What componets make up an email campagin

I'm sure you have been though the Netsuite Help files - and have scratched your head at what seems to be a ridiculous number of things that are "required" to make an email go out the door.  Well - here's a very simplistic visual representation that contains the authorized email address, the saved search, group, template, and campaign.

At the most basic level - the Saved Search generates the list of customers / leads / contacts / whatever criteria you build for the list of people who will get the message.

The Group generation is just a layer whereby you attach the Saved Search to a facade used in the Marketing world within Netsuite.

The Marketing Template is the actual content you will be emailing out - this can be as simple or complex as you need for your message.

And finally the Marketing Campaign is where the Template is matched to the Group and when the emails are scheduled, the category they fall into is assigned and here is where you will come back after a successful launch to view the historical statistics about delivery, read, bounce, unsubscribe and clicks.

Fundamentally the system is pretty simple and the components make sense from a practical sense.  It's just a bit overwhelming when you are initially assaulted by the complexity.  If you have ever used other web based marketing tools like Vertical Response, you will find many of the concepts to be the same.