Drip Email Campaigns: Definition, Benefits & Types
What is a drip email campaign?
Drip email campaigns involve setting up a series of email communications that are triggered automatically across a period or depending upon the actions that the users take.
It is worth noting that communications triggered based on user actions receive more opens and conversions than bulk emails that are sent out with little to no context.
Besides efficiently nurturing the leads, drip email marketing saves time by reducing the involvement of the marketer by automating communications.
Types of Drip Emails
Depending upon where the users are in their journey with your brand, we can divide the drip email marketing campaigns into different types. Let us discuss these in detail here.
Welcome Emails
These emails are triggered once someone signs up to your email list. The first impression often becomes the last impression. Welcome emails offer you a chance to introduce your brand to the customers and form that essential good first impression.
A series of carefully designed welcome emails can prove to be very effective in educating the prospects about your offerings.
Post- Purchase Emails
It is a commonly known fact that the cost of acquiring a new customer is many times higher than the cost of retaining an existing one.
The purpose of setting up good retention campaigns is to keep the customers with the brand by letting them know that the brand cares about them. One simple way to deliver on that promise is by sending automated post-purchase emails right after a sale.
This increases trust in the brand and avoids burdening other resources, like the support team, by confirming order placement directly with the customer. These can also be used for subtly upselling other products.
Read more about Top 5 Components of Email Marketing to Improve Customer Retention here.
Cart Emails
Imagine a user adds one of your products to their shopping cart and abandons it there. This user already has high purchase-intent but did not go through with the purchase due to some reason.
Marketers value these users a lot because they just need one final nudge to complete the purchase. These can be targeted via several channels and the attribution be studied to check channel effectiveness.
Promotional Emails
Offering a discount on the selling price of a product is the oldest trick in the book to get more conversions instantly. People want the most they can get for their money.
Promo codes, percentage discounts, and limited period offers act as catalysts in converting free users into paid ones.
Be careful with frequent heavy discounts as they may bring your brand equity down.
List Building Emails
These drip email campaigns focus on building your email subscriber list. This is a good way to attract genuinely interested people likely to buy from you in the future and increase the top-of-the-funnel marketing leads.
Having more marketing qualified leads helps make marketing efforts more productive for all channels.
Benefits of Drip Campaigns
Drip campaigns contribute greatly in increasing sales, in upselling and cross-selling, retaining customers, and in staying on top of the mind of the customers.
They provide more value because they are more targeted. Let us discuss some of these benefits.
Saves time
Marketing resources are expensive, and automating the processes saves time in the long run by reducing active involvement of human marketers in these campaigns.
These campaigns are planned way in advance which gives your marketing efforts more structure and saves your time to focus on other activities.
Increases brand awareness
With cut throat competition in almost all industries, staying on the top of the mind of the customer is crucial for retention and having a good NPS. By strategically setting up communications based on the user’s actions, the customers can be educated well about your products and your brand.
Increases customer engagement
There may be a few customers that are not actively engaging with your product. A drip campaign may be set up with the condition of trigger being “customer inactive” for the past x number of days.
The content of the email can be customised to make it more human and re-engage inactive customers. With this level of customisation, a meaningful relationship is developed between you and the recipients.
Nurtures interested leads
Carefully designed campaigns can provide customers with much needed information at the right time.
For example, a customer is using all the free resources that you offer but has not made a purchase yet. Now this user can be converted by some nurturing which can be done by understanding the bottlenecks and sending communications that work around them.
Converts leads faster
Drip campaigns are more efficient and work faster than manual campaigns due to the involvement of automation in execution.
Increased engagement and focus on nurturing interested leads will result in better chances of the lead getting converted and of it happening faster because of the support offered in the form of information, wherever needed.
Start using Drip Campaigns for your Business
These benefits should push you towards planning your communication goals in advance, setting up triggers, conditions, and actions, and automating your email marketing campaigns.
Strategically placed drip email campaigns will increase conversions, increase retention, as well as save precious time.
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FAQs
How many emails should a drip campaign have?
Drip campaigns can have 3 to 11 emails depending upon the complexity of the product and the goal of the campaign. You should plan the frequency well in advance and refrain from sending too many emails.
What is an email drip sequence?
An email drip sequence is a sequence of emails designed to be sent out automatically over a period of time or based on the actions that the user performs during their journey with the brand.
How do you do an email drip campaign?
- Identify your campaign trigger.
- Choose your audience.
- Design the template and the content for each communication.
- Track the campaign stats and take corrective action, if needed.
- Keep the campaigns updated.