An email campaign is a coordinated email or series of emails sent to a list or segment with a specific goal, such as promoting a sale, launching a product, or nurturing a new subscriber.
A Term That Covers More Ground Than It Seems To
What is an email campaign technically broad enough to include a single one-off broadcast and an entire multi-week automated sequence, which is part of why the term gets used loosely across the industry.
In practice, most people mean something more specific: a planned, goal-oriented send or series, as opposed to routine transactional email like an order confirmation, which nobody would call a campaign even though it’s technically an email being sent.
Email Campaign Types Worth Distinguishing
Email campaign types generally fall into three buckets:
- Broadcast campaigns go out to an entire list or segment at one scheduled time.
- Automated campaigns trigger from a subscriber’s own behavior, an abandoned cart, a signup, a purchase.
- Drip campaigns sit in between, a pre-set sequence that unfolds on a fixed schedule after a trigger rather than reacting to ongoing behavior.
Most stores run all three simultaneously, since each serves a different purpose rather than competing for the same job.
What Separates a Planned Campaign From a Reactive Send
Email campaign examples that perform well share a common trait: they start from a clear goal, drive signups to a new product launch, clear excess inventory, win back lapsed customers, rather than being built around “we should send something this week.”
Email campaign strategy at its most basic is simply defining that goal before writing a single word of copy, since the goal determines everything downstream: which segment to target, what the CTA should be, and how success gets measured afterward.
Related terms:
For a deeper walkthrough of building and running campaigns that convert, see our guide on best email marketing campaign strategies.
Adflipr’s campaign builder supports both one-off broadcast campaigns and automated sequences from the same platform. For the exact step-by-step process, see our guide on how to create an email campaign.
