Email marketing is one of the effective ways to reach out to your marketing goals. They are completely trending year over year which makes this mode of marketing more desirable than ever. One such popular concept that is arising in email marketing is the drip campaign. Marketers need to know what is drip campaign all about.
Whenever you are sending an email newsletter to a particular set of audiences. This can be within the team or externally as well. To track the performance of the campaign or filtering out the relevant audience is an important thing that you need to do. Because when you get or have irrelevant people in the audience list, it doesn’t make any sense.
Here the drip campaign comes into action. Knowingly or unknowingly you might have performed a drip marketing campaign during email promotion. Because the drip campaign is called by different names. Basically, these are the automated email campaigns that act like an autoresponder that heavily influences in the terms of marketing automation. You can configure the entire automatic email campaigns in a matter of days, weeks, or months.
This creates opportunities for marketing professionals. In this blog post, you will learn what is a drip campaign? The applications and the features of drip email campaigns.
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What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a range of emails that are completely automated which is sent to a particular set of audience. The drip campaigns have been configured into different triggers. You can customize the campaigns in the form of how many emails need to be sent, what should the email campaign do based on the action from the end-user, and so on. This process basically helps in prioritizing the people who matter to your company.
A drip campaign helps you to analyze the behaviour of your audience. It gives complete insights whenever the user opens your email, clicks any link from the email, or if they have marked your email as spam. You can even get a complete idea of how the campaign is performing for the audience list. Basically, the entire process of the drip campaign is to distinguish the data between two things. It can be based on how people have reacted to your email and who didn’t.
How does a drip email campaign influence marketing?
Drip marketing campaigns are basically targeting audiences based on their nature. This can be the interest that they have developed on a particular offering made by your business. Or it can be to the actions that they have taken on your previous email campaigns. This is one of the best ways to target your end-users based on personalized email campaigns which are engaging.
There are many such instances where the drip campaign heavily influences terms of marketing. It caters to a wide set of industries whether you are a B2B or B2C company. The drip email marketing campaigns are used extensively across the levels of business. Especially for e-commerce companies, the opportunities are endless. Because of every action that has been created by the customer on your website. You can target the missing action based on the email campaign.
Let us take an example of your customer adding a product to their cart but does not proceed in purchasing it. This is a basic scenario of abandoning the Shopping Cart function. To reach or influence the customer who has abandoned a shopping cart, you can send a drip-email campaign to the customer. This influences your customer’s activity and the chances for conversion are more. This is a basic process in one of its applications that influences marketing.
How can I use drip marketing campaigns?
Drip marketing campaigns can be used for multiple scenarios. As it caters to a wide range of applications. Through this email promotion, there are endless benefits that you are going to achieve by performing a drip marketing campaign.
When the complete drip marketing campaign is automated, it is easier for you to reach out to people who have developed an interest in your business. It can be for sales or even to build a better customer relationship. The use cases completely vary on the objectives of your drip marketing campaign.
Below are some of the drip marketing campaigns which will give you an idea of how businesses are successfully utilizing this strategy. You can also try to replicate the same strategy for your company.
1. Customer membership renewal
The majority of the businesses will be having membership plans for their customers. When there is any such plan that is introduced by your company, a drip-email campaign takes an active role in improvising this process. This function heavily influences your customers to take action in renewing their membership plans. And businesses have seen greater conversion rates while executing a drip campaign.
Whether your business is into retail or corporate. Every business will have a particular specialized plan for its customers. Let us take the example of online e-commerce. When you know that the customers are regularly purchasing from your store, you can pitch in for a membership plan to them. And when the customer purchases the membership plan, they will start to enjoy the benefits. When it comes to the renewal of membership plans, drip campaigns help in reminding them. This is a major overview of drip campaign workflow when it comes to retaining E-Commerce customer membership.
2. Special events
The special events are broadly classified for your company as well as your customers. First, let’s talk about the company perspective. If your business is celebrating any milestone which can be the Anniversary of how many products or services you have been diversified into. Based on these scenarios, you can send an email campaign to your customers thanking them for their association with your business. This helps the customer know about the activities which are going on in your company and builds a strong bond with them.
