Businesses worldwide have embraced the wonders of email marketing campaigns. You reach the right audience, convince them to commit to your call to action and create personalised content.
However, not everyone knows how to ideally leverage emails to up their game. Some are spamming customers with annoying sales pitches, while others deliver the wrong messages that don’t pay off in the end.
This is why the drip marketing campaign is the ultimate answer, along with hiring a digital marketing agency. It helps you find the right timing in converting a customer, sending a message and keeping them engaged.
Let’s delve deeper into this marketing tactic and find out how it works!
The Basics: What Is Drip Marketing?
Drip marketing is a strategy used by direct marketers that consists of time-based emails, phone calls, brochures, social media posts and many more. It is based on user actions and is known by several different names like lifecycle emails, marketing automation and autoresponders.
They are customisable, allowing you to pick the exact action they are sent with. For example, if a customer signs up for your platform’s online course, they will receive an email. Or perhaps, you could send a drip campaign to someone who adds an item to their shopping cart and abandons it.
If a visitor is having second thoughts about upgrading their subscription plan, you can send them an email discussing why the upgrade is worth every penny. The sky is the limit.
What’s great about drip campaigns is they are automated, so you don’t have to manually write and send them every time. You can even include a customer’s name and your company information, among other things.
This strategy is designed to help you give your customers the right information at the right time. You send out an ideal number of emails over a specific time period without overcommunicating and annoying potential customers.
Fun fact: The term ‘drip marketing’ was inspired by agriculture. It’s connected to drip irrigation where a farmer consistently waters their crops in small amounts to avoid drowning them. This is similar to a marketer who slowly develops a relationship with customers by nourishing them with info on a regular basis.
When Should You Use A Drip Marketing Campaign?
Kickstarting your own drip marketing campaign is an easy way to share relevant information with your target audience through triggers. You can freely focus on other aspects of your business while still keeping in touch with your customers.
However, when is a drip campaign relevant to your business? Here are the most common scenarios where this strategy is your number-one friend:
Lead Nurturing
When someone discovers your product or service, they might need a little push before you can convert them into a paying customer. This is where lead nurturing comes in. You can offer them free trials, provide product features or educate them about your service.
Obviously, you can’t manually achieve this all on your own. But with the help of a drip campaign, every user can be guided in purchasing your product and increasing your revenue in the process.
Abandoned Shopping Carts
If you’re in the e-commerce services, then you know that lots of customers usually just leave their products untouched on their carts. Because they want to research the best deals online, they often forget about their planned purchases.
So, how do you re-engage these customers and direct them back to the ‘checkout’ button? The answer is simple: an automated drip campaign. If a customer leaves an item on their cart, send a drip to remind them it’s still up for grabs.
You can also use a sales page as a trigger. For example, the page highlights the benefits of upgrading to the premium plan. Anyone who visits that page but does not convert will then receive a follow-up and convince them to take the next step.
Welcoming
You know that your marketing strategies are effective when thousands of new customers sign up for your service. And with welcome emails, you can introduce your company and how different you are from your competitors.
Let’s say a user subscribes to your newsletter. To formally welcome them, you may feature case studies on how beneficial your products are. Sharing the most clicked blogs on your platform is also a great way to keep them in the loop.
Unsubscribes
If a customer clicks the ‘unsubscribe’ button, don’t take it personally and block their IP address out of rage. Instead, use drip marketing to ask them for feedback or give a special ‘we want you back’ offer. You never know, you might just win them back!
In some cases, you can use the ‘We’re sorry to see you go!’ transactional message if decisions have been made. Don’t forget to include your social media channels on your drip campaign so they can still connect with your brand.
How to Run An Automated Drip Marketing Campaign
Running automated drip marketing is easy, making it perfect for newbies in online marketing. So, to help you build the foundation of your campaign, take a closer look at these steps:
Step 1: Know Your Audience
For any type of digital marketing campaign, it is crucial to identify your target audience. You have to know who they are, what they want and how they act. That way, you can make a personalised approach to every customer on your list and get a better understanding of their purchasing habits.
This will also help you in choosing the triggers you’re going to use. This includes the following:
- Action-trigger based segmentation – This type of trigger allows you to structure your drip campaign by grouping users based on how they interact with you. For instance, you send them a welcome email when they subscribe to your newsletter or vouchers when they buy your product.
- Demographic-trigger based segmentation – It focuses on tracking customer behaviour and using that information to convert leads. For example, when a user indicates that they are married, you can send them a series of recommended gifts for their spouse.
