What is Drip Email Marketing?
This type of experience happens to homeowners all the time. In fact, it happens to all of us. The more regularly we see or hear something, the more likely we are to take action. It’s just human nature.
Drip email campaigns capitalize on this human need to have reminders in order to take action. The more you stay in a prospective client’s mind, the more likely they are to feel familiar with your products or services and feel comfortable taking action. This action could be anything from making a purchase to filling out a contact form. The trick is to consistently be in contact—just not annoying, like that dripping faucet.
Sometimes it’s more helpful to speak with someone knowledgeable directly, rather than simply reading the information and trying to make sense of it all on your own. That’s why you can contact us online or call 888-601-5359 today to speak with one of our experts!
How drip email marketing works
You’ve probably already experienced drip email marketing, even if you didn’t realize it at the time. Here’s a typical scenario:
- You visit an online retail store. There, you are asked for your email address, so the store can send you future communications on offers, coupons, sales, etc.
- You provide your email address, effectively “opting in” to promotions and other messages. At this point, you may immediately get a thank-you email for signing up.
- Whether you buy anything from the online store, you start to see regular emails in your inbox. These emails aren’t generic newsletters, though—they’re targeted to you as a “new customer” or someone who has “been a member for a few weeks.”
- As you begin to see the emails week after week, you become curious. Eventually, you return to the site to make a purchase or check out a blog post.
Here’s another way that a drip email campaign can urge you to take action:
- You visit the website of an online retailer, and you start to put items in your virtual shopping cart.
- Just when you get to the checkout, you get cold feet. You aren’t sure that you really need the items in your cart, or you don’t feel like walking downstairs to find your credit card. As a result, you leave the site without completing a transaction.
- A few hours or days later, you get a reminder in your in-box. Your shopping cart is still waiting for you! You’d completely forgotten about the items, but now that you’ve seen them again, should you go back and buy them? Yet you do nothing… yet.
- A week later, the items show up in your inbox again. Plus, the company is now offering you a special—$5 off if you buy $30 or more. This is enough to get you to return to the site and purchase them.
These examples of drip email campaigns are but two of the ways that they manifest themselves daily on the internet. As a business owner, you can use drip campaigns to keep your company at the front of potential customers’ minds and encourage them to convert.
How to set up drip email marketing campaigns
Creating drip campaigns certainly requires an investment of time, but it isn’t as complicated as you may think. Here’s how to get started:
Set goals
The first step to setting up a drip email marketing campaign is to figure out what you want prospects to do. Is your goal to have people pick up the phone and call you about your service? Are you looking for “likes” on your Facebook page? Do you want them to enter into a drawing?
Attract subscribers
Once you figure out your primary goal, you’ll need to determine your audience and create a strategy for getting their email addresses. Keep in mind that email campaigns are opt-in only, meaning that you can’t just send them to random people and hope for the best. Here are a few ways you can attract subscribers:
- Hold a contest.
- Give away free, valuable content, such as a PDF booklet.
- Create an email newsletter and add signup forms on your site.
- Have private information that is opt-in only for those who are members of your site.
As you use these strategies, be sure to use a platform like EmailMarketingFX that will segment your subscribers into different lists. For example, people who sign up for a contest will likely need basic information about your company if they only came to your site for a chance to win something, while those who signed up for your newsletter will benefit from more specific content.
Create campaigns
The most important part of creating a drip email marketing campaign, of course, is creating the emails. We recommend no more than 4-6 emails per campaign, spaced out over 1-2 months. However, this depends on your industry. For example, if you sell expensive B2B products, it may take more than a few months for prospects to make purchasing decisions.
The content of your emails should start out very basic, maybe even just a “thank you” for signing up. As time goes on and subscribers become more familiar with your brand, they should get more targeted towards conversions.
Analyze your results
As your emails start to “drip”, you can track how many customers are opening them, as well as the number of clickthroughs each one gets. Analyze which emails have the highest open rates. For example, if you find that your third email is pulling better than your second or first emails in the drip campaign, you should try to figure out why.
It will take some trial and error to determine the right balance of timing and content, but with the right email platform, you’ll be able to tweak your campaigns for maximum efficiency. Over time, you’ll begin to see patterns develop in your email drip campaign, and that will help you create even better ones in the future
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Making your life easier with drip campaigns
One final word on email drip campaigns: Don’t try to do them manually! Many business owners erroneously believe that they, or one of their assistants, has to remember to send each email to each prospect on the right day. That’s an inefficient use of time. Invest in an email marketing platform, and reap the benefits of marketing automation.
If you’d like assistance choosing a platform or creating custom drip campaigns for your business, feel free to check out our drip email marketing plans. And if you’d like to speak to a strategist about how drip email marketing can help your business, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Our talented team of Internet marketers is more than happy to help you start generating business and revenue with email campaigns.