Drip emails are a cult favourite amongst email marketers, and why not? They are superior to a usual campaign in almost every sense; they are customized to a specific audience, they are automated, and boast a higher ROI when compared to the usual batch-and-blast emails. I wish I could end the story here, but there’s more than what meets the eye.
A drip email campaign can cause more harm than good if it is poorly planned and executed. They might end up making your customers feel like they have been thrown on a conveyor belt without you being concerned about them. What’s the consequence? They smash the unsubscribe button.
However, things are not as dreary as they might seem. It’s not that difficult to craft one effective drip email marketing campaign. Read till the end, and you’d figure out what all you need to do so that your drip emails bring loads and loads of leads.
Know What You Need
Usually, drip email campaigns are classified into four broad categories. Having said that, they can be further trickled down as per your needs, but you need to be clear about what you want to achieve from the campaign. Having a well-defined objective and sticking to that would reap you more benefits. Here are the main categories of drip emails to choose from:
- New Subscriber
- Existing Subscriber Nurture
- Existing Subscriber Upsell
- Existing Subscriber Retention
If you still can’t figure it out, you can always opt for service from subject matter experts like Marketo certified experts or Mailchimp email expert.
The below-mentioned email from The New York Times is a great example of precise communication, which in this case is aimed at customer retention.
Create a Roadmap
If you want to chalk out a flawless drip email marketing strategy, then go for Pardot email templates or Salesforce Marketing Cloud email specialist. It will really make your job a lot easier.
Talking about the roadmap, one imperative aspect to feature in it is the different types of user journeys that subscribers can take based on their respective interests and behavior. The biggest advantage of this practice is that it would help you identify the loopholes in your strategy and eradicate them well in time.
Have a look at the example mentioned below and notice the different CTA options the email provides to the subscriber.
Carry Out List Segmentation
As it is a norm with every type of drip email marketing campaign, drip emails are also the most effective when given a specific personalized (read segmented) touch. You might think that it would complicate the process of crafting a drip email campaign but here’s the catch: Rather than making one tedious and complex drip campaign, you should create smaller campaigns for different situations. You can take help from Salesforce email templates or customized Mailchimp email templates to ace your game.
For instance, You Should At Least Create Different Drip Emails For The Following Different User Action Points:
- When a new prospect downloads something from your landing page
- When an existing customer uses a coupon while making a recent purchase
- While catering to a particular buyer persona, for instance, the Marketing Manager of one of your leads
- While communicating with a new lead in a specific geo/location
- A lead that is about to be converted
The example mentioned below from Airbnb informs the subscriber about their recent purchase which in this case is the first business trip. It also acts as a referral email as it features a discount code for the next booking as well.
Apart from the above-mentioned examples, there would be certain situations specific to your business needs where you should send custom drip emails to the recipient. Make sure that the content of the emails is focused, crisp, and relevant to garner more interest in your brand and create a positive sentiment around it.
Play With The Frequency
One big reason why many drip email campaigns are turned down by the subscribers because they are bombarded with so much content in rapid succession. The big challenge lies in determining the best-suited frequency for your campaign. While timing the campaign, you need to consider a plethora of factors like the specific subscriber base, where your reader is located in the sales funnel, the type of the email, the flavour of the content and so on.
Since all the dynamics mentioned above are unique to every brand, the best and the most effective way to determine the perfect frequency is to experiment. The primary metrics you should seek are click-through rates. If your campaign’s CTRs are around 2-5% or more, then the email frequency or the email content is doing its thing, either of which would accelerate the results of your campaign.
However, If Your CTRs Are Low, This Could Be Because Of a Few Reasons. Here Are Some Of Them:
- The frequency of your emails is too high. It would make your emails redundant to your subscribers, and they would start losing interest with eventually hitting the unsubscribe button.
- The frequency is too less. Readers don’t recall you or your brand because they don’t remember you.
- The content is not up to the mark in terms of relevancy and value.
Wrapping Up
Drip emails can be a piece of cake when you execute the practices mentioned above while creating your next drip email marketing campaign. It’s mostly about the content, relevancy, and the timing of the emails, but dynamics are different for every business. So, don’t forget to add your element and the leads would start flocking.
Author Bio
Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates and PSD to Email conversion. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.
