Mastering Email Marketing Campaigns: A Guide to Success

Creating effective email marketing campaigns is essential for businesses seeking direct engagement with their audience. This guide offers a deep dive into crafting, executing, and optimizing email marketing strategies to achieve measurable success. From establishing clear objectives to leveraging advanced techniques for personalization and automation, we provide actionable insights for businesses at any stage of their email marketing journey. Learn how to enhance your campaigns for higher open rates, engagement, and conversions, ensuring your message not only reaches but also resonates with your target audience.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing allows companies to use emails to promote products, share news, or spark interest. It stands out in marketing for its affordability, speed, and ability to target specific groups with personalized messages.

One major benefit is the ability to track effectiveness. Companies can monitor who opens emails, clicks on links, or makes purchases, gaining insights into what their audience prefers.

Sending regular emails keeps the brand in people's minds, which can increase website traffic and sales. It also strengthens relationships with the audience by providing valuable content, tips, or exclusive deals.

For email marketing to work well, creating impactful messages, choosing the right audience, and timing are crucial. Engaging and readable emails have a higher chance of being opened and prompting action.

Grasping email marketing and executing it skillfully is essential if you want campaigns that engage and convert. This requires strategic planning, targeted messaging, and ongoing adjustments based on performance data, ensuring meaningful connections with your audience. Email marketing campaigns are key for talking directly to your audience.

This guide shows you how to start, run, and improve your email marketing campaigns. It includes the basics, the benefits, and tips for engaging your audience well. The guide helps you with planning the messages, doing the legwork, and checking how well your email marketing works. Whether it's your first campaign or you're trying to get better at what you already do, this guide gives you the information you need to make your email marketing successful.

Top 5 Benefits of Email Marketing

Email marketing is renowned for delivering impressive returns on investment (ROI) and its unmatched cost-efficiency. Here's a closer look at its top benefits:

High ROI and cost-effectiveness

Email marketing's appeal lies in its ability to deliver targeted content to interested audiences, maximizing the efficiency of marketing activities and leading to significant returns such as expanded reach and optimized marketing expenditure. Its cost-effectiveness is particularly notable, with most expenses limited to software and campaign management services, enabling smaller businesses to extend their marketing reach without straining their budgets.

Improves sales

This marketing strategy excels in driving sales by delivering personalized and relevant content directly to subscribers who have already expressed interest in your brand. Tailoring messages based on customer behavior and preferences enhances the impact of each email, directly influencing sales conversions. Email marketing is an invaluable tool for boosting sales performance by supporting various stages of the customer journey.

Finds quality leads

Specializing in identifying and nurturing high-quality leads is crucial for business growth. Email marketing's precision targeting allows campaigns to reach individuals most likely to be interested in your offerings. This focus ensures your marketing activities target a receptive audience, enhancing campaign efficiency and boosting the likelihood of conversion.

Strengthens customer relationships

A key strength of email marketing is its capacity to build and maintain strong customer relationships. Regular, personalized interactions demonstrate a commitment to customer satisfaction, thereby fostering trust and loyalty. This ongoing engagement strengthens bonds with customers and encourages brand advocacy, contributing to sustained sales growth.

Drives website traffic

By incorporating direct links into emails, businesses can effectively guide subscribers to their websites for more detailed content, product exploration, or to take advantage of special promotions. This strategy increases immediate website traffic and promotes regular engagement, building a loyal audience base over time.

What Is an Email Marketing Campaign?

An email marketing campaign is a coordinated set of messages sent with a specific purpose, aimed at achieving a particular outcome with a target audience. Whether to inform, engage, promote, or convert, these campaigns are a staple in digital marketing for their direct approach and personalized touch.

At its heart, a campaign starts with a clear objective. This could range from increasing product awareness, driving event attendance, to nurturing customer loyalty. The goals set the direction for the campaign, influencing content, design, and target audience selection.

The components of an email marketing campaign are crucial for its success. A well-defined target audience ensures that the message reaches those most likely to be interested. The content of the emails, whether informative, promotional, or educational, needs to resonate with this audience, providing value that encourages engagement.

Calls-to-action are the key to driving the desired response. These guide recipients toward the next step, be it a purchase, sign-up, or further information.

