7 Quick-Hit Campaigner Tips to Streamline Your Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is one of the most powerful weapons in your company's customer engagement arsenal. These platforms can set up complex automated workflows that keep leads and customers in your sales and email marketing pipeline with personalized messaging, deep analytics, and more.

For any business today that relies on online customer engagement and subscriber lists, it's impossible to monetize that list and grow your user base without an effective email marketing and marketing automation plan. While there are plenty of affordable tools out there to blast out emails and manage all your lists, one of the best is Campaigner . This all-in-one platform has a wealth of features to save time setting up marketing campaigns and give users rich contextual email experiences. Here are seven of Campaigner's most useful features and automated mechanisms for creating an impressively detailed email marketing strategy, and doing so quickly.

1. Automatic User Segments

Campaigner automatically groups users together based on shared traits extracted from their profile and account information, but you can also create your own custom user segments. From the Contacts tab in the Campaigner dashboard, click "Manage Segments" where you can create new segments based on various email actions, form submissions, or custom fields. Once you've created the new segment, you can associate that user group with a particular campaign or campaigns to make blasting emails to targeted audiences a lot simpler.

2. Image Mapping

One of Campaigner's niftiest tricks is its ability to link different elements within a single image to multiple locations. Click "Edit Email Design" within a campaign template and, after uploading an image into the Campaigner media library and inserting it into the design as with any normal image, select the "Image Map Editor." From there, choose "Add New Area" to the image and decide that link area's size and shape. Then drag it to where you'd like it in the image. Then, simply type the link into the corresponding field for that area. Repeat the process for as many links as you want to add.

3. A/B Split Tests

Figuring out the most effective email marketing campaign tactics involves a lot of trial and error. Campaigner builds that directly into the platform with A/B split tests, and automates the trial-and-error process for you. Campaigner has an Experiments tab that lists all of your A/B split tests. To create a new one, simply click "New Experiment" and select from four different test types: Subject line, From name, From address, and Design.

You can then add different variations for, let's say, Subject line, where you can try out different lines on whatever campaign lists or segments you'd like, and set how many recipients on whom you'd like to A/B test the subject lines. Within the experiment setup wizard, you then set the test to run over any number of hours or days. You can also set whether you'd like the winning subject line to be determined by unique opens, unique clicks, or total clicks. Campaigner will then run the A/B test for you, and you'll have a battle-tested subject line to blast out to the rest of your lists for maximum effectiveness.

4. Workflows

Workflows aren't just for project management or for task management tools such as Asana . In Campaigner, you can use workflows to define automated rule sets for email campaigns. Based on a specific date, time, or user action, the workflow will trigger an automatic response depending on the sequence of messages you've created.

In the Workflows tab of the Campaigner dashboard, you can create a workflow design incorporating tools such as specific email templates, built-in delays in response, and branches to take the user to a different part of the workflow depending on their action. There's also a Copy Workflow option in the Design Editor toolbar to re-create an effective workflow and designate it for another campaign.

5. Email Triggers and Autoresponders

Within a workflow, email triggers and autoresponders are what get customers where you want them to go. In the Workflow design user interface (UI) itself, you can drag and drop email icons into the workflow. To configure that icon with a trigger, click it and choose an action such as Opens, Clicks, or Replies to trigger a follow-up email. You can also use the Campaigner Element application programming interface (API) to set custom email triggers from within any other apps in which your customers are interacting with your organization. Once an email is triggered, an autoresponder is often what gets sent to the customer or target list. Campaigner has two types of autoresponders—Recurring and Triggered—and each has its use in an email marketing workflow. Recurring autoresponders go out on a timed schedule, and can be used to reach out to contacts you've marked as inactive or to follow up with a contact over specified intervals. Triggered autoresponders pull a given email template from your list when a workflow action is triggered, such as a welcome email or a follow-up email to a specific product a customer clicked on, etc. Within the Design editor, click an email in the workflow to set a trigger, and then open the drop-down menu to browse autoresponders from your email templates.

6. Cross-Platform Reporting

Email marketing is just as much about mobile as desktop these days—and desktop is losing ground. Within the Campaigner dashboard's Reporting tab, you'll find traditional Open/Click reporting that shows you the top-clicked links, which contacts opened and viewed your email campaigns, and an option to view what's called "click overlay." Click overlay shows a heat map of your email template design, with the most and least-clicked items.

You'll also see an option in the reporting list called Platform Reports and, if you click on that, you'll see "Desktop vs. Mobile." This gives you a simple pie chart that breaks down your campaign's desktop and mobile traffic, and whether you received more clicks and engagement on the emails from one platform or another. If your mobile campaigns aren't doing as well, Campaigner will actually surface a recommendation for you to start using its responsive design email templates.

7. Social Integration and Sharing

Email marketing doesn't function anymore without effective social media integration. Email is still where you can give customers the richest experience and the most information about your products and offerings, but social media is where your customers live. Campaigner includes built-in email integrations with Facebook and Twitter, which you can enable by going into "My Account and Account Settings," and clicking on the Integration tab. After adding your company's Facebook and Twitter accounts, Campaigner gives you the option to individually enable each account to receive email campaigns, and choose an image from the Campaigner Media Library to act as the default image with each post.

Once enabled, you can go into the Email Campaigns tab and click "Email Details" within whichever campaign you'd like to push through social channels. After checking off the social sharing boxes for Facebook and/or Twitter, you can edit the content of the Facebook post or tweet from within the campaign tab. Just select which recipients you want the social post sent to (as you would do with a normal email) and click "Save." By selecting recipients you're connected with on social channels, the integration will bring them from Facebook or Twitter directly to the landing page you want.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.