Now when it comes to the customer’s scenario, you can send automated date-based email campaigns to your customers. If any of your customers have a birthday or a wedding anniversary. You can send out drip email campaigns that you have automated and configured in advance when the customer has registered to your portal. This is one of the best ways to make them feel special and create an engaging experience through personalized emails.
Suggested read: How does email marketing work?
3. Improvise the quality of leads
As you all know, the importance of quality leads for your business is essential. Because you do not want to waste your time on irrelevant leads. A drip campaign is one of the best ways to improve the quality of leads that you are receiving. The basic process that involves here is you can refine the database based on the email campaigns that you send to them.
In the email drip campaign, you can educate your customers regarding the services and products offered. You can also try to pitch in about the promotional offers that you are actively giving out to them. Based on the response, you can easily come to know whether the customers are actually interested in your offerings or not. Through this technique, you can easily filter out the leads who are critical for your business.
4. Welcome emails
Welcome emails are an important aspect when it comes to creating a personalized experience for your customers. This is one of the great engagement methods where you can keep your customers close without losing them. When the customer gets associated with your business, you can support the customer by giving out information that helps to understand your business better. You can also congratulate your customer and tell them the benefits that they are going to achieve by the association with your company.
Through the drip email campaigns, all the above activities are very easy to do. The instances can be many. Whether if the user has recently purchased your products or services. Or if they have recently joined your email newsletter list. The use cases for drip email campaigns in this scenario effectively work on them. You can also help your users to know about the future events that are going to be undertaken, this can be the annual conference or the new products that are going to be launched.
5. When they purchase any product or service
Whenever the end-user purchases any product or services from your business, they become a customer of your company. And to create better value for these special customers, you need to send drip email campaigns that help to build better customer relationships. Because it’s not like after the customer purchases from your company, the sales process ends. Every business needs to keep them actively engaged.
Always ensure that to make the customers feel special to be a part of your organization. It can be done by executing drip campaigns by letting them remind you that their product or service choice is great. You can also additionally send out to them the features list and the tips to use the products or services. This makes the customer feel that the decision to opt for the offering from your company is worth it.
Learn: What is Mailchimp?
6. Recommending a product or a service
You might have encountered this kind of recommendation in your email every day. Because this is what any company does when you get associated with them. When the company can analyze your buying patterns, it is very convenient for them to promote the relevant products or services from your past buying decision behaviour. And most of the time this effectively works in conversion.
For a business to continuously upscale the revenue growth, they try to find different avenues to scale growth. A drip campaign is one of the efficient ways that actively work in this scenario. Because whenever a customer purchases any product or service from a company. They can easily pitch in other related offerings that can be beneficial for customers. This is a great way to cross-sell and upsell your products.
Many industries are successfully utilizing this strategy. You don’t need to have a big budget for this technique of marketing. Let us consider a scenario of a customer purchasing a mobile phone from you. Based on this behaviour, you can easily pitch the customer to opt for screen protectors and back covers for the mobile phone. By appropriately targeting the customers based on their buying pattern, you can gain better conversions through this strategy.
7. Abandoned shopping cards
Every business faces this scenario when the customer abandons their shopping cart. Because there are so many instances in which the business can assume what the user has gone through. It can be the pricing problem or the product features and so on. Moreover, the major factor which businesses get worried about is the loss of revenue. This is something that any company does not wish for.
For example, a customer adds multiple products to their Shopping Cart. And when it comes to the payment method, they abandon it. This is such a huge loss for a company when the customer does not purchase those products.
Drip campaigns are an effective way to regain lost customers. Whenever the online shopper leaves behind a product in the cart, you can send out automated drip email campaigns through a reminder or letting them educate more about the product. This gives you a second chance to convert the customer. And this strategy has been successfully found by many businesses.
Learn how to create an email marketing campaign?
8. When the user unsubscribes from your email list
It is unfortunate to see the user leave your email list. This can be due to multiple reasons like whenever you are overpromoting or if they find the content irrelevant for them. The companies can’t blame the users because every business needs to create a healthy and strong brand presence.
