Wondering how to look for ways to improve your sales and marketing activities for a sustainable marketing strategy? To appease your potential audience and boost user engagement, drip campaigns could be a useful strategy that ultimately builds your mailing list and increases the brand’s awareness.
According to Statista, 50% of small and medium-sized businesses use their marketing automation software to send email drip campaigns.
The concept of drip campaigns is the same, we are often called by many names like - automated marketing, drip marketing, autoresponders, or marketing automation. They’re based on sending a series of pre-designed, marketing emails that will be sent out automatically at specific intervals. The main purpose of the drip campaign is to keep potential prospects hooked in and sending promotional relevant emails to convert them.
“Drip marketing is an email marketing strategy that involves sending several automated email messages to customers and prospects over a period of time.”
This most common method of direct marketing is usually automated and can be in the form of emails. An effective drip campaign will ensure customers are more aware of your product offerings and encourage engagement with your company.
Did you know? The term drip marketing derived from the common phrase used in agriculture called drip irrigation, in which water is released slowly enough at a time so they don’t soak up water and keep the plants & crops healthy. Similarly, marketing professionals who use drip marketing aims to give relevant information and nurture sales leads.
Getting Started with Effective Drip Marketing Campaign
Planning for a drip email marketing can be done to a year in advance of the campaign. You might seem daunting while setting your drip email campaign, don’t be discouraged to get while planning effective drip marketing, to get started consider the following:
- Identify your goals of a drip campaign
- Segment your target audience(s)
- Craft attention seeker message
- Map out email triggers and content
- Test and Optimize
By creating this drip marketing plan you can guarantee that you will effectively nurture sales leads throughout the entire sales process. The beauty of drip marketing is that it saves too much time and organizational efforts. You don’t need to manually write an email, though you can directly reach the right people by segmenting your email list in drip marketing.
Does Drip email Marketing really work? It is obvious that email drip campaigns can only be successful when they are properly planned and executed. However, buying a high-quality and potential email list will be really helpful in finding the right prospects that will help them to know your brand better.
Be careful not to overdo the emails. Too many emails sent will annoy your customers and can cause to unsubscribe. A thoughtful and predetermined set of drip emails enable you to stay in touch with your existing clients and future prospects with relevant information they need.
If you’re serious about your emails, you need to understand some important email marketing metrics that will help you to determine the success of your email campaigns. After that, you’ll get to know how you can automate and set up your drip email campaigns accordingly.
Why are Drip Campaigns important?
Now that you got to know how drip campaigns help in nurturing relationships with existing customers and new prospects. Let’s look at some benefits of drip marketing that make them so unique.
Open rates for drip campaigns are about 80 percent higher than single send emails, and average click-through rates are three times higher.
Drip Campaigns has a number of benefits that can help you and your brand engaged with your leads. Let’s get started with some of the important benefits;
- Lead Nurturing
Drip Marketing pairing with lead nurturing will assist you to generate more sales leads and take you to the next level with comprehensive solutions. At times, your customers might not be ready to purchase what we offer to them. Therefore, they might need a little bit of nurturing that will help to build trust and turn them into your potential customers ideally.
According to Marketing Sherpa, businesses that nurture their leads experience a 45% increase in lead generation ROI when compared with businesses that don’t.
- High-Quality Relevant Content
Drip email campaigns are useful by delivering necessary information related to a product or service that is tailored to moving them to the next step. Promoting relevant content has the ability to build a trusted relationship with your subscribers.
- Saves Time
Developing a drip email campaign saves both time and resources. The great thing about drip marketing is, they are automated. You don’t need to send emails manually to different leads. Using drip marketing, email campaigns are initiated on their own without constant control.
Interestingly, 30% of professionals surveyed that the biggest benefit of marketing automation is that it saves time.
- Increases Conversion Rate
Because you’re targeting the right audience or people who’ve shown interest in your offerings, drip campaigns help in increasing conversion rates. In other words, drip marketing results in higher response rates, customer retention, and speeds up the sales cycle.
It all sounds great and drip marketing has a host of benefits to offer that brings you value. Only a little time and effort get you well in the start on your way to getting productive results.
Example of Drip Campaigns for growing your business
1. Welcome Series
Sending welcome email campaigns to your email contacts works so well - especially those who’ve just on boarded in your list. These emails usually take the form of a welcoming note and highlight an introduction about your business.
The below example of Banana Republic shows what you can include in your welcome emails that your new subscriber receives after signup.
2. Cross-Selling
Cross-Selling Campaign is a great and effective sales technique - easy to implement. These campaigns aim at recommending customers to explore more products based on their history and preferences.
The following example of Dollar Shave Club clearly shows how effectively cross-selling emails benefit in building business credibility and customer relationships.
3. Abandoned Cart
One of the most effective drip marketing strategies for eCommerce businesses is abandoned cart emails. These emails are triggered when people leave their carts due to high costs or any other reason. The idea behind this campaign is to remind and encourage people to finalize their sale.
Now, let’s take a look at these two email drip campaigns from Zulily:
4. Re-Engagement
This email campaign or a series of emails are directed towards contacts that haven’t been active for a while. What’s more, using re-engagement emails can revive your relationship and show how much you care about them. These emails are triggered in an attempt to find their way back to you.
See below the example of re-engagement email from SkinnyDip:
In Conclusion
Whatever strategy you decide to try for your email drip campaign, it is important that you target potential user groups based on segmentation and share valuable content that your contact may be reading to take the desired action. Keep in mind to set up your drip campaigns to educate and nurture your new customers and targeted prospects.
Of Course, you’ll need marketing automation software that can help you to create drip email campaigns and schedule it in a way to reach out to the right people.
Whether your goal of running drip email campaigns is to build trust, engage or convert, you can take the examples above for mapping out your strategy to boost sales and stand out your brand on top. With this thought in mind, your campaign will succeed.