Email Drip Campaign Essentials: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers

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Do you ever wish you could send the same email again? Imagine it: you can send older emails to new subscribers without having to resend them to everyone. Sounds crazy, right?

Well, it's not too crazy. In fact, you can do exactly that.

It's called an email drip campaign. This email marketing strategy allows marketers to compose a string of automated emails for a subscriber after he/she completes an action.

To learn more about email drip campaigns and how you can use them to your advantage, keep reading. This kind of marketing could completely change your email strategy.

What Is Drip Marketing?

Drip marketing is a strategy that involves sending specific communications to your audience. You can automate touchpoints with your audience through drip marketing.

If a consumer completes an action, you can automatically send them messages related to that action.

For example, let's say that a customer leaves something in their cart. You may want to send an email about an hour after they abandon the cart. You may also want to send reminders a day or a week later.

These automated emails are part of a drip marketing campaign.

Here are some instances when you may want to use drip marketing:

  • When the customer places an order
  • When the customer views an item but doesn't buy it
  • When the customer attends an online or in-person event
  • When the customer signs up for something your company is hosting
  • When the customer meets with customer service
  • When the customer hasn't bought something in a while

The word 'drip' refers to the fact that the touchpoints following the actions are slow. You don't want to send five instances of communication ball within the same day. You want to take your time and contact your customer every once in a while about the action.

If you bombard your customers with too much at once, you may turn them away.

What Is an Email Drip Campaign?

Email is the most popular form of a drip campaign. In fact, you've likely received emails as a part of a drip campaign before.

If you've subscribed to an email list, you've likely received a string of emails related to the email list. Perhaps, you got a welcome email. Then, a few days later you received an email regarding the company's products and services.

This is the company's way of sending you content that will catch you up with the rest of the subscribers. Marketers don't want to bombard subscribers with new emails immediately. Thus, they send emails to welcome them to the family and let them know what to expect.

When Should You Use an Email Drip Campaign?

The ways that you use drip marketing may differ from the ways that another company uses drip marketing. You may have different needs for your marketing strategy.

If you're looking for great ways to use an email drip campaign, there are ten main ways to consider:

  1. Nurturing leads
  2. Welcoming new subscribers
  3. Onboarding new subscribers
  4. Addressing abandoned shopping carts
  5. Making product/service recommendations
  6. Renewals
  7. Confirmation emails
  8. Customer engagement
  9. Courses
  10. Unsubscribers

Let's look at how your company could use an email drip campaign in any of these scenarios.

1. Nurturing Leads

To refresh your memory, leads are those prospective customers who you think may purchase from you in the near future. Nurturing these leads involves making a strong relationship with them. In turn, they'll hopefully buy from your company.

Nurturing your leads may involve educating them, introducing them to new products/services, or offering free trials. It's anything that may improve your relationship with the customer while improving their impression of your business.

Focusing on every single lead that your company has can become too much. The larger your company is, the harder this task becomes.

That's why many large companies use drip campaigns to nurture their leads.

You can even incorporate some of the other email drip campaign strategies in conjunction with your lead nurturing. Your welcoming, onboarding, and engagement emails may help improve those customer relationships that you're building.

2. Welcoming New Subscribers

A welcome email is the first email that new subscribers get. It's the "hello" they receive after signing up for the email list. As you build your email list, you'll get to send more and more of these.

Sending a welcome email can help you tell the subscriber about your business and what you have to offer. At the same time, it's a kind gesture that can go a long way in developing a worthwhile customer relationship.

Your welcome drip should include everything that new subscribers should know:

  • The "hello"
  • A review of your most popular products/services
  • Some of your most-viewed blog posts
  • What the subscriber can expect from the email list
  • Any free trials or specials you're currently offering

The faster you send that initial email, the more likely a subscriber is to open it. So, jump on those autoresponder messages as soon as the customer signs up.

3. Onboarding New Subscribers

The onboarding process involves getting new subscribers to do more than signing up for trials. Eventually, you want new subscribers to buy your products or sign up for services.

To encourage this, you need to get the customer involved with other parts of your business. This means inviting the customer to download your app, join your social media community, sign up for your upcoming webinar, and more.

The more involved the customer becomes, the more likely he or she is to go forward with an actual purchase.

4. Addressing Abandoned Shopping Carts

Did you know that consumers abandon 67.45% of online shopping carts? That's right: abandoned shopping carts are more common than you think. And, it's likely happening to your business more than you realize.