Whenever the user unsubscribes from your email list. Through drip email campaigns, you can send an automated email to reconsider your decision. This can generally happen sometimes due to the unintentional action performed by the user. If the action was intentional, you can recommend them to follow your social media channels. This creates a positive impact on the audience and there are high chances for them to re-subscribe to your email list or follow your company on other social media channels.
9. When the users are not active
If the customer has purchased any product or service from your business in the past. And they are not actively engaged on your portal for a few months. It is important for you to reach out to the customers to know why they are not active. This can be majorly due to multiple factors influencing consumer behaviour.
Through email drip marketing campaigns, you can let the users know that you miss them. You can also send out automated email campaigns in the form of discounts or coupon codes. This is one of the personalized experiences that can create an impact on the end-user. And there are high chances for the customer to get active and check out the latest offerings made by your band.
Related: What is email blasting?
10. Facilitate customer service
Customer service is very important for any business. To boost your online brand identity, you need to have better customer support for your consumers. Whenever a user finds any suggestions, feedback or complaints that they need to give regarding about the product or service. The companies need to be open to listening out to the thoughts and opinions made by the end-user.
Whether the inquiry can be made for shipping-related issues, exchange related and it can be even related to the payment concerns. The scenarios can be multiple. But one thing is for sure that you need to immediately address their issue.
Email campaigns take an active part in the customer service process. Whenever the customer gives any feedback or complaint, you can send out an automated drip campaign to let the customer know that they have considered their opinions. This will make the customer feel that their opinions are heard. You can also send them constant follow-up emails to update the status regarding about the issue. And when the issue is resolved, you can take customer feedback from them asking for their experience.
What are the main features of a drip marketing campaign?
The drip marketing campaigns are completely automated, they have few key features that help in achieving the goals of the campaign. These are the features that help you to execute drip marketing email campaigns. As every email marketing automation tool has similar features, you do not need to get confused between the applications.
1. Triggers
These are the action elements that help to start the lead funnel. There are multiple types of the trigger, it ranges from someone who subscribes to your email newsletter till the person who has left the abandoned cart. When you set the trigger function with respect to the scenario. The drip marketing campaign understands the flow and the data is segregated. This is one of the initial steps that functions in the marketing campaign workflow.
2. Manage your audience database
When the audience is separated on the basis of triggers. You need to understand what kind of email campaign needs to be executed for a particular set of audiences. This can be based on the behavioural activity possessed by the end-user. Whether you want to retain the customer from lost sales or actively welcome the user who has recently subscribed to your platform.
3. Defining conditions
Conditions are something that really depends on the user activity when they get your email. If we have to consider a scenario for this situation it would be, when a person opens your email, you can define conditions for your drip campaign to send out the subsequent emails after a particular number of days or weeks. This is an ideal way to not over spam your audience.
4. Action elements
Every drip campaign email needs to be crafted with action elements. This helps your audience to take the necessary action based on the intent of the email. Whether this can be for a feedback campaign or a sales campaign. Irrespective of the situation, you need to have a proper CTA embedded within the email. Through this, you can easily measure and optimize the sales funnel.
5. Measure, manage and optimize
Regularly checking the performance of your drip marketing campaign is one of the essential ways to scale growth through this technique. Because when it comes to the marketing campaign where you invest some amount for the activities, you can’t just leave it as it is. When you check the analytics and get the insights, you can easily come to know the gaps in the marketing technique. And with this, you can optimize the campaign for better effective results.
Related: Why email marketing is important?
Concluding thoughts
The main intention of conducting a drip campaign is to optimize the leads database. This can be the existing customers who have enrolled on your database or the new users whom you want to reach out to. The end goal is the same, is to create a personalized experience and engage with your audience actively.
As you have read the multiple benefits that you are going to achieve through a drip campaign, it is one of the most desirable techniques that marketers don’t miss. Whether you can be a small or large-scale business, drip email campaigns are effectively utilized across multi-level and industries.
The best part about the strategies is that you don’t have to invest a lot. As the drip campaigns can be conducted for promotional activities, customer surveys, and lead nurturing, this empowers your marketing and support team to delight customers.
How would you like to use the drip marketing campaigns?