What is a Drip Campaign: Definition and Examples
Drip campaigns are a powerful way to generate leads, grow your email list, increase leads, increase conversions, and grow sales and revenue. The email marketing channel is beneficial for both you and the customers to achieve greater business success. Your customers can learn more about your offerings and quickly decide in your favor. It's more effective than newsletters or full mailing list messages in one go because drip campaigns are designed with the latest developments in your organization in mind and delivered piecemeal to retain your audience. Offering a solution that can help your customers solve their specific requirements is key, and drip campaigns can help you do just that. According to reports, companies using drip marketing can generate 80% more sales and enjoy a high open rate. So if you want to better connect with your audience and increase conversions, running a drip campaign can be helpful. Let's discuss what a drip campaign is and what benefits you can expect from it.
What is a Drip Campaign?
A drip campaign is automated email marketing campaign where a series of emails are sent automatically over a period of time. These small "drops" of content are periodically emailed to the target audience instead of sending all of the marketing content at once. Drip marketing is a great way to get your message across to the right audience. It focuses on nurturing potential customers by sending valuable messages that can educate, inform and help them in some way. This allows you to engage with your audience on a regular basis, grab their attention, and present your products and services along with the benefits they can expect from you. All this helps to increase customer engagement, conversion, and revenue. Typically, drip emails are composed, pre-written, and personalized for the recipient based on their name, actions taken, gender, interests, and other important information and sent with an email automation software. A drip campaign can be launched when a visitor:
- Signs up for a webinar
- Places an order
- Attends an event you host
- Registers for a white paper
- Contacts customer support
- Throws a cart
- Stays inactive for a while, and so on...
Types of Drip Campaigns
You can implement drip campaigns in a variety of ways, each based on a visitor or customer action. The main types of drip campaigns are:
When a visitor signs up for your newsletter, website, or service, you can send them a welcome email containing your company details and other important information. Welcome emails inform and educate visitors, help you connect with them, and nurture them as potential customers.
Engagement emails are aimed at attracting potential customers and developing them. You can launch a series of emails if they have accessed your site or services but have not made a purchase or the action you want them to take. By providing important information via email, you can help them make a quick decision so they can buy what you're selling.
Segmented emails are sent to categorize visitors based on various criteria such as location, interests, gender, etc. These are targeted and super relevant emails with clear CTAs to promote a seminar, purchase a particular product or service, etc.
Purchase offer emails are sent with the aim of encouraging potential buyers to purchase your products or services by providing them with an offer. This is a very targeted and specific email that is sent to the visitor if they can take advantage of the offer or meet the requirements for the product. You can give an attractive offer or discount to get customers interested in your products and services.
Reengagement emails, as the name suggests, are sent to inactive customers who, for whatever reason, haven't used your products, services, or website for some time. Sending emails with up-to-date, encouraging information and enticing offers can help you win back those customers.
With newsletters, you continue to engage your customers and ensure that they always have your brand in mind. Nothing prevents you from addressing them to both your current customers and your prospects but making sure that the messages make sense for the target audience. Thus, the newsletters sent to your current customers will include, for example, information on your loyalty program or the very latest blog articles to consult. Those addressed to your prospects will expose interesting facts about your business, testimonials, and useful information related to your offers.
What Are the Benefits of Drip Campaigns?
If you manage your drip campaign the right way, keeping the interests and likes of your customers in mind, you will be able to achieve greater campaign, purchase, and revenue success. Here's how.
Drip campaigns aim to generate leads for your brand by sending valuable emails at regular intervals. This establishes a connection with them and gives the impression that you care about them. This keeps them hooked on your brand and attracted to your emails. And when you do this, your brand will be constantly on their minds when they think about the product you offer. As a result, they can buy your products and services.
- Growing potential customers
Drip campaign also helps educate your potential customers by providing them with information that can help them make a decision. You must constantly tell them how well you can serve them with your services and products. For example, if they have expressed interest in some of your products, you can set up trigger emails to help them learn more about the products, their benefits, and why your product is superior to others.
You can promote your content like articles or newsletters to help your potential customers with drip marketing. Presenting the right information to the right customers who are looking for something you offer will work well, such as a product or a detailed guide to using a particular product. You can include product reviews, and case studies, answer common questions, dispel myths, and more to inform and educate your customers.
Drip campaigns are great for bringing back customers if they stop using your product or services or interact with your website. They may have added items to their cart but abandoned it for some reason. In this case, you can send a personalized reminder email that they left something in their cart and talk about some offers or discounts. This will help redirect their attention to completing their upcoming purchase.
When you consistently provide your customers with the valuable information they are looking for, it makes their path to purchase easier. This helps them better understand your services and products and resolve any issues that prevent them from making a purchase. You can send emails with relevant content to help them complete this action. In this way, you automatically move them further up the sales funnel and increase the likelihood that they will turn into your customers. Ultimately, this helps increase your conversion rate and increase your revenue.
