Run targeted email campaigns with Odoo Email Marketing

What is Odoo Email Marketing?

Odoo Email Marketing is the dedicated mass-mailing application inside the Odoo business suite. It provides drag-and-drop design tools, pre-built templates, A/B testing, and detailed reporting metrics so marketing teams can create, send, and track bulk email campaigns without leaving the Odoo backend.

The app is the foundation of Odoo's marketing stack. The separate Odoo Marketing Automation app depends on Email Marketing and layers advanced behavioral triggers and multi-step workflows on top of it. If your needs extend beyond one-off blasts, Email Marketing is the prerequisite; Marketing Automation is the sequencer (we cover that app separately in our marketing automation and marketing guide articles).

For SMEs evaluating an all-in-one ERP, this matters: the same database that holds your CRM contacts, sales orders, and accounting records also powers your newsletters and promotional mailings, with no separate integration to maintain. Because Email Marketing is included with the Odoo subscription rather than billed per-contact, a business already running Odoo can send campaigns to its full CRM audience without an additional marketing-software line item.

What it is not: Odoo Email Marketing is a transactional and bulk-sending tool, not a deliverability-focused ESP like Mailchimp or Mailjet on its own. For high sending volumes, Odoo can route mailings through a dedicated external SMTP relay (covered in the deliverability section below), so the sending reputation and inbox placement belong to whichever server you configure.

Mailing lists and subscriber management

Mailing lists in Odoo silo contacts for different communication types: pre-sales prospects, post-sales customers, focus-group participants, or qualified lead lists for sales teams. Lists are created by navigating to Email Marketing, then Mailing Lists, then Mailing Lists, then New.

Each list exposes smart buttons for Recipients, Mailings, % Bounce, % Opt-out, and % Blacklist, giving you an at-a-glance read on list health before you send. The % Bounce figure reflects the share of mailings tied to that list that bounced back; % Opt-out reflects recipients who have unsubscribed. Lists can also be linked to the website using Newsletter building blocks, so visitors subscribe directly from public pages and are added to the right segment automatically.

Because bounce, opt-out, and blacklist rates are tracked per list, you can spot decaying audiences early and prune them, which protects deliverability across every campaign you send from that list.

• →Create lists under Email Marketing > Mailing Lists > Mailing Lists > New.
• →Smart buttons show Recipients, Mailings, % Bounce, % Opt-out, and % Blacklist.
• →Link lists to website Newsletter blocks for visitor self-subscription.
• →Lists feed pre- and post-sales communications and qualified lead lists for sales.

Designing and sending mailings

The mailing builder offers drag-and-drop blocks and pre-built templates, so non-technical marketers can assemble on-brand emails. Each mailing can target one or more mailing lists, and recipients are deduplicated so a single contact is never mailed twice for the same campaign.

Building a campaign follows a consistent path. From Email Marketing, open Mailings and choose New; pick a template or start blank; attach one or more mailing lists; then compose the subject, sender, and reply-to. The visual builder stacks blocks (text, image, button, columns, divider, social links), and you can insert dynamic placeholders such as the recipient's name or company so each copy is personalized.

Before sending, Odoo lets you preview the email, run deliverability checks, and send a test to yourself or a colleague to confirm links, images, and personalization render across Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail. You can send immediately, schedule for a future date and time, or enable A/B testing so Odoo trials variants first. The same builder handles both one-off newsletters and recurring promotional blasts, and the underlying contact data comes straight from the CRM or other Odoo apps, with no manual import/export step.

• →Start from Email Marketing > Mailings > New; choose a template or a blank layout.
• →Attach mailing list(s); Odoo deduplicates so each contact receives the mailing only once.
• →Compose subject, sender, and reply-to; keep subject lines concise for stronger open rates.
• →Assemble content with drag-and-drop blocks and personalize with dynamic placeholders (recipient name, company).
• →Preview across mobile and desktop, run deliverability checks, and send a test before going live.
• →Send now, schedule for a future time, or enable A/B testing to trial variants first.