To combat this, you can start an email drip campaign for abandoned shopping carts.

With automated emails, you can send the customer a reminder that they left something in their shopping cart. If it's a physical product, you can confirm that the product is still available. For digital products or online services, you can send an email that reminds the customer of the advantages of buying that product or service.

You don't want to send this email right when the customer leaves your website. Instead, you want to send the email at a strategic time during the day.

For example, you may want to schedule these kinds of emails to go out around lunchtime or in the evening. This will increase the probability that your subscribers will see and read the email.

when to send email drip campaigns?

5. Making Product/Service Recommendations

Recommendations aren't just for Netflix users. Any company can use recommendations to push product/service sales.

Automated emails are great for these situations. Your system can make automatic recommendations based on past purchases and views. This way, you don't have to worry about doing the digging yourself.

Understanding the patterns of all of your customers may be too much. However, your database can figure out the best matches in seconds.

It may also be helpful to segment your customers based on the kind of content they enjoy. It's likely that you can group your customers based on specific interests. Use these groups to send similar recommendations.

Making recommendations to your customers may introduce them to something that they didn't know they wanted. This is likely to increase sales while showing your customers what else they can get from you.

6. Renewals

You can also send automated emails for issues related to a customer's subscription. This may include emails related to an extension of their subscription. It may also include emails related to the end of a subscription.

Alerting your customer about the condition of their subscription will help them take the correct next steps. Even if they do end up canceling their subscription, they'll appreciate the reminder. You'd rather have a happy, former customer than an upset, current customer.

Setting up automated emails for subscription renewals is easy, and your customers will appreciate the reminder.

If your subscriptions don't auto-renew, you should include clear instructions on how to do so. Give your customers a clear process to sign up for your service again. The easier it is, the more likely they are to repeat the subscription.

Once the service auto-renews or the customer signs up again, you should send another email. This will be another automated email that will thank them for their repeat service. You may even encourage the customer to share the service with their friends.

7. Confirmation Emails

Everyone loves a confirmation email. When a consumer makes an appointment, buys a product, or schedules a meeting, he/she should receive an email confirming all of the details.

A confirmation email gives the customer peace of mind that he/she did everything right. Plus, the email is now a reference piece that they can use in the future.

Confirmation emails are more than receipts. They offer information regarding their purchase as well as recommendations for future actions.

For example, let's say that a customer signed up for a webinar. If you have a service that aligns with that webinar, you should recommend that the customer view that service. In fact, you may even want to include a free trial or a coupon.

This encourages sales while helping the customer to interact with your company more.

8. Customer Engagement

Customer engagement emails encourage customers to interact with your emails. In turn, they should end up at your website.

For some companies, this may involve sending an automated email anytime the customer completes an action. For some, it may involve recommending blog articles for the customer to read.

These emails are going to depend on the kind of business you're running.

For example, let's say that you're running a social platform. You may send the customer an automated email if they were tagged in something on your platform.

However, a restaurant may have a different approach. They may send an email the day after a customer makes an order.

You should find out the best strategy for your business and its activity. The bottom line is that you want to encourage your customers to interact with your website and its content. Think about how you can accomplish this.

9. Courses

Courses are popularly linked with email drip campaigns. You may send emails to customers as they sign up. Plus, you may send an email out every time they reach the next stage of the course.

Since most businesses schedule courses week-by-week, you may send emails each week with information for the next step.

In fact, these structured course schedules are better for your customer to follow. If you send emails randomly, customers won't know when to expect the next thing. This means they won't be looking for the email and may miss it.

At the end of the course, you can send an automated email about a product or service that relates to the things that the consumer just learned about. This can help drive sales in relation to the course.

Since you spent the duration of the course building a relationship with your lead, they're more likely to make a purchase.

10. Unsubscribers

Unfortunately, you're going to have people unsubscribe from your email list no matter what you do. No matter how amazing your email list is, you're going to have someone unsubscribe every once in a while.

Someone unsubscribing doesn't mean that you should give up. While you should honor the individual's unsubscription, you should let the last email count.

That last email is your chance to pull the person back in, make a sale, or rebuild a lost relationship.

One of the most popular efforts involves social media. Just because someone unsubscribes from your email list doesn't mean they dislike your company. They may just not prefer email as a form of communication with your company.

So, many companies link their social media and other forms of communication in the exit email. This gives the consumer other ways to interact with your company and increases the chance that they'll come back in the future.