You should also establish clear objectives to help you set the framework for your campaign. Are you focused on nurturing leads? Do you want to recover disengaged contacts and make them revisit their abandoned carts? Having these goals in mind will point you in the right direction, especially when you feel clueless.
Step 2: Write Your Message
Once you’ve identified the kind of audience you’re targeting, time to craft a message. Make sure that it has a clear call to action (CTA) and on-brand messaging.
Focus on the goals of your campaign to help you write an actionable copy. Once your recipients receive your message, they should know what to do from the get-go. Perhaps, you want them to explore the products on your online store, or learn about your newly launched service.
Also, if it’s a drip email, make it easy to skim. Most users don’t read the entire email, no matter how detailed and informative it is. So, ensure that you write small paragraphs, use white space and add images or gifs.
Step 3: Plan The Drip Campaign
The next step is to map out the logistics of your drip marketing campaign. You have to plan the entire workflow and figure out how to measure success based on the results.
Check out these questions to answer to guide you in planning your campaign:
- How many emails do I plan to send and in what order will I be sending them?
- Are my identified triggers and emails connected to each other?
- How will I measure success?
Step 4: Launch Your Campaign
When everything is ready on your end, you can now start the campaign and send emails. Make sure that you launch it using reliable email marketing software to get the best results!
To make the most out of drip marketing, use a tool that allows you to build personalised email sequences for a better flow. It should also have behavioural triggers so the right emails are sent to the right customers based on their actions.
Other software would also provide you with detailed analytics to track your KPIs and assess the performance of sent emails. To get started, here are the most recommended drip campaign software you should consider:
Step 5: Evaluate The Results
Some marketers assume that an automated drip campaign will magically do the work for them. Everything is cut out for you anyway, so why not just leave it unsupervised?
However, this is not entirely helpful. When you launch your campaign, you have to keep track of the results and see if they align with your goals. For example, if you’re not getting your desired click-through rate and other metrics, change your CTA.
Always readjust your strategy and segments to stay on top of your game. Remember, when it comes to digital marketing, you can’t leave everything to chance!
Follow The Drip: Brands That Found Success In Drip Marketing
Netflix
Image source: https://moosend.com/blog/drip-campaign-examples/
Customers leaving can sometimes be inevitable. Maybe they were left unsatisfied, making them unsubscribe from your platform. This is why re-engagement strategies become relevant in winning your customers back.
Netflix, one of the biggest streaming services worldwide, launched a drip campaign to earn back unsubscribing users. It starts with a message that acknowledges the customer’s decision and is followed by a CTA to re-subscribe.
However, the most effective part of this win-back campaign is what Netflix does a few months after a user leaves. They would send out automated emails featuring the latest shows and films to make customers return.
Kenneth Cole
Image source: https://moosend.com/blog/drip-campaign-examples/
Closing a sale with a potential customer can be difficult, especially when you run an online store. Aside from inventory overload, one of the biggest problems you usually encounter is cart abandonment. In fact, a study revealed that 60% of customers leave their shopping carts because of high prices.
This is how apparel company Kenneth Cole closed potential sales: a cart abandonment campaign. The brand gave out a 15% discount to encourage customers in completing their purchases. This offer was valid for 48 hours to make sure their customers had enough time to see the message and increase conversion rates.
But things didn’t end there because they increased the discount by 5%. If you’re a shopper, it’s almost impossible to walk away from this rare offer.
Final Thoughts
Drip marketing isn’t rocket science. You just have to know who your target audience is, identify triggers, write actionable copies and calibrate your campaign based on results. It’s an easy marketing plan, as long as you have the right intention.
Whether you’re in the B2B or B2C world, this strategy can help you widen your reach, build trust and generate more revenue.
Drip campaigns can also be a reminder that even the smallest details matter. A simple email offering free shipping and vouchers might just be your way to boost sales.
Email remains to be the heart of the digital marketing world. It’s here to stay. To help you leverage the power of email, our team of digital marketing experts here at Roots Digital is ready to lend a helping hand. Contact us for more information.
FAQs
What is drip marketing?
Drip marketing is a strategy that uses a series of automated messages to keep customers engaged, close deals and increase revenue. They are based on user actions or a set schedule.
Its main purpose revolves around the goal of delivering the right information to the right customer at the right time.
Why use drip campaigns?
Businesses should use drip marketing campaigns to capture abandoned carts, improve engagement, promote newly released content and recover disengaged users, among others.
How do you set up a drip campaign?
To set up drip campaigns, here are the steps you need to take:
1. Know your audience.
2. Craft a message.
3. Map out your campaign.
4. Launch the campaign
5. Assess the first results and re-adjust your strategy.