A/B testing email content

A/B testing in Odoo Email Marketing lives on the mailing form's A/B Tests tab. To enable it, you check the Allow A/B Testing option on the mailing. An on (%) field then appears where you set the share of pre-configured recipients who receive the test variants, and each recipient is mailed only once for the entire campaign regardless of how many variants you test.

You then choose a Winner Selection metric and set a Send Final On date and time that triggers automatic winner rollout to the remaining recipients.

To build the variant, you use the Create an Alternative Version action on the same A/B Tests tab and edit the body or content. Note that Mailing Campaigns must be enabled in Configuration, then Settings to expose the Campaigns menu and the A/B options in the first place; the same setting also enables A/B testing for SMS mailings.

Behavioral triggers and Marketing Automation

Behavioral triggers such as opened, not opened, replied, not replied, clicked, not clicked, and bounced, plus sequenced multi-step workflows, are not features of the Email Marketing app itself. They require the separate Odoo Marketing Automation app, which depends on Email Marketing being installed.

In Marketing Automation, each campaign activity has a Trigger (the beginning of the workflow or a follow-up after another activity), an optional delay measured in Hours, Days, Weeks, or Months, an optional Expiry Duration, and a per-activity domain filter that narrows who enters that step. Activity types are Email (using mail templates), Server action (update a record, send an email or note, send an SMS, add or remove followers, execute code, or call a webhook), or SMS. Child activities branch from a parent based on the trigger outcome.

The short version: Email Marketing is for batch sends and A/B tests; Marketing Automation is for triggered, multi-step journeys. If you need automated nurture sequences, plan to enable both apps. We cover triggered workflows in depth in our marketing automation guide.

Analytics and reporting

Odoo Email Marketing surfaces per-mailing metrics for Sent, Delivered %, Opened %, Clicked %, and Replied %, with smart buttons that link directly to the filtered recipient records behind each number so you can drill from a metric to the actual contacts.

Beyond per-mailing stats, a Mass Mailing Analysis reporting dashboard offers graph, pivot, and list views that can be grouped by period and by the responsible user, making it easy to compare campaign performance over time or across team members. A low bounce rate on this view generally indicates an up-to-date mailing list and sender authentication that email providers trust.

When A/B testing is tied to business outcomes, the same smart buttons extend to Revenues, Quotations, Opportunities, and Clicks, closing the loop between a marketing touch and downstream sales activity.

To interpret the numbers, it helps to compare against typical industry benchmarks: open rates of roughly 20-30% for B2B and 15-25% for B2C mailings, click rates around 2-5%, a bounce rate under 2%, and an unsubscribe rate under 0.5%. A bounce rate above 2% is a warning to clean the list and verify sender authentication; a high unsubscribe rate usually means the content or frequency is mismatched to the segment, so segment more tightly and send less often.

Deliverability: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and the sending server

Reaching the inbox rather than the spam folder depends on sender authentication, list hygiene, and the server you send through. Odoo documents three complementary protocols that prove your domain is a legitimate sender: SPF (Sender Policy Framework) authorizes which mail servers may send for your domain, DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds a cryptographic signature recipients can verify, and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) ties the two together and tells receivers what to do when a message fails alignment.

For Odoo Online and Odoo.sh hosted databases, Odoo manages SPF/DKIM on its own sending infrastructure, but you must still configure the DNS records Odoo instructs when you use a custom domain so that bounces and the Return-Path address align. On a self-hosted or custom-domain setup, you add the SPF, DKIM (or CNAME), and DMARC records at your DNS provider; Odoo's domain configuration page lists the exact records and links to common providers.

For higher sending volumes, enable the Dedicated Server option under Email Marketing, then Configuration, then Settings. This routes mailings through a separate, dedicated outgoing mail server you choose instead of the default shared server, which is important when you want a sending reputation you control. Many teams point the dedicated server at a transactional relay such as Mailjet, Mailgun, or Amazon SES, which specialize in high-volume delivery, bounce processing, and reputation management. Mailjet, for example, publishes a documented Odoo integration that configures it as the outgoing SMTP server.

