What is a Drip Marketing Campaign? Complete Guide to Email Drip Campaigns
It is an established fact that email marketing is one of the most effective ways to build strong relationships with customers and keep them updated with good offers and deals on your website. Naturally, by all means, you must invest in email marketing to grab customer attention and engage them.
However, newsletters are often not specifically catered to the different types of subscribers you may have, like new subscribers or subscribers looking to purchase on a budget, or subscribers who are there just for the information, etc. Newsletters form part of a company’s regular email marketing efforts, where generic emails announcing developments, good deals, and offers are sent out occasionally to customers. Some customers love a good offer, and hence, with an attractively designed email, you can get them to click through to your website.
So easy to use you’ll want to hug us.
From initial setup, to building high-converting emails and onsite campaigns, to getting automations rolling, Drip is like using a hammer. Straightforward (no steep learning curve here), highly effective at getting stuff done, and downright satisfying to use.
In less time than it takes to inflate a flamingo pool float, you can whip up an email campaign (our pre-built templates* were designed to help ecomm brands shine), segment your heart out, and set your workflows into motion.
It’s time to do it all (really well) on one platform, and watch your ecomm brand reach new-level growth. Add in your precious data, let it enhance your staple ingredients (email campaigns and onsite personalization), then set it, forget it, and voila.
Why use drip campaigns?
Drip campaigns are designed to reach out with a targeted message for someone at the right time. Since they’re automated emails—like welcome messages, happy birthday wishes, and order notifications—they work for your business while you focus on other things.
Automated drip campaigns make it easy to connect with the right person at the right moment—without doing the work every time. Whether they’re triggered by dates or actions, there are many examples of drip campaigns that could work for your business.
Drip emails can accompany each potential customer through your sales pipeline. From welcome drips, onboarding sequences, lead nurturing campaigns, and abandoned shopping carts to new product recommendations.
Reach out on dates that are important to your audience
Subscription renewal or reordering prompts. If your business has any products on a subscription or membership basis—such as a gym or yoga studio, a paid newsletter, a farm delivery service, regular delivery of staples like toothpaste or shaving cream, etc.—then a drip campaign is a great way to notify your audience when their subscription is up for renewal. Remind them of the value you provide and how they’ve benefited from your services. If you can, entice them with new offerings that are in the works.
Birthdays, anniversaries, and other events. While you may not turn these into a series, an email on an audience member’s birthday, the anniversary of their first purchase, or another relevant event can be a great way to reinforce your brand value—and perhaps even prompt a purchase.
Communicate based on a user’s behaviors
Welcome emails. When someone new joins your audience, it’s a key moment to make a good impression. With welcome drips, you can share everything about your business that a newcomer needs to know. You can also use welcome emails to follow up with someone you met in person, like at an event you hosted—for example, a trunk show, wine tasting, or sale. A drip campaign can be an effective way to keep new audience members posted on upcoming events, sales, or other activities and to make them feel like you share their values.
First purchase automations. When someone makes their first purchase from you, it’s a great opportunity to thank them for their business, remind them of the product features and quality, give them tips on how to get the most from their purchase, suggest complementary things that other buyers have purchased, and reinforce that they made a good decision. Saying thank you at this early stage of your business relationship can make them feel part of a special community.
Product recommendations. When someone makes a purchase, a great way to boost sales is to suggest related items. This can be included in an order confirmation or shipment notification email. For example, if someone buys a dress on your site, you might suggest a belt or scarf—whether they’re often bought together by other shoppers or recommended by your in-house experts. Alternatively, you might follow up a few weeks, or even months, after a purchase to suggest refills or parts. For example, if someone buys an air purifier on your site, you might send an email 3 months later suggesting replacement filters.
Follow-up emails to educate and onboard your audience. If someone engages with your customer service or sales team—for example, to inquire about order status, shipping timing, or some other concern—a drip campaign can prompt them to do more. For example, if they call about a missing invoice or payment, a drip campaign might encourage them to sign up for emailed invoices or online or automatic payment. Likewise, if they started but didn’t complete a tutorial video on using your product or a product registration, a drip campaign can encourage them to finish—and better tie them to your business.
Abandoned shopping carts. Online shoppers often put something in their cart, then remove it before purchase—or abandon the purchase altogether. A well-executed abandoned cart email can encourage them to reassess the purchase. Be careful, though, not to be too “big brother”-ish—you don’t want to appear overly intrusive. For example, if the shopper abandoned a particular skirt, you might send an email promoting your whole spring line, or a line from that designer, without mentioning the specific item they selected.
