With the growing impetus on digital privacy issues, including curtailing third-party cookies, brands are looking to concentrate their budgets on other successful ways of reaching out to customers. One of the proven ways of connecting to existing customers and getting to know new prospects is email marketing. Even though email is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, email marketing strategies continue to net great results.
According to Campaign Monitor, 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers. So, it makes sense to use email to the fullest extent. Constant Contact tracks the open rates of emails by industry and posts them each month. In November 2021, the average open rate for all industries was 22.6%, while the average click rate was 1.4%. Not all industries have the same rates, but you can still improve your open and click rates to drive more business to your website or your brick-and-mortar store.
What is an Email Drip Campaign?
One of the things to keep in mind when discussing digital marketing strategies is that although you have probably had email marketing campaigns in the past, email marketing has changed dramatically. Emerging digital technology has given new life to email marketing through machine learning, segmented email lists, personalization, and marketing automation. These can all be used in an email drip campaign.
HubSpot defines an email drip campaign as:
A form of automated sales outreach. It’s composed of a series of emails automatically sent to a specific audience after they take a specific action. For example, if a lead downloads a whitepaper on recruiting best practices, they might be placed in a drip campaign sharing relevant recruiting content. The final email might include a CTA to request a demo for your recruiting software.
After Google’s announcement in 2020 that it was looking to make third-party cookies obsolete, marketers started looking for new ways to reach their audiences without third-party cookies. While email marketing is a marketing channel that has continued to be used by most small businesses, technology has advanced to the point where email marketing is a whole new game in a whole new ballpark. Email marketing strategies need to be updated to match the level of technology that is now available.
How Does an Email Drip Campaign Work?
An email drip campaign uses marketing automation to reach out and get to know your website visitors. Furthermore, it’s a set of automated emails sent that are based on a schedule and/or user action. Email marketing cultivates user engagement within a group of customers interested in your brand, thus leading to more conversions and increased revenue. There are five basic steps to setting up an email drip campaign. According to MailChimp, they are:
- Choosing your trigger
- Identifying your audience
- Crafting your message for each email
- Measuring and adjusting campaigns based on performance
- Maintaining your automated emails
When to Start an email Drip Campaign
Drip campaigns can also be effective because they’re targeted, meaning they’re based on a specific action and can be personalized. More than 90% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from companies that recognize and remember them.
When should you start an email drip campaign? Your campaign is set off by a trigger. Common triggers include important dates or actions taken (or not taken) by the visitor, such as:
- Subscription renewal
- Reordering prompts
- Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc.
- Welcome emails when someone joins your email list
- First purchase automation when someone buys from you
- Product recommendations for related items
- Follow up emails to educate and onboard your audience
- Abandoned shopping carts
- Lead nurture after actions of a new prospect
- Unsubscribe emails
Personalize Emails for a Segmented Audience
If you’re hitting a creative roadblock, here’s some ideas to jumpstart your email drip campaign.
Welcome Emails
When someone joins your email list, you can introduce them to your brand with a welcome email. You can offer a discount or special opportunity, and thank them for becoming a subscriber. Welcoming someone to the community adds a personal touch.
Onboarding Emails
Onboarding emails are somewhat similar to welcome emails because they are sent at the beginning of a subscriber’s journey. But, they provide the newcomer with hands-on information about your business. An example of this might happen when someone joins a gym. After they join, the gym sends an email telling the new member about any rules, benefits, and upcoming events.
Shopping Cart Abandonment
When a shopper starts an order online but doesn’t complete it, that is called shopping cart abandonment. This is a good trigger for an email drip campaign because you already know that the person is interested in buying your product or service. They’ve visited your online shop and started an order.
Subscription Renewal
You can use a drip campaign to remind subscribers of an upcoming subscription renewal. Customers often feel valued by receiving an email reminder. It’s also a good time to thank customers, but you should also make it easy for them to unsubscribe.
Building an Email List
New visitors to your website can trigger an email drip campaign that asks them to opt-in to your email list. This gives you continuous outreach to new prospects who you know are interested in your business.
Benefits of Using Email Drip Campaigns
You can receive several benefits from your email drip campaigns. Some of them are:
- Boosting engagement by interacting with the customer in a personalized fashion
- Promoting your content to visitors who are interested in learning more
- Nurturing prospective leads through the sales cycle by sending them the information they need to make a decision
- Building brand awareness through company updates
- Reengaging old contacts who you haven’t heard from lately
- Reminding customers that they left items in their shopping carts so they will buy
- Saving you a lot of time
Easy Mobile Access
Responsive web design is an essential element of your website. Likewise, Google emphasizes the importance of mobile traffic by prioritizing stats from mobile devices over desktop. Statista notes that:
Nearly 55% of global website traffic is generated from mobile devices, excluding tablets.
What that means is that you need to ensure that your email campaigns are mobile-friendly. If subscribers can’t read your emails easily from their mobile devices, you are losing contact with a growing number of internet visitors. After all,
59% of Millennials primarily use their smartphone to check email, while 67% of Generation Z scans their inbox on mobile.
As the next generation, who have grown up in a world with easy access to mobile devices, become adults, they will expect everything online to be mobile-friendly. If they can’t access email content easily from their smartphones, they will find another company to support.
Learning More about Marketing Automation
Are you looking for a better way to reach out to email subscribers? As we move towards a cookie-less future, nurturing a highly engaged email list will grow in importance. We would love to share personalized email marketing strategies for your brand to achieve a successful year when you contact us.