Building a Campaign Engine Through Smart Email Workflows

UX Design | Designing Influcio’s Email Automation System

Project Overview

Introduction

Influcio is a platform that connects brands and influencers to run campaigns more efficiently

Project Goal

Build a user-centered, automated notification system that keeps both brands and influencers informed, engaged, and moving throughout a campaign

Timeline

Feb – Mar 2025: Fast iteration cycles with real campaigns to test, learn, and optimize in real time

My Role

Led the UX strategy, flow design, and iteration, combining product thinking with user empathy

Background and Problem Statement

Background:

Influcio is an influencer marketing platform that connects brands with the right influencers. During its development, we conducted a bunch of campaigns, designing the platform's workflow based on hands-on best practices. While our beta version performed well in controlled tests, real-world usage unveiled a significant challenge: users, both influencers and brands, often failed to take necessary actions, causing campaigns to stall. This wasn't a technical flaw, but a communication gap: a lack of timely prompts to guide progress. This pivotal insight led me to design an email notification system aimed not just at informing, but at driving action, ensuring campaign momentum, and maintaining engagement throughout the campaign lifecycle.

Problem Statement:

A campaign functions as a synchronized dance between a brand and an influencer, where each step is interdependent. In traditional campaign management, campaign manager could directly guide these steps. But on a platform, automation needed to anticipate human hesitation. To succeed at scale, we needed more than reminders. We needed an intelligent, empathetic email system that would guide users through every campaign step.

Research and Discovery

Research Methods:

Before launching the platform, we had already run dozens of influencer campaigns, gaining valuable insights into how brands and creators collaborate. But once we introduced automation, new challenges emerged: delays, inaction, and communication breakdowns. To uncover the root causes, I led a mixed-method research effort:

•A/B Testing & Email Metrics: We tested different email formats (visual vs. plain-text, subject line variations, CTA positioning) and tracked open, click-through, and conversion rates to identify what truly drove action.

•Behavioral Tracking: We monitored user sessions to understand how and when users interacted with campaign pages — including login frequency, time spent on specific steps, and points of drop-off.

•User Interviews: We conducted targeted interviews with both brands and influencers to uncover pain points around communication, delays, and expectations when using the platform.

Key Discovery:

Unlike manual campaign management, where humans could adapt in real time, email automation had to anticipate a wide range of behaviors, edge cases, and emotional contexts. This shifted our design mindset:

Email notifications weren’t just reminders, they became the operating system of the campaign.

Design Process

I organized messy stakeholder asks and fragmented insights into four key design categories:

•Workflow: Email is not just a message. It is the system. Unlike human-managed campaigns that allow flexible coordination, automated campaigns require clear, predefined logic and fallback flows for when things don’t go as planned. So the workflow should consider both: campaign-stage-based triggers, like invite → brief → approval → payout. And mapped backup flows, such as follow-up sequences.

•Best Practices from Real Campaigns: Drawing from our previous hands-on experience, we had amassed a wealth of email sending best practices. We summarized several high-conversion email templates that were:
1. Personalized and relevant to the recipient
2. Succinct, clear, and to the point
3. Attractive in tone and style
4. Equipped with clear calls-to-action

•Branding & Trust: Strong branding turned cold emails into trusted collaborations. Each message became an extension of the Influcio brand. Emails with strong branding could h messages stand out and avoid being ignored.

•Compliance & Regulation: Even small emails have some rules to follow. Based on the different functions of the emails, I designed our templates to comply with regulations such CAN-SPAM: Including unsubscribe, sender address.

Due to the urgent needs of the campaign, we had to immediately put our designs into action, which also provided us with immediate opportunities to test and iterate our solutions.

Fast Iteration

Solution and Results

In addition to the overall campaign workflow created by our excellent PM, I designed a communication-specific flow: one tailored to the interactions between brands and influencers. It mapped out email notification triggers and clearly defined when automation would fall short, requiring human intervention.

Workflow of Campaign

Based on this communication workflow, I then designed a detailed email notification system, outlining specific triggers, follow-up sequences, and escalation paths.

Email System Diagram

Since different types of emails require different formats and content, I designed modular components that could be easily assembled to fit various scenarios.

Based on the notification workflow, I designed modular templates for all key campaign triggers.

Email Template Example

Reflection and Learnings

This journey of designing an email notification system for Influcio revealed a profound truth: notifications are far more than just messages. They are the invisible hand that guides users, the encouraging voice that builds relationships, and the firm structure that ensures fairness and efficiency. In building this system, our platform evolved from simply being information tellers to becoming:

•Project Managers: Proactively pushing campaigns toward successful completion.

•Relationship Keepers: Nurturing a positive and supportive community.

•Rule Makers: Shaping the very framework of our platform to create a more equitable and effective environment for both brands and influencers.

The Influcio email notification system is a testament to the power of UX design to not only solve immediate problems but also to fundamentally shape the user experience and drive business success.