Finally, a mechanism for tracking and analyzing the campaign's performance allows for continual improvement, making each campaign more effective than the last.

As we peel back the layers of what makes an email marketing campaign tick, the strategic role of email within the broader marketing ecosystem becomes apparent. Far from being a standalone tool, email marketing campaigns are integral to reinforcing and amplifying the overall marketing strategy. They offer a unique blend of direct communication and personalized engagement that can significantly enhance the customer journey. 

 Moving forward, the integration and importance of email marketing in broader strategies reveal just how pivotal these campaigns can be in achieving marketing objectives, setting the stage for a deeper dive into the various types of email marketing campaigns and their specific uses.

How Emails Impact Your Marketing Strategy

Email marketing significantly influences broader marketing strategies, serving as a key player in engaging audiences, nurturing leads, and driving conversions. Its integration into marketing plans ensures that messages are consistent across all channels yet tailored to meet the audience where they are most receptive.

The importance of email marketing extends beyond direct communication. It supports and amplifies other efforts, such as social media and content marketing, by providing a direct channel to guide subscribers back to your website or social platforms. This synergy between channels enhances the overall impact of your marketing activity, ensuring that your message is heard loud and clear across all touchpoints.

Moreover, email marketing's data-driven approach offers insights into customer behavior and preferences, enabling more targeted and effective marketing strategies. By analyzing campaign metrics, businesses can refine their messaging, timing, and targeting across all marketing channels, leading to a more cohesive and personalized customer experience.

As we delve deeper into the effectiveness of email marketing, it becomes clear that the types of campaigns you choose to deploy can significantly shape the customer journey. The next step is to explore the variety of campaigns available, each designed to achieve specific marketing goals and engage your audience in different stages of their interaction with your brand.

Types of Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing campaigns come in various forms, each designed to achieve different goals. Here's a look at some of the most impactful types of email campaigns, complete with examples to illustrate how they can be effectively utilized, especially for startups and small businesses.

Welcome email series

The series of initial emails you send to new subscribers serves as a digital handshake, introducing them to your brand. This sequence begins with a compelling first message that expresses gratitude for their subscription and sets the tone for future communications. For instance, Slack’s initial outreach makes a strong first impression by thanking new users, providing a clear call to action (CTA), and offering valuable resources about the product. Expanding this into a series further enhances the introduction, progressively engaging subscribers with more in-depth information and personalized content. Implementing a welcome email series is an effective strategy to start the customer journey on a positive note, gradually building a deeper connection with each message.

Product feedback messages

Gathering feedback is essential for any business looking to improve its offerings. Product feedback emails encourage customers to share their experiences, providing insights that can directly influence future product developments. A simple, laid-back approach, similar to Headspace’s feedback requests, can make it easy for customers to share their thoughts without feeling overwhelmed by detailed questionnaires.

New feature updates

Whenever you roll out updates or new features, sharing this news can re-engage users and spark interest. Detailed emails about product updates inform users about new possibilities and enhancements, ensuring they get the most out of your service. These emails should pack in relevant details to preempt questions and highlight the benefits of the latest updates.

Nurturing emails

Not all subscribers will engage with your content or product right away. Nurturing emails aim to rekindle interest and guide users back to your service with personalized messages and offers. For example, CloudApp’s nurturing email stands out for its personal touch, gently checking in with users and offering a free service month, encouraging them to give the platform another try.

Thank you messages

Expressing gratitude is a simple yet effective way to connect with your audience. Thank you emails can celebrate milestones, acknowledge customer loyalty, or even just serve as a polite follow-up after a purchase. Grabyo’s thank you message for a special event exemplifies how acknowledging customer support can foster a positive brand image and deepen customer relationships.

Exploring the variety of email marketing campaigns sets the stage for our next focus: crafting these campaigns. Each type, from welcoming new subscribers to gathering user feedback, plays a unique role in engaging your audience. Next, we will delve into advanced email marketing techniques that enhance engagement and relevance through interactive content, dynamic personalization, strategic automation, and deliverability optimization. These strategies are designed to elevate your campaigns by creating more personalized and effective connections with your audience.

