diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index ab3ba7b7..cb3553df 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,5 +1,22 @@
 # kumomta
 
+## Concepts
+
+### Queuing
+
+Messages are assigned to a queue upon reception. The system can support
+arbitrarily named queues but the convention is to construct the queue name from
+some metadata associated with the message:
+
+* `tenant` - some kind of sender or customer identifier or identity derived
+  either from the message itself or authentication of the injection session.
+* `campaign` - a sender-provided label that can be used to logically group a set
+  of related messages, perhaps generated from the same campaign.
+* destination domain - the site where the email will be routed
+
+These three pieces of information are combined to produce the name of the queue
+in the form `campaign:tenant@domain`.
+
 ## Debugging/Tracing
 
 This will launch the server using the policy defined in [simple_policy.lua](simple_policy.lua):
diff --git a/crates/kumod/src/smtp_server.rs b/crates/kumod/src/smtp_server.rs
index e8127f2b..0e138c35 100644
--- a/crates/kumod/src/smtp_server.rs
+++ b/crates/kumod/src/smtp_server.rs
@@ -415,12 +415,19 @@ impl SmtpServer {
 
                         ids.push(message.id().to_string());
 
-                        let queue_name = match message.get_meta("queue")? {
-                            serde_json::Value::String(name) => name.to_string(),
-                            serde_json::Value::Null => message.recipient()?.domain().to_string(),
-                            value => anyhow::bail!(
-                                "expected 'queue' metadata to be a string value, got {value:?}"
-                            ),
+                        let queue_name = match message.get_meta_string("queue")? {
+                            Some(name) => name.to_string(),
+                            None => {
+                                let campaign = message.get_meta_string("campaign")?;
+                                let tenant = message.get_meta_string("tenant")?;
+                                let domain = message.recipient()?.domain().to_string();
+                                match (campaign, tenant) {
+                                    (Some(c), Some(t)) => format!("{c}:{t}@{domain}"),
+                                    (Some(c), None) => format!("{c}:@{domain}"),
+                                    (None, Some(t)) => format!("{t}@{domain}"),
+                                    (None, None) => domain,
+                                }
+                            }
                         };
 
                         if queue_name != "null" {
diff --git a/crates/message/src/message.rs b/crates/message/src/message.rs
index f95ab29b..4bfaf7b8 100644
--- a/crates/message/src/message.rs
+++ b/crates/message/src/message.rs
@@ -227,6 +227,20 @@ impl Message {
         }
     }
 
+    /// Retrieve `key` as a String.
+    pub fn get_meta_string<S: serde_json::value::Index + std::fmt::Display + Copy>(
+        &self,
+        key: S,
+    ) -> anyhow::Result<Option<String>> {
+        match self.get_meta(key) {
+            Ok(serde_json::Value::String(value)) => Ok(Some(value.to_string())),
+            Ok(serde_json::Value::Null) => Ok(None),
+            hmm => {
+                anyhow::bail!("expected '{key}' to be a string value, got {hmm:?}");
+            }
+        }
+    }
+
     pub fn get_meta<S: serde_json::value::Index>(
         &self,
         key: S,