Email marketing is one of the most targeted and low-cost strategies to reach out to your prospective and current buyers and newsletters are the best way to keep your customers in the loop of any new development at your company.
But there is one major issue with them - New subscribers can only see the new emails, and they can never get the older emails which were sent out earlier. All they get to see is the announcements and information you send after they have signed up.
This problem could be solved by using drip email campaigns.
What is email drip marketing campaign?
Drip campaigns are automated set of emails that go out at specific times and dates or based on some user actions to drip relevant information and features to prospects and customers.
Also known as automated email campaigns, lifecycle emails, trigger emails, and marketing automation, can be set up to send out automated emails based on pre-decided triggers like customer subscribing to your newsletters or subscribers making a purchase, or clicking through a call to action in an email.
For example, when a person subscribes to receive your monthly newsletters you immediately send them a welcome email which is the first of your email drip campaign. You send them a second email a few days later and a third email a week after that to educate them about your product and services.
The beauty of drip emails is that this all happens automatically based on triggers you have defined, and you don’t have to write and send each email, it comes out from a queue of already written emails.
As per research conducted by email-marketing firm Emma, running relevant and targeted drip campaigns can generate 18 times more revenue for your business. That’s huge given that you are reusing your content every time and it’s all automatic. It also helps you gain trust among your audiences by personalizing the contents. Like you can put your customers in the different funnels and run campaign to educate or reward your customers, send welcome emails, promote your content and also helping people who hit on your particular page.
But you have to be careful about the frequency and number of drip campaigns as you don’t want to irritate your prospects. Moderation is the key to life so don’t overdo it. Be thoughtful while reminding people to buy your product, teaching them how to use your product once they’ve purchased it or prompting them to upgrade the tool.
Different types of drip campaigns you can create
Nurturing Leads
One of the most important drip campaigns is for nurturing your leads and prospects, who you think might purchase your product in the future. You need to cultivate a healthy relationship of trust by sharing timely and relevant content. It may require some handholding and sticking with them until they’re ready to buy from you it can take months and sometimes years but you need to maintain that recall value for yourself.
As per Marketo, all most 50% of leads are not ready to buy right away so you can not send just sales driven messages to everybody and ignore that 50%.
Also nurturing leads generates 50% more sales-ready leads that too at a 33% lower cost. Now the question is how do you do it? How to identify such leads?
You need to see the fit of the lead with your ideal prospects like their demographics, can they afford to spend on your product, do they have the authority to buy and similar things. You also need to track their online behavior to see if they are interested in your product.
Now you need to move them through the funnel by sharing relevant content through drip campaigns. By segmenting your prospects and timing your contents, you make your prospects believe that you understand their needs and they might think about buying from you in the future.
It’s also important to personalize your emails and prompt them to ask questions so that you can strike a conversation with them assuring them they are talking to a person across that email and not a computer.
Welcome emails
You have got tons of new subscribers or prospects who would be interested to know about your products but how are they going to learn about them? Well, welcome emails solve this problem. Welcome emails make customers feel excited about their choice of joining your community or taking up a trial of your product.
If someone subscribes to your newsletter send them the top performing content through automated drip campaigns, or if somebody buys your product send them the manuals on how to use the products.
At the very least it’s a nice way to say “Hey! Nice to meet you, welcome aboard.” As per a study by Experian welcome emails get the most open rate of 57.8% as compared to other promotional emails. Also, welcome emails should be sent immediately after the user has taken any action like subscribing to your newsletter or signed up for a free trial. Email open rates are higher at 88.3% when the welcome email is sent immediately as a triggered email compared to sending the same at a later date.
But a few important things to keep in mind is:
- To send emails from someone’s personal email address instead of some software automation.
- Try to talk to a prospect like you are having a conversation with a friend; a personal touch is imperative to gain trust for a long term relationship.
- You can also ask your subscribers to shift your email from promotions tab to primary tab or add your email to their address book if they have received the email in promotions tab which can happen if they signed up with a personal Gmail account.
- You can also ask questions about any challenges your customers face which your product or service might solve.
Onboarding emails
Once you have welcomed a subscriber, you need to properly onboard them by educating them and nurturing those free trials over time to convert them into paying customers. If done right, onboarding emails can turn first time buyers into consistent customers who will come back to you for the next purchase.
While designing onboarding emails you should not assume anything like the customer is aware of your product or they are ready to use your product. You need to be very clear in what do you want to convey through your chain of onboarding emails.
Explain your product to the users, how will that help solve their problems and how different are you from most other sellers in the market. This slow and steady informations can help you persuade them to move ahead in the sales funnel.
You can also give out contact information and urge them to reach out to you if they ever need any other information regarding that product or service. Also, share similar pieces of content you have that not only educates them and help understand the key product features but also make them feel good about their decision of buying the product when they do.
Shopping cart abandon emails
With an email drip campaign, you can re-engage with people who have left your site at the shopping cart page. You can lead them back to your page by showing them the availability of the product and just reminding them. You can also encourage them to return and complete the purchase by giving additional incentives like discounts.
Confirmation/renewal drip campaigns
Drip emails can also be used to encourage your customers to renew their subscription and if they have, you can send them confirmation emails thanking them for staying with you. This action brings out the validity and legitimacy of your organization and keeps your customers engaged.
If you have auto renewals you can use autoresponders to send alerts to users to their subscription is about to get renewed. But if your subscriptions do not auto-renew, you can create a drip marketing campaign with a clear call to action prompting them to renew their service. You can attach links which will take them directly to the renewal page, or share your contact details so that they can reach out if they face any issues.
Engagement drip campaigns
Engagement drip emails are designed to keep the audiences glued to you and your organizations. Sharing website links and inviting them to return to your site to check out something new exciting you have introduced or a new piece of content you have published.
The fundamentals of a drip marketing campaign are to take your users on a journey through which you educate them, make them comfortable, build trust, high recall value and advance them to the buying stage.
Engagement emails also include messages which you send your users when they have not visited your website for a long time and you miss their presence.
Apart from the options mentioned above, you can create drip marketing campaigns for various other things like product training campaigns for your customers, promoting a product or service or to unsubscribers asking for their feedback and much more.
The fundamentals of a drip marketing campaign are to take your users on a journey through which you educate them, make them comfortable, build trust, high recall value and advance them to the buying stage.
Does your organization need help to design and implement an effective drip marketing campaign? We at Chaskis are at your disposal. Contact us or send us an email at contact@chaskis.digital to know more about email marketing automation, email templates and much more.