Lead nurture. Active interest from prospects is particularly well suited to drip campaigns. If someone registers for a webinar or a content element like a white paper or interactive tool, that’s your cue to reach out to them with relevant content. For example, if you provide lawn care, and a prospect signs up for your guide to winter-proofing their yard, you can send them emails with additional tips and include promotions of your yard care products and services. Lead Nurturing can take many forms, like giving them more details about product features, or what they will learn from your online course, or educating them on your service, either way, a lead nurturing campaign can not only increase your sales but the purchase value as well.
How to set up a drip campaign
- Choose your trigger. What specific action or date will your drip campaign be based on?
- Identify your audience(s). For example, will your “first purchase” drip campaign go to all new audience members, or only those whose purchase is over, say, $100?
- Craft your message for each email. Your drip campaign emails don’t need to be long, but they definitely need to be consistent with your brand.
- Measure and adjust based on performance. The right measurement for your campaign will be based on the type of email you send, its audience, and other factors. Monitor how your various emails are working, their click rates and conversion rates, and be prepared to make tweaks based on what you learn.
- Maintain your drip emails. The copy you use may go out of date as your offerings evolve; review all your drip campaigns periodically to be sure they don’t go stale.
With all that you have to do, use drip marketing to help with company promotion efforts! While it’s sending the right message, at the right time, to just the right audience, you can be focused on other business priorities. You can use Mailchimp marketing automation software to set up an effective drip campaign. See how Mailchimp’s free marketing automation tools compare to the competition.
How To Create a Drip Campaign
One benefit of drip marketing is that you can set up the framework from the beginning and only have to make minor changes to it over the campaign lifecycle. Otherwise, the campaign runs on its own. Use these steps to learn how to create a drip campaign for your company:
1. Set Goals
As with most other marketing efforts, it’s important to set goals before crafting your full campaign. This is so you can understand what outcomes or expectations to work towards and provide guidance for setup and organization. Consider using SMART goals for your drip campaigns. The acronym SMART stands for:
2. Pick a Trigger
What events are going to trigger the start of the campaign? What is your customer or lead going to do that sets the communications in motion? It’s helpful to know this from the beginning to structure the rest of your notifications and mark the right starting actions in your apps or programs. You may have multiple trigger points for certain campaigns. For example, you may start a product recommendation drip for first-time customers, returning customers, and people who abandon a cart.
3. Segment Your Audience
Some drip campaign criteria may be broad, but others may benefit from narrowing the target pool. For example, you could choose to start a first-purchase campaign for anyone who buys something from your site. But maybe you’d prefer to try to promote specific products or lines. In that case, you may only start a first-time drip with someone who purchases from those lines or spends a certain amount of money on designated products. Segmentation can help you target a subset of your full audience and attempt to get more conversions in certain areas or increase specific metrics.
4. Plan a Schedule
How long is your campaign going to last? How many communications do you plan to send, and when? Creating a schedule for your drip, whether it corresponds to certain triggers or calendar dates, can help you determine how many pieces of copy to write and what each one targets. For example, you may choose to run your lead generation drip over three months and send five emails in total, each with a specific purpose.
5. Design Each Communication
Once you know how many communications you’re sending and their purposes, you can craft the content. Most drip communications include written text, media elements like images or video, links, surveys, or other interactive elements. Based on each campaign, your target audience distribution channel, and budget, you can decide what makes the most sense to include in each communication.
Are you looking for help in creating the best and most effective drip content for your audience? Start a call with CopyPress! We have experts who specialize in all areas of content marketing, from writing to graphic design. We’re ready and excited to help bring your ideas to life.
6. Measure the Performance
You may engage in drip campaigns for a variety of reasons, either to turn more leads into customers, or get people coming back to your site, or download more resources. You’ve set these expectations up with your goals, so it’s important to use metrics to help you determine if you’re meeting them. Popular metrics to measure may include click rates, open rates, and conversion rates. Tracking the data can help you determine if the campaign is successful and give you insights into elements you can change in the future.
7. Conduct Maintenance
Update your drip copy over time as your company changes. You may revise wording, statistics, links, or visuals if they become outdated or otherwise no longer relevant. It’s also important to do periodic testing to see if what you’ve created still resonates with your audience. If you find it doesn’t, that’s a good indicator that it’s time for a content overhaul.
Sending the right message to the right audience at the right time can be a key factor in helping you increase sales and other conversions. A drip campaign is one tactic you can use that not only helps you make this goal a reality but can also save you time and even money after initial creation because of its automation.
Resources:
https://salespanel.io/blog/marketing/drip-marketing/
https://www.drip.com/
https://mailchimp.com/marketing-glossary/drip-campaign/
https://www.copypress.com/kb/interactive-media/drip-marketing/
https://manychat.com/blog/drip-marketing/