Advanced Email Marketing Techniques

Learning to effectively use email marketing by adopting advanced techniques is essential for enhancing engagement, personalizing experiences, and increasing email relevance. To optimize your email campaigns, incorporating elements like interactive content, dynamic personalization, strategic automation, and deliverability optimization is key.

Interactive Content

Interactive content transforms passive emails into engaging experiences that encourage active participation from the recipient. Examples include:

• Polls and Surveys: Embedding these directly into emails can increase engagement rates and provide valuable feedback or insights into your audience's preferences.
• Interactive Images and Videos: These can include hover effects, clickable areas, or embedded videos that play within the email, making the content more dynamic and entertaining.
• Gamification: Incorporating elements of games, such as quizzes or scratch cards for discounts, can significantly boost engagement and fun, driving higher interaction rates.

Interactive content entertains while deepening the relationship between your brand and your audience by providing value and a sense of involvement.

Dynamic Content

Dynamic content refers to emails that automatically adjust their content based on the recipient's behavior, preferences, or demographics. This personalization makes each email feel tailor-made for the individual, increasing relevance and engagement. For example:

• Personalized Product Recommendations: Based on past purchases or browsing behavior, you can dynamically include products that the recipient is likely to be interested in.
• Location-based Offers: Tailor content such as event invitations or store promotions based on the recipient's geographical location.
• Behavior-triggered Content: Send content that is triggered by specific actions, like browsing a particular product category, to keep the products or services top of mind.

Dynamic content requires a robust data collection and analysis system but can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your email marketing by delivering highly personalized experiences.

Strategic Email Automation

Email automation streamlines communication and ensures timely interaction with your audience. By automating the process of sending an email marketing campaign, businesses can ensure that their messages are delivered at optimal times, increasing the likelihood of engagement. This strategic use of automation supports various objectives:

• Onboarding Sequences: Welcome new subscribers or customers with a series of emails designed to introduce them to your brand, products, or services, gradually nurturing their interest and engagement.
• Re-engagement Campaigns: Automatically identify and reach out to subscribers who haven't engaged with your emails over a certain period. Tailored messages can reignite their interest and encourage them to reconnect with your brand.
• Milestone Emails: Celebrate important milestones, such as anniversaries or birthdays, with automation flows that show appreciation and foster loyalty.

Effective automation relies on understanding your audience's journey and identifying key touchpoints where automated emails can add value.

Optimizing Email Deliverability

Ensuring your emails reach the inbox is foundational to the success of any email marketing strategy. Optimization involves:

• Maintaining a Healthy Sender Reputation: This influences how email service providers (ESPs) treat your emails. A good reputation increases the chances of your emails landing in the inbox. Ensure you're sending emails from a verified domain and keeping bounce rates low to maintain a positive reputation.

• Regular List Cleaning: Periodically remove inactive subscribers from your company's email list. Inactive users can harm your engagement rates and sender reputation. Use engagement metrics to identify and either re-engage or remove subscribers who haven't interacted with your emails over a set period.

• Avoiding Spam Triggers: Certain words, phrases, and formatting choices can trigger spam filters, causing your emails to land in the spam folder. Avoid using overly salesy language, excessive capitalization, and multiple exclamation marks. Also, ensure your emails include a clear unsubscribe option.

Advanced email marketing techniques can make your campaigns more engaging, personalized, and effective. Using interactive and dynamic content, strategic automation, and improving deliverability can greatly boost your email marketing impact, leading to better outcomes and stronger audience relationships.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Even with the best intentions, certain oversights can undermine the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid, along with best practices when it comes to ensuring your email marketing efforts are successful.

Lack of Clear Email Marketing Goals: Without specific objectives, it's challenging to measure success and return on investment.
Forgetting the Welcome Mat: Not sending a welcome email misses a critical opportunity to engage and set expectations with new subscribers.
Overlooking Email Deliverability: Regularly check your sender reputation and follow best practices to ensure your emails reach the inbox.
Using No-Reply Sender Addresses: This can discourage engagement and suggests you don’t value feedback, making it essential to use an address that invites responses.

By blending these best practices with innovative strategies and avoiding common traps, your campaigns can achieve remarkable success, fostering stronger relationships with your audience and driving your business goals forward.

How to Create a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Creating a marketing campaign involves several key steps, from understanding your audience to measuring the impact of your efforts. This section will guide you through each stage of the process, ensuring your campaigns are well-crafted and effectively executed.

