Email drip campaigns are good for small business. In fact, automated email series get 80 percent higher open rates and triple the click-through of single emails, and they generate 80 percent more sales at 33 percent less cost. Despite such convincing statistics, many small businesses do not engage in email automation. The concept of email drip campaigns can seem overwhelming to novice marketers, but in reality it’s not difficult to create an email drip campaign that works.
The primary goal of an email drip marketing campaign is to attract the right subscribers and send subscribers highly relevant emails that encourage them to commit to your call to action. However, the usual “sign up to receive my newsletter” opt-in box won’t cut it anymore. Nor will sending subscribers emails intermittently about topics they didn’t sign up for.
Therefore, striking the perfect balance while list building and keeping your subscribers engaged allows you to appease your target audience, which is crucial in a sustainable email marketing strategy. To consolidate both needs (building a mailing list AND user engagement at the same time), one way to do this is by launching drip email campaigns.
What’s an email drip campaign and how do they work?
Drip marketing is an email marketing strategy composed of multiple emails sent out at specific times and dates. Upon signing up to your email list through a form, they will receive the emails in a timely fashion until the campaign ends.
In short, an email drip campaign is a series of emails sent at set intervals after a subscriber joins your email list. For example:
• Email 1 is sent immediately upon subscription
• Email 2 is sent three days after subscription
• Email 3 is sent six days after subscription
• And so on
When you adhere to email drip campaign best practices, each email in the series has value but also builds upon previous emails. The overarching effect is lead nurturing: Your email series takes subscribers on a journey from introduction to purchase.
The beauty of email drip campaigns is they’re automated. All content is created before you launch your campaign. After that, your email automation software handles the work, which frees time for you to focus on other business growth efforts. Create your content upfront, and you don’t need to come up with a new email every few days to keep subscribers engaged — simply set it and forget it!
How to create an email drip campaign that works
Email drip campaigns aren’t difficult when you follow these three steps.
Step 1: Identify your desired action and set up a landing page
The goal of every email drip campaign is to nurture subscribers and influence them to take a specific action. In many cases, that action is completing a purchase, but it can also be to schedule a consultation, submit a lead generation form or click an affiliate link. Start by determining exactly what action you want your subscribers to take.
Once you’ve established your campaign goal, set up a compelling landing page that makes it easy for subscribers to take the desired action when you deliver a special offer.
Step 2: Create and schedule your emails
Start by determining how many emails will be in your series. Drip campaigns can be comprised of as few as three emails or as many as fifteen or more, but it’s best to keep your first drip campaign simple: limit your series to six total emails.
Next, determine your email intervals. There are no hard-set rules about how frequently you should send emails, so rely on your knowledge of your customers’ buying journey to inform your decision. Also consider which stage of the journey they’re in when they subscribe: Are they in the information-gathering stage or is a purchase imminent?
For example, if customers typically buy within one week of expressing interest, you might want to send a series of six emails over six days. If customers tend to hem and haw for a few weeks, you might schedule emails to send every three days.
What makes drip campaigns creative compared to other types of email marketing tactic is they combine the ability to build your list while sending them emails that they signed up for in the first place.
As a result, there is a greater chance for more sign-ups and a lower risk of people unsubscribing.
The secret to creating the perfect drip is to revisit it along the way; feed your insights and results into your existing drips and customize them accordingly.
This way, you will streamline every single aspect of your business – automatically!
Awesome drip campaign example
Welcomes the recipient :
Sending a welcome email to a new subscriber on your site is the best way to establish a good relationship with your users / readers / customers right from the start.
This message can serve to reinforce your value proposition and, at the same time, to give an idea to your contacts about what they can expect. Try to explain to him what kind of emails you will send him and at what frequency.
Customer On-boarding:
Getting users to sign up for a trial is great, but the eventual goal is always to get them to make a purchase from you. That’s where an onboarding drip strategy comes in – Once you’ve sent in a welcome email which introduces customers to your brand, the ensuing step is a user onboarding email. These emails offer targeted “sells” informing your customers of what the next step is.
Engagement campaigns:
As a business, you already have a lot of data about your customers – their likes, dislikes, birthdays, anniversaries and so much more. How can you use that information to teach people something about themselves? An engagement drip campaign email is not only a compelling email to open, but it also motivates people to re-engage to gain more insights about their behavior and progress through the customer journey.
Once a customer begins engaging with your business more frequently, it’s easy to collect their data and send them highly personalized emails
Courses and Newsletters:
You can use your weekly (or monthly) newsletter to engage with your customers. Along with giving them an update on your most recent blog posts and what’s been happening at your end, you can also include a link .
Look at this drip campaign example before while discussing the basics. I am going to elaborate what exactly is so amazing about it here.
What makes this an awesome drip campaign example?
• Relevance: I received this email only after I stole my brother’s Kindle and downloaded all the free stuff I could. Sensing my interest, I get an option to try Kindle Unlimited for a month.
• Goal orientation: The plan here is to get the recipients hooked, and then make them sign up for an annual subscription to Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
• No use of images (because they’re not needed): So, e-commerce businesses are known for their image-heavy emails, because that’s how they entice the prospective buyers. But, in this particular case, they don’t need to entice me with pretty pictures. They know I have a Kindle, they know I am enjoying downloading all the free stuff I can get, and they just want me to enjoy the complete Kindle experience for free for a month. So, that’s what they send – a simple offer, with a button to claim the offer.
• Urgency: They have given me a deadline for the offer as well. It expires on 30th April, 2017. That’s reason enough for me to sign up for the offer quick if I really want to check it out.
• Cleanly laid-out steps to claim the offer: They have spelled out the complete process to claim the offer, making it very easy for people to sign up, which would encourage more people to claim the offer.
• Important points are highlighted in bold: So, a) the steps are numbered b) even in numbered steps, the most important things are highlighted. So even skimming through would give me an idea of what the email is about.
You should now have a better picture of what Drip Email campaign is and how it can help you develop your business.
The question that now arises is: which marketing automation software to choose? You will immediately notice that many solutions are quite expensive and only target large companies.
171mails offers you a more accessible and user-friendly tool, without giving up any functionality.
You can use it for free up to 12000 emails per month : now you have no more excuses for not trying it!