sent, including its send timing and a preview as the recipient received it. Message content is read-only for campaigns that are active, completed, or archived.
Bulk Actions
When viewing a status tab (other than All), you can select multiple campaigns using the checkboxes and apply a bulk action. Available bulk actions vary by campaign status:
Status tab | Available bulk actions |
Draft | Delete |
Scheduled | Cancel schedule |
Active | Mark as complete |
Completed | Archive, Delete |
Archived | Delete |
Archive Campaigns
Completed campaigns can be archived to keep your campaign list organized. Archived campaigns are read-only — their performance data remains accessible, but their settings and messages cannot be edited.
An active campaign cannot be archived directly. Mark it as complete first, then archive it.
To archive a completed campaign
Click the Completed tab on the Campaigns page.
Select the checkbox next to each campaign you want to archive.
Click Archive in the bulk actions bar.
The campaigns move to the Archived tab.
To work with archived campaigns
From the Archived tab, you can:
View performance: Click into the campaign to see its metrics and message history.
Duplicate: Create an editable draft copy of the campaign to reuse its setup for a new campaign.
Delete: Permanently remove the campaign. Deleted campaigns cannot be recovered.
Fix a Campaign That Will Not Activate
If activation fails or the activation control is unavailable, check these in order.
The audience has no eligible recipients. The activation button names the number it will send to, so a count of zero points here. Talent who are opted out, unsubscribed, marked do not contact, or excluded by Talent Eligibility do not count as recipients even when they appear in the audience.
A required field is empty. Name, Reply-To, audience, audience mode, category, and recipient journey are all required.
The message has no content. A campaign needs at least one message with a subject and body.
The end date is too early. An end date has to fall after the current audience finishes its message sequence.
Your role does not allow activation. Check with whoever administers Pool in your account.