Understanding your audience

Understanding your audience is essential for effective email marketing. Start by segmenting your email list into groups based on demographics, purchase history, and engagement. This step ensures your emails match the specific interests of each group.

Use analytics to observe behaviors like email opens and link clicks, offering insights into subscriber preferences.

Additionally, surveys can directly gather subscriber feedback, further tailoring your approach. Combining these methods allows for targeted, engaging campaigns. Tailored messaging increases relevance, driving better engagement and results from your efforts.

Building your email marketing list

Building a robust and engaged subscriber list is crucial for successful email marketing. Start by placing opt-in forms prominently on your website, social media pages, and other digital platforms. Make the sign-up process simple, asking only for essential information to encourage participation.

Incentives play a significant role in attracting email subscribers. Offer exclusive content, discounts, or early access to products as rewards for signing up. These incentives boost your email marketing list size plus ensure that new subscribers are genuinely interested in your brand.

Engagement begins with how you welcome new subscribers. Send a welcome email that sets expectations and introduces them to what they'll gain by being on your list. This first interaction is pivotal in building a long-term relationship.

Remember, quality trumps quantity. A smaller list of engaged subscribers is more valuable than a large list with low activity. Focus on attracting individuals who are interested in your offerings and are more likely to engage with your content. Regularly clean your list to remove inactive subscribers, maintaining a healthy and active email database.

Setting clear objectives

Before you create an email campaign, it's crucial to establish clear goals. Establish goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART).

Specific goals target a clear area for improvement or action, making it easier to focus your efforts. Measurable objectives allow you to track progress and assess the campaign's success. Ensuring goals are Achievable keeps your strategy realistic, while Relevant objectives ensure alignment with broader business goals. Time-bound goals create urgency and a timeline for achievement.

This SMART framework ensures your email marketing initiatives are structured, focused, and capable of producing tangible outcomes. Clearly defined objectives also facilitate better planning, execution, and analysis, enabling you to adjust strategies based on performance and drive meaningful engagement with your audience.

Crafting your message

Crafting your message is pivotal in capturing attention and driving action in email marketing. Begin with a compelling email subject line; it's your first impression and determines whether your email is opened. Keep it concise, intriguing, and relevant to the recipient. When personalizing your email, do so with the ambition that it becomes the best email your recipients receive that day. While it may not always be the top email in their inbox, your goal is to make it as engaging and relevant as possible. Use data insights to address recipients by name and tailor content based on their interests, previous interactions, or purchase history.

The body of your email should deliver on the promise of the subject line, providing valuable content that engages the reader. Whether educational, promotional, or a mix, ensure clarity, conciseness, and relevance. Use short paragraphs and bullet points for easier reading, and incorporate engaging visuals to complement the text and enhance the message's impact.

A clear call-to-action (CTA) is crucial. It guides the reader on what to do next, whether it's visiting a website, making a purchase, or subscribing to a service. Your CTA should stand out, be action-oriented, and create a sense of urgency or benefit. For example, "Shop Now to Save 20%" is more compelling than a simple "Click Here."

Lastly, consistency in your message tone and style helps reinforce your brand identity and fosters a stronger connection with your audience.

By adhering to these principles, you create email content that captures attention and encourages meaningful engagement and action.

Designing your email

Effective email design ensures your message is not only read but also enjoyed and acted upon. Start by ensuring your design is responsive, automatically adjusting to fit the screen of any device. This increases readability and user engagement across desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Utilizing an email template can streamline this process, providing a professional and cohesive look that aligns with your brand identity. Maintain a clean, uncluttered layout with a clear hierarchy of information, using headings, subheadings, and bullet points to break up text.

Your email's visual elements should reflect your brand's identity, including logo placement, color scheme, and font choice, to foster brand recognition and trust. Use images and videos judiciously to complement your message and capture interest, but ensure they don't overshadow your call-to-action (CTA).

Speaking of CTAs, make them prominent and easy to find. A button with contrasting colors draws the eye and encourages clicks. Finally, test your email's design across different email clients and devices to ensure it consistently delivers the intended experience. By adhering to these design best practices, your emails will not only look professional but will resonate more effectively with your audience.