You may also want to offer a change in email frequency. Another common problem that subscribers run into is that they're receiving more emails than they bargained for.

If you offer the consumer fewer emails, they may stay on the list. This is especially if you allow them to pick and choose what kind of emails they receive.

How to set up an email drip campaign

How to Set Up an Email Drip Campaign

After hearing about drip campaigns, we know you're excited to get started. A successful drip campaign can help your company accomplish more than ever before.

Now, it's time to set up a successful email drip campaign. Here are the steps you need to get ready to take:

  1. Identify the email triggers
  2. Write your message
  3. Plan your drip campaign
  4. Put the campaign to work
  5. Review and adjust

If you follow these steps, you'll be able to build a successful email drip campaign. In turn, you'll be making more sales and building stronger relationships.

1. Identify the Email Triggers

If you're going to create a drip campaign, you need to know what the actions you're responding to are. What kinds of actions are going to set off your email campaign?

Typically, companies break these actions into two groups: actions that a customer does and actions that a customer doesn't do.

Here are actions an individual may do to trigger an email drip campaign:

  • The lead subscribes to the newsletter
  • The lead makes a purchase
  • The lead contacts customer service

Here are actions an individual may not do to trigger an email drip campaign:

  • The lead adds things to their cart then doesn't complete the purchase
  • The lead starts using your service but doesn't complete what they were doing
  • The lead stops using your service for a week

Any of these situations are great email triggers. Identify what your company will send automated emails for.

2. Write Your Message

Once you have your list of triggers, you need to figure out exactly what you're going to say for each one. What point do you want to get across? What do you want the customer to do?

Make the email clear and concise. The customer shouldn't be confused by the message.

You should make the call to action clear. Tell them why you've reached out and how you can help them.

For example, let's look at a lead who hasn't used your service in a week. This may financially benefit you in the short term, but this could be a sign of a customer who is going to unsubscribe in the future. So, contacting them now is important.

We recommend reaching out to these individuals with instructions and helpful videos. They may not know how to use the service. Sending an email could completely change their opinion of the service.

3. Plan Your Drip Campaign

You have the trigger. You have the message. Now, it's time to construct the logistics of the campaign.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • How many emails am I going to send?
  • What order am I going to send the emails in?
  • When am I going to send each email?
  • Do my messages line up with the triggers I chose?
  • How am I going to measure the success of my drip campaign?

As you're planning each email, you should make sure that you're not doing too much. Remember: you don't want to overwhelm your customers. Don't send emails back to back.

Devise a plan that gets your subscribers' attention without annoying them.

4. Put the Campaign to Work

It's the moment of truth. It's time to start the campaign.

You've done all of the planning and now you need to put it to use.

You don't have to start all of your campaigns at once. In fact, you may want to implement one at a time. This can help you make sure that everything is going as you planned.

As you run the campaign, you should make sure to have a trusted platform to run your analytics. In a week or so, you should have a few analytics to review.

Tracking and reviewing analytics can help you determine the best courses of action in the future. If you know what did and did not work now, you can make changes for the better the next time around.

5. Review and Adjust

A week or so later, it's analytics time! Just like we said, you can't leave your campaign unsupervised.

Taking the time to review analytics now will save you from trouble later.

For all you know, there's a mistake in the system. Maybe customers aren't receiving emails or maybe the emails aren't effective.

Either way, you're going to want to make changes.

As you continue building your email marketing drip campaign, you should set goals for the future of the strategy. This will help you grow your email list. In turn, you may make more sales.

Tips for Your Email Drip Campaign Strategy

If you're going to run an email drip campaign, you need to know the best of the best tips. The better off you can start your campaign, the better it will go in the future.

So, we're going to share some of the best tips for your email drip campaign strategy to give you a head start on the competition.

  • The faster you get the email drip campaign strategy started, the more results you'll see in the long-run
  • Listen to your analytics first and foremost
  • Don't overload your emails with attachments and documents
  • Make one clear call to action
  • Compose emails to be as personalized as possible
  • Make unsubscribing easy

Email Drip Campaign Tools

Now that you know everything about email drip campaigns, it's time to get started. The sooner you create your strategy, the better off you'll be.

With that, you shouldn't rush into any old strategy. We highly recommend that you invest in the right email automation platform.

With our help, you'll know exactly what to do with your email drip campaign. Our tool here at helpmonk can help you connect with your customers like never before.

Get started with helpmonk's email automation tool today!

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