Every email has an objective. If you’re a digital marketer, that purpose should be centered on a specific goal, such as:
- Thank you for joining up, here’s a coupon!
- Happy Easter and enjoy a free holiday marketing eBook!
- Here’s a recap of what we’ve been up to recently.
Probably nowhere is this idea more evident than in drip marketing.
What Are Email Drip Campaigns?
A drip email campaign is a form of automated sales outreach. It’s made up of emails that are automatically sent to a specific audience after they perform a specific action at just the appropriate cadence — you can also target them to specific segments to ensure they’re tailored and thereby offering maximum value to your subscribers.
Imagine someone fills out a form on your website to get one of your eBooks. Your first email may be informing them that their free eBook has arrived. Your second email could follow up five days later, inquiring how they liked the booklet. The third may come a few days later, inviting them to share the love by telling their friends about your eBook and urging them to sign up to your website.
Drip campaigns can be complex, and they don’t all involve a lead magnet like an eBook. The sales funnel can sometimes be used by marketers to guide leads through the buyer’s journey.
Why Use Drip Campaigns?
Drip campaigns are critical components of an efficient inbound marketing and sales strategy. They not only automate the nurturing of new prospects and the maintenance of client relationships, but they also achieve excellent results: Drip emails, according to Zapier , can increase click-through rates by 119%.
What is the source of this efficiency? Drip campaigns have the advantage of being sent to those who have already shown an interest in what you do — they’ve signed up for your list or purchased something — which means they’re already set up for success.
Furthermore, drip marketing can keep your business top-of-mind in an already packed inbox. One email may be lost, but several emails can help build familiarity with your company.
Your job is to seize that golden opportunity by designing and implementing drip campaigns that capture the interest of those new subscribers and bring them to conversion.
Preparing for a Drip Campaign: Definition and Identity
Before you can start creating drip campaigns, you must address two critical points
Definition: What is the purpose of your campaign?
it all boils down to purpose. This should be your company’s overarching goal with your entire email marketing agenda:
• Are you trying to convert new leads?
• Are you rewarding existing customers?
• Are you boosting sales in a slow season?
• Are you emailing a first-time subscriber?
• Are you nurturing an existing subscriber?
• Are you trying to up sell an existing customer
Depending on who you’re talking to, you can (and should) have various drip campaigns for different email groups. All the scenarios listed above can coexist, but you must first build a foundation by establishing your goals. The rest will be a breeze.
Identification: Be straightforward
People frequently anticipate something in exchange for providing you with their email address. It is best to give them the relevant content as soon as possible.
Say for instance you’re trying to engage with customers of your apparel store. You want to entice them with a 25% off coupon code for their next purchase. Customers should receive the discount code in the first email they receive. If they haven’t redeemed it yet, the second email could be a friendly reminder. It might also be a thank you note with similar products offered, followed by a customer service survey in the third or final email trail.
A great drip campaign should just include a few emails. Three to five is ideal. Don’t stretch it if you don’t have a lot of value to offer. Nothing is more bothersome than receiving daily drip emails for a week.
How to Put Together a Successful Drip Campaign
Hint: Be sure to know who the recipient of your email campaign will be before you start a campaign. Creating personalized messages requires an understanding of your audience
Putting together a drip campaign is the exciting part. While we’ll guide you through the entire process, you must know that marketing automation solutions, preferably ones with built-in CRMs and lead generation features, are essential.
1. Get leads
First, you need to enlist subscribers in your email marketing, and the best way to do so is through site-based lead capture forms. A pop-up form with a sign-up incentive and landing pages for paid ads are excellent ways to accomplish this. Make sure these landing pages have embedded forms so you may give a guide, eBook, or other handy resources.
2. Determine factors for segmenting leads
Once you have a good list, make a note of some of the key qualities of each lead, such as their industry, level of education, on-site behavior, and anything else you can discover. You should segment your leads based on numerous qualifiers, so you know which ones are further along in their trip and hence more ready to buy. This allows you to spend more time on leads that are more qualified and hence more likely to convert into clients.
3. Segment Your List
Sort your leads into relevant lists based on these qualifications so that you can better personalize your email content. The more targeted your emails, the higher your conversion rate.
This phase will also aid in the structuring and concentration of your email campaigns. You can design ads tailored to the individual needs of those on within those lists.
4. Create an email series for each segment.
This may appear to be a lot of work, but if you’ve been producing content on a regular basis, it should be very simple. Choose your best-performing content or most educational blog entries and organize them by the pain issues they address.
Append this content to your campaigns as needed, and then spend some time writing your emails. They don’t have to be particularly long; they just must be useful.
5. Satisfy the requirements of each segment
This is critical, and we believe it is critical to address it fully: ensure that the educational content in your emails meets the needs of the people in each group. Hence, if you’re sending an email intended for a highly knowledgeable group of leads, avoid using “101s” or beginner tutorials. Remember that your CRM should offer you a wealth of information on your leads, so utilize it to bridge the gap between who your subscribers are and the content they seek.
6. Track Behaviour
You may also set up drip campaigns based on your subscribers’ internet activity and email behaviour.
Plan your campaigns using a flowchart or mind map builder tools.
Image credit: BenchmarkONE
Here’s an example of a nurturing sequence you could create. The industry here is travel.
The image above includes the tag rules capabilities. It enables you to assign particular tags to consumers based on the activities they do, allowing you to better qualify leads (by assigning numerical value to more desired actions) and personalize future outreach.
7. Establish a Frequency for Each Series
Knowing your subscribers will determine how far apart you space each email in your drip campaign. But, drawing on personal experience is also beneficial. How frequently do you want to receive emails from brands? You don’t want to anger your prospects by sending too many emails.
Nevertheless, you don’t want to communicate so infrequently that people forget why they signed up for your email marketing in the first place. You may want to start a sequence by emailing more regularly while there is early enthusiasm, and then gradually decrease frequency to avoid burning out your subscribers.
8. Establish a CTA
Providing subscribers with an opportunity to take the next step in the sales funnel is necessary if you want your emails to convert (which we know you do!). Personalized CTAs should be included at the end of every email. It could be to request a quote or schedule a demonstration, download a guide, or talk to a sales representative etc.
9. Track Results
Like with any plan, there will be times when you need to pivot, and analysing analytics like click-through rates and unsubscribe reasons (which you can obtain by adding a questionnaire to your unsubscribe page) will help you figure out what needs to be altered to optimize your results.
Ensure that your email campaigns are not merely created and forgotten. Check in with them on a regular basis to assess if they’re doing a good job of converting leads to customers or if there are any changes you should make, such as altering content, CTAs, or the number of emails in a series.
By continually providing value to your customers you can ensure they receive the information they require to make a purchasing decision. This will enable your employees to sell effortlessly, increasing revenue at your company exponentially.
Are you looking to create a drip campaign that engages and converts your leads ? Let’s help you figure out what your company needs to put together a successful drip campaign that will ensure that you are continually providing value to your customers and meeting your business goals. Schedule a discovery call with Atarodo.
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