A Beginner's Guide to Drip Marketing

Customers are not ready to buy right away, even if they have subscribed to your newsletters. When the product is complex, the user needs time to explore it. The business task is to help the client make a purchase decision. This can be done in different ways. Your company can tell a story about the product, demonstrate its own expertise, build customer trust or offer favorable conditions.

Drip marketing makes all these actions possible. This is an automated marketing strategy that is planned ahead of time. Step by step — or drip by drip — such campaigns lead a client to a conversion or a target action through increasing loyalty, useful content, promotions and other methods.

In the post, we will tell you what benefits the drip method has, what emails are classified as 'drips', and how to launch such a campaign.

What is Drip Marketing

A drip campaign is a scheduled series of automated emails that are sent when a customer takes an action. The drip method leads the user to communication with the brand or to the sale.

The trigger for newsletters can be the actions of the client on the website, reactions to messages, certain events. It can also be inaction if the subscriber stops responding to messages from the company. If you carefully craft your email series, users will get a personalized experience.

Benefits of Drip Marketing

Increasing customer loyalty. When users receive only the emails they need, they have no reason to be annoyed. There is less chance that they will unsubscribe, moreover, their loyalty will increase.

Increasing sales. A well-thought-out drip campaign moves the client through the sales funnel neatly and unobtrusively. The emails progressively reveal the benefits of the product or promote content that also advertises the product. ‘Drips’ push the customer to buy at the right time, for example, they remind you of an abandoned cart.

Simplifying the work of the marketer. Drip emails are automated, so marketers don’t need to do routine actions. They have time to develop strategies, come up with creative campaigns, and solve other tasks.

Increasing engagement. By reminding itself regularly, the brand maintains communication with users and builds trust. When you conduct audience surveys or ask for feedback, you make it clear that the brand is ready to listen to customers, and they begin to respond more to the company's messages. Businesses better understand the interests of the audience through engagement tools.

Content promotion. No one will see your content without promotion, even if it is very interesting. The company shows expertise and demonstrates the product through blog posts, videos, infographics and other types of content. This is why it's important to invest in content advertising. Drip marketing is one way to promote your content.

Re-engage customers. Drip emails automatically return inactive subscribers: those who have stopped reading messages or haven’t completed the purchase. It is difficult to keep track of such actions manually, and it is even more difficult to respond to them quickly.

Detailed audience segmentation. The more personalized the offer for the client, the higher the chance of a purchase. Drip campaigns adjust automatically to the client and are more likely to reach the business goal.

8 Types of Drip Campaigns

Not every email campaign is a drip campaign. Here are some examples of drip emails:

Onboarding emails

Companies use onboarding emails to introduce the subscriber to their product step by step.

Now the user is more likely to be surprised if he doesn’t receive confirmation of the subscription, because we are used to such communication.

Welcome email

Feedback emails

These emails usually come after a purchase or brand interaction with a user. Use email surveys to collect feedback. This way, you will improve the company’s service and increase loyalty because people love it when a company asks for their opinion.

Feedback request from customer after purchase

Holiday emails

Congratulate the client on the holidays in a drip campaign. For example, wish a happy birthday or a Merry Christmas. Send promotional codes or gifts. This way, you remind the user of the brand and encourage them to buy.

Congratulation email

Educational emails

You shouldn’t always send only sales emails to the client. Try sending useful newsletters containing life hacks or tutorials on working with your product. Such content is an indirect way of selling and another way of increasing loyalty.

Emails can be educational or redirect the user to other sites: a blog, a page for downloading manuals, or to a useful video on Youtube.

Educational email

Reactivation emails

They return users who have stopped clicking on links in your emails or who click but don't purchase your products. Emails are sent after a certain period of client inactivity. To reactivate customers, you can use different methods: unsubscribe the client, ask to come back, give discounts, etc.

Reactivation Emails

Trigger emails

Usually, they remind the user of some unfinished action: an incomplete registration or an abandoned cart. Customers don’t always stop the purchase intentionally, sometimes they are simply distracted and forget. The email will bring the customer back to action, and the additional discount will speed up the purchase.

Email with additional discount

Transactional emails

It is important for the client to know that his order has been accepted and work has begun on it. Drip campaigns include order confirmation emails, payment confirmation emails, delivery status notifications.

Transactional emails

This also includes emails that report the status of the subscription. If the validity period ends and the client has not renewed it, you send an email.

Sales funnel promotion emails

This is a series of emails that encourages the customer to buy in different ways. For example, it offers a demo, webinar, discounts, and so on.

Special offer email

How to create a drip campaign

1. Set a goal

Specify what should happen when the drip campaign starts to work. Here are some possible goals: sales, increasing customer engagement or brand awareness, subscriptions to other sources, responses to content, etc. Describe the intended goal with numbers. Use ‘increase sales by N over time’ instead of just ‘increase sales’.

2. Define your target audience

Decide to which segments of the audience you will send messages and under what conditions. Buyers don’t behave in the same way and are at different stages of decision making. The task of the business is to divide customers into groups in order to send the most personalized newsletter. Don’t send everyone the same versions of emails.

3. Create campaign plan

Designate the number, frequency and time of sending emails for each of the groups that you identified in the previous paragraph. Also decide which communication channels you will use: email marketing is often complemented by push notifications and SMS. Don't forget to select campaign analytics metrics: opens, clicks on links in emails, conversions.

4. Make content

It is the longest and most important stage, because without attractive content, the newsletter won’t bring results.

Here are a few rules:

• Write clear topics so that users don’t guess what is waiting for them inside.
• Personalize the newsletter not only with the person's name, but also with selections based on their interests and purchases.
• If you are going to bombard a subscriber with a lot of information, correctly format the text with highlighted paragraphs and subheadings in the article.
• Be helpful. Nobody likes trite content.
• Be moderate in design.
• Add CTAs to emails.

5. Launch a campaign

Drip emails are automatic, so the first thing you need to do is to set up sending with your automation tool. For example, our Altcraft Platform service has a function of personalized trigger campaigns and regular campaigns. All data is stored in a single profile, which simplifies and speeds up personalization. When the settings are done, feel free to press the ‘Start’ button and start monitoring the campaign performance.

6. Analyze and optimize drip emails

Although newsletters are automatic, marketers need to work with analytics. Monitor results to optimize content, email subject lines, send time, number of emails, and more. Data analysis will be useful for future campaigns.

Conclusion

Drip campaign is a series of emails that users receive automatically when they take an action. For example, they make an order, abandon items in the shopping cart or browse the products they are interested in, but never buy.

Drip marketing increases loyalty, customer engagement, promotes content, simplifies the work of marketers, moves the client through the sales funnel and increases the company's profit.

Drip emails include onboarding, feedback, welcome, educational, reactivation, congratulations, trigger and sales emails.

Start creating a drip campaign by setting a goal and choosing a target audience. Next, you develop a plan, create content and launch a newsletter that you set up in one of the services. After that, you just have to analyze metrics and adjust the campaign.