Odoo handles the compliance mechanics automatically: every mailing includes an unsubscribe link, opt-outs are recorded, and addresses that bounce or complain are added to the blacklist so they are never mailed again. The per-list smart buttons for Bounce, Opt-out, and Blacklist let you monitor list health before it hurts deliverability. Removing hard bounces and inactive subscribers keeps your bounce rate low, which inbox providers read as a signal of a trustworthy sender.

• →Configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC DNS records for your sending domain as Odoo's domain setup instructs.
• →For volume sending, enable Dedicated Server (Email Marketing > Configuration > Settings) and select your outgoing server.
• →Optionally route through a transactional relay (Mailjet, Mailgun, Amazon SES) for reputation and bounce handling you control.
• →Rely on Odoo's automatic unsubscribe link, opt-out tracking, and blacklist so bouncers and complainers are never re-mailed.
• →Prune hard bounces and inactive contacts using the per-list Bounce and Blacklist smart buttons to protect sender reputation.

Odoo Email Marketing vs Mailchimp and HubSpot

Because the search for 'email marketing odoo' often overlaps with Mailchimp and HubSpot comparisons, here is an honest look at where each tool fits. The core trade-off is integration versus specialization: Odoo Email Marketing is built into an ERP suite that already holds your CRM, sales, and accounting data, while Mailchimp and HubSpot are dedicated marketing platforms with deeper, more mature marketing feature sets.

On cost, Odoo Email Marketing is included in the Odoo subscription with no per-contact email fee; you pay for the Odoo users and hosting you already budget for. Mailchimp charges by audience size: its Essentials plan starts at about $13 per month for 500 contacts and 5,000 sends, the Standard plan adds advanced automations at around $20 per month, and pricing climbs as your list grows (roughly $45 per month at 2,500 contacts). HubSpot Marketing Hub is positioned higher and gets expensive quickly at scale, though its free tier covers basic contact management.

On capability, Mailchimp and HubSpot lead on template marketplaces, deliverability tooling, and out-of-the-box automation, while Odoo's advantage is the unified record: a campaign can target the exact contacts, customers, or leads that already exist in your CRM and accounting, and A/B test results can be tied to generated quotations and revenue without a third-party connector. For an SME already running Odoo for the rest of the business, that integration usually outweighs the raw feature breadth of a standalone ESP.

The Dynamics 365 equivalent for SMEs

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 equivalent is Customer Insights - Journeys (real-time marketing), the successor to Dynamics 365 Marketing and the older outbound marketing module. Microsoft fully removed the outbound marketing module in May 2026 after a phased transition (the originally announced retirement date was June 30, 2025), and outbound assets such as old journeys, segments, and certain forms are not usable in the current real-time environment.

Customer Insights - Journeys orchestrates trigger-based journeys, which react in real time to customer or business actions, and segment-based journeys, which run targeted scheduled or repeating outreach. Both are built on a visual canvas with messages, waits, branches, and splits across email, text/SMS, push, and custom channels. Static segments built from a CSV upload are capped at 200,000 members per segment.

We cover Customer Insights - Journeys in full depth, including pricing, segmentation, lead scoring, and the outbound-to-real-time migration, in our Dynamics 365 Marketing guide. The table below is a quick orientation only.

Which platform fits an SME?

The choice is rarely about which marketing tool is objectively better. It is about which stack the SME already runs, or plans to run. Odoo Email Marketing sits inside an all-in-one ERP that also covers CRM, accounting, inventory, and e-commerce, so it shines when the goal is a single integrated database with no third-party connectors and a unified contact record.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys fits SMEs already invested in the Microsoft and Power Platform ecosystem, especially those using Dataverse, Power Automate, and Customer Insights - Data for unified customer profiles. Its real-time trigger model and Sankey-style journey analytics are geared toward teams that want event-driven, multi-channel orchestration rather than scheduled blasts.

Because Flectic implements both platforms, the recommendation is stack-led: if your business runs on Odoo, Email Marketing plus Marketing Automation covers the spectrum from newsletter to triggered workflow; if your business runs on Dynamics 365, Customer Insights - Journeys is the current, supported path now that outbound marketing has been removed.

Frequently asked questions