Drip Campaigns Demystified: How to Boost Your Email Marketing
According to data, the average person receives 121 emails per day. Yep 121.
Companies considering implementing or augmenting their email marketing strategy might see this stat and view it in one of two ways:
Executive A might say: “This is confirmation that people already get too much email, and that’s a reason to focus on other channels.”
Executive B might say: “No way! That stat is confirmation to focus on email marketing. People get so many emails because it works.”
Executive B is spot on. According to Hubspot, email marketing generates a whopping ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.
And for those that assume email marketing is more effective for B2C or ecommerce companies, au contraire! Seventy-three percent of B2B marketers consider email marketing to be the most effective method for reaching prospects.
Furthermore, email marketing is crucial because today's world demands a multi-channel marketing/communications strategy to ensure your story gets noticed. Not to mention, we can't rely solely on social media– if you lose your social media page, you lose an entire audience. With email marketing, you own your subscriber list.
Still, we can’t disregard Executive A’s point about people getting too many emails. How many times have you heard someone say, “I just get so many emails!”
So what’s a company to do? Make every single word on the screen valuable and worthwhile for your audience, so they keep coming back for more.
There are various ways to implement an email marketing campaign, ranging from mass emails and newsletters to automated drip campaigns and segmented lead-nurturing campaigns. Today, we’re going to focus on drip campaigns.
What is a drip campaign in email marketing?
Drip campaigns are a great way to set the stage for your reader, repurpose existing content, and stay top of mind. In the realm of email marketing, it’s a relatively straightforward approach, as you can keep it simple (more on that below).
So, what is the meaning of a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a series of pre-written emails that are “dripped” out over a period, triggered by days or dates. An email marketing platform automatically sends out these emails. The goal is to build a relationship with your subscribers. In comparison to mass email campaigns or newsletters, drip campaigns offer a more “personalized, gradual approach, providing relevant content at specific intervals.”
If you’ve ever received a series of emails after signing up for a newsletter, you’ve experienced a drip campaign.
Drip campaigns are not to be confused with nurture campaigns. Okay, well, they could be, because they are similar, and even while writing this article, there was much confusion. Both types of campaigns consist of an automated series of emails, but they are executed differently. In drip campaigns, everyone receives the same series of emails, whereas a nurture campaign is triggered by subscriber behavior. In essence, you’ll receive a different email based on what you’ve clicked on.
Klaviyo says it best: “If you’re unsure about what types of email automations to create and the difference between email drip campaigns and nurture campaigns, take heart: You’re not alone. Some marketers use these terms interchangeably, but they actually mean something different…”
Drip campaigns are a straightforward way to build relationships with your audience, whether you run a pre-clinical biotech company or a small business with limited resources.
Key aspects of drip campaigns
So what exactly makes a drip campaign a drip campaign rather than a collection of emails? Below, we’ve identified the key elements of a drip campaign.
Automation
Automation might sound intimidating to my clients, who are accustomed to sending out mass BCC emails or news alerts, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, a friend set up a very simple drip campaign in her Gmail by using the scheduling feature.
However, you’re much better off using an email marketing platform that specializes in sending out automated emails, like Hubspot or Mailchimp. This type of software can efficiently orchestrate your campaign. Also, they allow you to grow with your business, so when you want to move into a nurture campaign, you’ll have the capacity.
Furthermore, automation allows you to personalize your drip campaign, and we know how important personalization is in the marketing world. One statistic shows that personalized emails have an average open rate of 18.8% compared to non-personalized emails, which average 13.1%.
Targeting
Drip campaigns aren’t just sent to anyone you’ve ever interacted with. They’re targeted towards individuals who have taken an action, such as signing up for your email newsletter, being onboarded with your company, or downloading a lead magnet.
Scheduled
In a drip campaign, a subscriber receives a series of emails in a pre-determined schedule. That could mean subscribers receive email #2 exactly five days after receiving email #1, and so on. Or, it could mean that every subscriber receives an “anniversary” drip campaign on the date they first signed on as a client.
Nurturing
Even though drip campaigns aren’t the same thing as a nurture campaign, you still need to nurture the client. You are building a narrative of who you are, what you do, and why you do it. The goal is to build or strengthen your relationship with this subscriber, and you do that by nurturing them with helpful information and relevant content.
Lead qualification
A drip campaign also serves the purpose of qualifying leads. As with anything in marketing, you’ll want to focus on the metrics (or ask your marketing/comms team to do that). By viewing metrics such as who opens the emails, what they click on, and who unsubscribes, you can gain a better understanding of who might be a qualified lead.
Conversion focus
At the end of the day, the goal of email marketing is to convert your subscribers to something, whether that’s a client, a referral partner, or even just an engaged lead. Either way, a drip campaign should have clearly defined CTAs (calls-to-action) to ensure the subscriber is engaging with you. The CTA could be as simple as sending your subscriber to a case study or encouraging them to follow your LinkedIn page.
Examples of drip campaigns
Now that you understand more about drip campaigns, you are probably thinking about all the times you’ve received a drip campaign. Here are a few examples of campaigns that we’ve written for customers in the past:
Welcome or onboarding series
A welcome series is probably the most common drip campaign, as it is triggered by someone signing up for your email newsletter or downloading a resource. We’ve also worked on onboarding email campaigns, another type of welcome email.
These are great for service-based clients and membership organizations that want to inform subscribers about their new benefits. These campaigns are typically done once a month upon signing up or a similar cadence.
Welcome emails are an easy win as they have a click-through rate of 14.34%, which is more than seven times higher than the click-through rate of 1.89% for a standard email.
Post-engagement series
Another popular drip campaign is what we refer to as the post-engagement series. It’s when you want to solidify the relationship after a subscriber engaged with you in a certain way.
For example, if someone attended an event you hosted, you can send them a drip campaign asking for feedback. Or say someone interacted with you at your conference booth, you can send them a drip campaign to ensure they stay in touch.
In another example, if someone signs up for your webinar and you want to make sure they attend, send them a “reminder” series to encourage attendance.
“Saving the Subscriber” series
While those are all fairly positive-leaning campaigns, we’ve also helped clients who want to reengage with subscribers who failed to take the intended action. The most tangible example is the “abandoned cart” series in the B2C world, but for the B2Bers, this series could be for someone who unsubscribed from your newsletter or someone who failed to sign up for your membership after attending your event.
There are many more types of drip campaigns, but they all serve the same purpose: engaging with your subscribers in a straightforward, structured manner.
Benefits of drip campaigns
As we’ve indicated, there are many benefits of drip campaigns, including increased engagement and improved customer loyalty. They also warrant higher conversion rates due to the benefits mentioned above. When people are engaged and loyal to you, they’re more likely to convert into clients, referral partners, or simply just invested audience members that keep you top of mind.
However, one of the biggest benefits of drip campaigns is the time and cost savings. As mentioned above, a drip campaign can also be implemented through your regular email account, although we don’t recommend that approach. Many email marketing platforms offer a free or near-free option. And most of these platforms have templates, making it easy for you to pop in your content, saving you the time and effort of creating new graphics and templates.
A drip campaign is a perfect opportunity to save time by repurposing your content. As you know, we are big fans here of repurposing content at Lauren Perna Communications. And a drip campaign is no different. It should be a prime opportunity to repurpose because you want to give your subscribers an accurate taste of your brand experience.
Ready to Create Your Drip Campaign?
If you’re looking for a new way to engage your audience, a drip campaign is a simple way to make an impact. Not sure where to start or what to write? Send us a message!
