Effective lead generation is a complex process that involves many different marketing tools, including drip marketing.
The term “drip marketing” originated as a direct translation of the English term “drip marketing” and is a scheduled automated email campaign. The goal of this strategy is to drive traffic to the site , increase user engagement, and, as a result, conversion.
We’ve prepared a comprehensive guide to help you launch an effective email marketing campaign and get the most out of drip marketing.
What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a form of marketing automation that is most commonly used in digital marketing. With this method, a series of predefined ones is sent to your contacts over a long period.
The sending time of each email is based on certain triggers. For example, you can schedule the first email to be sent to users after they subscribe, and the second one 3 days after.
Drops have several advantages:
- They help you gently develop relationships with customers, gradually increasing their interest, rather than annoying with a lot of content. Since such emails are personalized, they are more attractive to users, which ultimately affects an increase in conversion and a decrease in the number of unsubscriptions.
- Drip marketing boosts user engagement by keeping them from forgetting about your brand. Well-written emails with a convenient and unobtrusive sending schedule increase customer confidence and help guide them through the sales funnel.
What platform to use for drip marketing?
Creating a drip email directly from your site’s dashboard is perhaps the most convenient way. With this approach, all information about your business, reports and email data will be concentrated in one place.
Types of drip marketing campaigns
Welcome Emails: Create automatic welcome emails when a new user signs up, subscribes, or requests a free trial. Let them know that you are happy to meet them and tell us more about yourself, your brand and its philosophy.
Sales funnel: Create a series of emails that nudge potential customers to purchase. Submit brochures, demo, trial access. Ask them to share their tasks to better understand how to cover their needs.
User Engagement: These are emails that invite users to return to the site. For example, an email “We miss you” to subscribers who haven’t interacted with your brand for a while, or an email “You might also like it” – it will tell you about products and services that may be of interest to customers.
Abandoned Cart Reminder: Sometimes customers leave their carts not because they don’t want to buy products, but because they were distracted or something more important happened. These users should be reminded of their purchases because they are the hottest leads closest to completing an order.
Renewal Reminder: Send renewal reminders to customers if your product is a subscription. If the renewal occurs automatically, notify users in advance that the money will be debited soon. If not, notify them that their subscription is about to expire and remind them to pay to continue using the service.
Confirmation Emails: Send a letter of appreciation for your purchase, confirmation of receipt of payment, and an invitation to continue shopping.
Guides: Create a series of letters, each one about a specific subject. For example, turn your blog content into an SEO course where a specific section is covered in a separate email.
How to set up a drip campaign
- Define your main goal
- Define your target audience
- Plan your campaign
- Create engaging content
- Launch a campaign
- Optimize your strategy
01. Determine the main goal
Perhaps you want to get new customers or you want to draw attention to your brand. Regardless of what you’re aiming for, it’s important that you have a clear goal in mind when designing a drip campaign.
Think about what you want your audience to do by the end of the drip campaign. Have you bought a product, subscribed to the newsletter, or have started to visit the site more often?
If it’s still difficult for you to decide, see which of the following goals may be relevant to you:
- Product promotion
- Increase in sales
- Increasing brand awareness
- Increased engagement
- Increasing the number of subscriptions
02. Define your target audience
Digital marketing is not a universal story; It works best when messages to users are personalized. To make your emails more personal, segment your target audience into segments so that you can more easily understand what the main message should be for each user group.
Market segmentation is the division of an audience into different types of customers based on their common characteristics. For example, this can be location, age, interests, behavior on the site, and more. Based on this data, you can create triggers that will determine which emails certain users receive.
For example, you can create an abandoned cart trigger. In this case, your segment could be people who have not returned to their order for 24 hours or more. You will then create an email drip specifically for that segment in order to complete the shopping process.
03. Plan your campaign
At this stage, you should know what the purpose of the mailing is and which groups of people you will be sending them to. But how many emails do you need to create? And how often do you need to send them? On the one hand, you want your audience to be engaged and engaged. On the other hand, don’t annoy them with too much content.
Effective mailing is from 4 to 10 letters with an interval of 3 days to 2 weeks between messages. You can set a gap of 3-4 days between the first emails to interact with users immediately after the trigger. Then postpone sending emails for a longer time to avoid overwhelming customers with information.
04. Create engaging content
For your letters to be opened and read, they must be interesting and informative.
Clear title. The most important action a user must take is to open the email. Without this, even the most beautiful content will disappear under a ton of other emails and sink into obscurity. To prevent this from happening, the subject line should be bright and interesting.
Personalization. Letters that were written specifically for a specific group of people are much more popular than those that were written for everyone and therefore impersonal.
Tone of voice. Brands, like people, have personality. Help your clients get to know and love your project by creating a memorable brand. Determine how you want to communicate with clients – relaxed or professional, using slang and humor, or, conversely, strictly and to the point.
Brevity. In the era of 15-second videos, you don’t need to write long letters – most likely they will not be read, or they may not even start reading when they see the length of the text. Keep your message short and clear, and link to your website or blog for more details. Exception: courses by email. In this case, the user already knows that the letter will not be short and will definitely read it to the end.
Include a CTA: Every email you write should include a call to action that guides readers towards the end goal. It should be a prominent button with the text “Start Now”, “Download” or “Register”.
05. Start your campaign
After you’ve created your emails and finalized your strategy, it’s time to send them to your audience. Since the process is automated, all you have to do is set an initial trigger and specify the number of days between emails.
06. Optimize your strategy
As with any good marketing campaign, you must continually adapt your strategy for better results. If your campaign hasn’t met its goal, you may need to change audience segments, adjust content, or change the timing of emails.
For example, if the open rate is low, try changing the subject line. For low conversions, check the button or call-to-action text. Continuous analysis and optimization of your campaign will help you achieve the best results and increase your sales.