Testing and optimization

Testing and optimization are crucial for enhancing the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. A/B testing, or split testing, is a fundamental technique where you create two versions of your email with one varying element, such as the subject line, call-to-action (CTA), or email layout. By sending these versions to a small segment of your audience, you can measure which one performs better in terms of opens, clicks, and conversions, and then use the more successful version for the wider campaign.

Optimizing Send Times Through Testing

One of the most impactful areas for testing is the optimization of send times. The timing of your emails can significantly affect their open and engagement rates. Different audiences may have varying preferences for when they are most likely to read and engage with emails, influenced by factors such as their daily routines, work hours, and time zones.

To figure out the best times to send your emails, conduct A/B tests where the only variable is the time of day or the day of the week you send your emails. Start by segmenting your email list into smaller groups to test different sending times. For example, you might send the same email to one group in the morning and another group in the evening, or send emails on different days of the week to see which timing yields the best engagement.

Keep in mind that the optimal send time might vary for different types of email campaigns. For instance, promotional emails might perform better at a different time compared to educational email newsletters. Therefore, it's important to test send times for various email categories within your marketing strategy.

Analyzing Performance Data

Beyond A/B testing, analyzing the performance data of your emails can uncover valuable insights into your audience's behavior and preferences. This analysis can extend to understanding how different send times affect your key metrics. Use your email marketing platform's analytics tools to track how send times correlate with open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

Segmenting for Targeted Messages

Another critical aspect of optimization involves segmenting your email list based on user behavior or demographics. Segmentation allows for more targeted and relevant messaging, which can significantly increase engagement rates and conversions. Combining segmentation with insights gained from testing different send times can further refine your strategy, enabling you to tailor the content of your emails and when they are sent to different audience segments.

Continuous Refinement

Regularly review and update your email strategy based on test results and data analysis. This continuous cycle of testing, analyzing, and refining ensures that your email marketing campaigns remain effective and aligned with your audience's evolving needs and interests. By optimizing send times through testing, you can significantly improve the reach and impact of your email marketing efforts, ensuring that your messages are seen and acted upon at the most opportune moments.

Sending your emails

Timing and automation are critical components in maximizing the impact of your email marketing campaigns. The optimal time to send emails can vary based on your audience's habits and preferences. Generally, mid-week mornings are considered effective, but it's essential to analyze your specific audience data to identify peak engagement times. Utilize your email marketing platform's analytics to track open and click-through rates by day and time, tailoring your send schedule accordingly.

Automation tools are essential for ensuring efficiency and consistency in your email campaigns. With these tools, you can schedule emails to be dispatched at optimal times without needing to do so manually, guaranteeing that your messages reach your audience when they're most likely to be engaged. Furthermore, automation facilitates the creation of triggered emails based on specific user actions, such as follow-up messages after a purchase or reminders for incomplete registrations, thereby personalizing the customer experience and boosting engagement.

Measuring email marketing success

Measuring the success of your email marketing campaign is crucial for understanding its impact and identifying areas for improvement. Key metrics to track include open rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates. Every single email contributes to these metrics, offering insights into how well your subject lines perform, the engagement with your content, and the effectiveness of your calls-to-action. Open rates give you insight into the initial appeal of your emails, while click-through rates and conversion rates measure the engagement and persuasive power of your content. A high unsubscribe rate may indicate that your messages are not resonating with your audience or that you're sending too frequently. Beyond these basic metrics, advanced analytics can offer deeper insights into behavior patterns, such as which parts of your email are attracting the most engagement or the times of day when your emails are most likely to be opened.

To interpret these metrics effectively, compare them against industry benchmarks to see where you stand. Over time, track the performance trends of your campaigns to identify what strategies work best for your audience. This ongoing analysis is essential for continually refining your email marketing initiatives and achieving better results.

Analyzing feedback and adjusting strategy

Examining feedback and modifying your strategy are vital steps in the cycle of continuous improvement for your email marketing campaigns. Feedback comes in various forms, including direct responses from subscribers, engagement metrics, and behavior analytics.

To harness this feedback effectively, start by segmenting data to identify patterns and trends. For instance, if certain types of content consistently yield higher engagement rates, this indicates a preference among your audience that you can capitalize on in future campaigns.