When to Start a Drip Campaign?
You can set up drip marketing campaigns for the following use cases:
When someone registers: When someone registers on your site, service, or subscribes to your newsletter, you can send them a welcome email. You can also include your top-performing content and products in the email to grab their attention.
Courting leads: Some prospects need support or additional information before making a purchase; you can do this with drip campaigns. Send them useful content for a set period of time until they are convinced to buy from you.
Getting started: Make the onboarding process easy for your clients or subscribers by explaining everything they need to get started. You can introduce your brand values and help them feel comfortable with helpful guides on how to use and get the most out of your product or service.
Recommendation: If your customers are looking for something, like shoes, you can recommend to them the best models from your store that they like based on their past browsing preferences. This will help them quickly make a choice and complete the purchase.
Confirmation: Send a confirmation email when a user completes a purchase. You can create a thank you message, as well as other information or links to learn about related products, helpful guides, and more.
Subscription renewal: Send drip emails to customers asking them to renew their subscription. This will remind them of the set days so they can make a purchase on time.
Engagement: Sending emails at regular intervals will help your customers stay with you both before and after they make a purchase. This ensures that they will buy from you and contact you next time.
How to Start a Drip Campaign?
Here's how to set up a drip marketing campaign;
Any marketing strategy revolves around a goal. These can be short-term or long-term goals. So before you create a drip campaign, think about your goals first. It can be conversion boost, sales boost, promotion of your content, lead generation, subscription renewal, cart abandonment, and so on. Knowing your goal will make it easier for you to choose the type of drip campaign that's right for you.
The next important point is the definition of your audience, knowing it, its problems, and its difficulties. You cannot send any email to any client; it must be targeted, performing a specific action. So once you've identified your audience, segment it properly, such as who to send a welcome email to, who to send a confirmation email to, who to refer to, who to use the user manual, etc. You can segment your market based on demographic profiles (age, gender, geographic location, and profession). Customers can also be targeted based on their behaviors (purchasing, creating an account on a website, or signing up for a free interview). With a marketing automation platform , segmentation becomes a piece of cake.
- Use a marketing automation platform
One of the most effective ways to run a drip campaign is through a marketing automation platform. Marketing automation software is designed to help you restructure your marketing and sales actions. They make it easier for you to generate more leads, sign more deals, and achieve your goals, both short and long term.
With a quality marketing automation platform, you'll have no trouble segmenting your customer base, sending triggered emails, optimizing your campaigns, and most importantly, improving your marketing ROI.
- Don't stop at a sales pitch.
Remember, the goal of a drip campaign is to slowly but surely convince your customers to take certain actions. Campaigns of this type aim to achieve goals gradually rather than all at once. Concretely, your e-mails must go beyond the sales pitch. Make sure they include useful information that can help your customers and establish yourself as a thought leader by sharing interesting content that they can relate to.
The success of a drip campaign depends on its triggers, in other words the specific actions that customers must take to receive an email. If a customer signs up or subscribes to get more information about one of your services, for example, you might want to send them emails to get their attention. And if they put an item in their baskets before abandoning it, no doubt you will find it useful to send them e-mails to convince them to take back their basket and finalize their purchase. Your emails may offer special promotions, such as free shipping or a 5% discount for orders placed by a certain date. Also think, in your messages, to promote related products likely to arouse the interest of the customer.
Keep it light and stay positive so your customers feel good every time they open one of your emails. Include content that will make them smile and want to hear from you. Never blame them for abandoning a cart, unsubscribing from your blog, or not making a purchase.
Consider how often you send your emails. If there are no hard and fast rules, decide what cadence you think is appropriate for your goals and your customers. When in doubt, run a few tests to find the one that will make customer interactions easier.
The sequence of your email campaign should match your goals. Regarding the number of emails to send, it is important not to abuse the patience and attention of your customers. It is essential to send as many emails as necessary to get your message across without tiring your contacts.
If your subject lines lack emphasis, customers will be less likely to open your emails. To ensure that they will be read, make sure to create succinct, catchy and personalized titles. Put yourself in your customers' shoes and ask yourself what might grab your own attention.
Start Your Campaign with Mailsoftly
Email automation software such as Mailsoftly can be used to start a drip campaign. You can create a series of personalized emails based on custom triggers and send them at a specific interval. To be more successful at drip campaigns;
- Use client names
- Compose an attractive email with useful and relevant information
- Correctly structure the content, avoiding grammatical and spelling errors
- Highlight your value proposition
- Add links to related products
- Include a compelling call to action (CTA) to help them take quick action
- And add other useful information