Engagement metrics, such as open and click-through rates, provide quantitative feedback, but it's also important to seek qualitative feedback through surveys or direct subscriber communication. This can offer insights into subscriber preferences, content relevance, and potential areas for improvement that metrics alone may not reveal.

Based on this comprehensive feedback, experiment with different content formats, messaging styles, and call-to-action placements to see what resonates most with your audience. Additionally, consider testing the frequency and timing of your emails to optimize engagement.

Use the insights gained from these analyses to refine your segmentation, personalize your communications more effectively, and tailor your overall strategy. Remember, the goal is not just to increase short-term metrics but to build long-term relationships with your subscribers. 

With a solid understanding of how to craft, execute, and measure the success of your email marketing campaigns, let's now shift our focus to a real-world example of a platform that delivers results. We will practically illustrate the principles discussed, providing valuable insights into how various strategies can be applied effectively across different scenarios.

Getting Started with Email Marketing Using Maildroppa

Starting with Maildroppa, an intuitive email marketing tool, is a straightforward process aimed at empowering your email marketing campaigns with efficiency and innovation. Whether you're a startup, a solo founder, or a small business owner, Maildroppa offers an array of features designed to streamline your email marketing activities and enhance engagement with your audience. Here's how to kick off your journey with Maildroppa and leverage its comprehensive suite of tools:

Sign Up and Initial Setup

Begin by signing up for Maildroppa for free. You'll be provided with a link to create your account without any initial cost.

Once registered, you can choose to use the default hosted signup form provided by Maildroppa or embed the default form onto your own website with a simple JavaScript snippet. For those seeking a more tailored approach, creating a custom signup form is quick and intuitive.

Importing subscribers

If you're transitioning from another platform, Maildroppa's CSV subscriber importer makes it easy to bring your existing subscribers into your new Maildroppa account, ensuring a seamless migration.

Crafting your first email campaign

Create your first newsletter campaign with Maildroppa's user-friendly email campaign editor. This tool is designed to help you write and design impactful email marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience.

Automating email communications

Maildroppa stands out for its automation capabilities. Set up automated messages for occasions like birthday wishes to nurture your leads effectively. Leverage the visual automation builder to develop a comprehensive free email course, providing a hands-off approach to lead nurturing and engagement.

Feature Highlights of Maildroppa:

• Email Marketing Automation: Maildroppa automates the sequence of emails for various purposes through drip campaigns, enhancing subscriber engagement from the outset. This includes delivering educational content in chunks and nurturing leads to build strong relationships.
• Segmentation and Personalization: Tailor your content delivery with advanced segmentation and conditional personalization, ensuring your messages resonate perfectly with each segment of your audience.
• Event and Milestone Automations: Celebrate special occasions with your subscribers through automated milestone emails, fostering a deeper connection with your audience.
• Comprehensive Management Tools: Maildroppa's dashboard provides a centralized platform for managing your automations, subscriber lists, and campaign performance metrics, all within an intuitive interface.

For those looking to explore the full range of Maildroppa's features, including detailed automation settings, transactional email management, and GDPR compliance tools, further reading is available. Maildroppa streamlines the email marketing process and enhances its effectiveness, making it an essential tool for businesses aiming to cultivate meaningful relationships with their subscribers.

Conclusion

In this guide, we have shared email marketing tips that aim to arm you with actionable strategies and knowledge to engage your audience and meet your marketing objectives effectively.

Email marketing remains an essential tool for digital communication, known for its efficiency, precise targeting, and direct connection with recipients. It allows for tailored messaging that builds relationships and achieves solid business outcomes.

Adhering to the guidelines provided here will enhance your email marketing. The secret of success in email marketing lies in ongoing learning, experimentation, and adaptation to feedback and data insights.

Consider using Maildroppa, a straightforward tool that enhances email marketing initiatives.  Register for free to see how Maildroppa can facilitate your email marketing, from list building to launching your first successful email campaign.

The journey to mastering email marketing is continuous, offering numerous opportunities to engage with your audience and achieve your marketing aims. With the insights from this guide and the capabilities of Maildroppa, you're well-prepared to start this journey, ensuring your email marketing campaigns are meaningful and successful.