Cultivating leads:

The Essence of Drip Email Marketing

Drip campaign, also known as automated email campaign, autoresponders, lifecycle emails, and marketing automation, is a series of pre-written auto generated emails, which are sent right from the awareness stage of the lead funnel till the lead is converted and thereafter.

  • Your buyer

    Stage

    Your actions

  • Realizes the issues and pain points

    Awareness

    Emphasis on issues and pain points. Entertain and inform using multi-channel marketing, but remember email is most effective.

  • Shows interest in finding a pertinent solution, understand industry trends, products & brands.

    Interest

    Pay attention to solutions. Educate the prospect to measure the buying criteria. Use white-papers, e-books, videos, reviews and more.

  • Is keen to interact with sellers and assess precise products.

    Consideration

    Showcase the demos, data sheets, trials, and vendor comparison to make your prospects realize what it is like to work with you. You can also offer them ease of communication to help them decide.

  • Chooses a specific solution; validates the reason of purchase.

    Purchase

    Let the prospects know that they have taken the right decision by making the entire contract process easier. Begin training and implementation through webinar and other tools.

  • Anticipates worthy product / service alongside excellent customer relationship.

    Post Purchase

    Constant understanding through loyalty programs and feedback loops. Take care of them with emails, phone calls, newsletters and other channels.

  • Will possibly become interested in other related products / services.

    Repurchase

    Touch base with them regularly and provide information on other products.

Here’s how a great looking drip email marketing workflow will look like:

Send Drip Email Campaign Send an informative whitepaper to start with.

OPENED WhitePaper?

no
Yes
Video in Drip Email Send an interactive video for more information.
Send Ebook in Email Send an e-book which is synced with whitepaper.
no

Viewed Video?

Yes
no

OPENED e-book?

Yes
End of Drip

Remove them from your prospects’ list or schedule them for future re-engagement emails.

E-Book

Keep your prospect engaged with a detailed analysis of the product and its payback.

Video Overview

Videos are highly impactful and can get maximum response and engagement.

Products Demo

Make the final move into the sales process by demonstrating your products / service.

Are you ready to nurture a seed to harvest greener crops?

Effective drip email marketing best practices
Segment email list

Segment your list appropriately in order to create personalized email along with offer. Further, segment lists into channels from where they came, small scale or large scale customers etc.

Right communication

Right communication based on user preferences or based on the amount of time that has passed since your last e-mail is the key. Choose your frequency schedule wisely otherwise users might unsubscribe.

Produce diverse content

It is a mystery knowing exactly what might excite or aggravate sales prospects, so you will need to slowly feed them various different messages and gauge their reactions.

The Divine Mantras of Drip Emails that keeps you blessed
  • Key elements and advantages of your products
  • Consumer feedback, testimonials and reviews
  • Showcase the ratings from industry influencers as social proof
  • Share tips about the product by creating a product how-to
  • Industry trend reports
  • Provide incentives to customers by providing offers & discounts
Try multiple email designs

Consider creating multiple email designs for your segmented email list. Fashion several emails with different images, layouts, content, subject lines, and so on. This can effectively help you engage with potential clients.

Schedule emails strategically

Maximizing ROI with email campaigns might be the goal of every business. However, it is essential to instill trust among readers. So, plan and schedule your emails strategically to guide your buyer through the sales process. Make sure not to send follow up sales email just after a couple of introductory emails.

Prevent Unsubscription

If a prospect clicks to unsubscribe, let them land on a landing page with a preference center where they can select the kind of communication they want to receive. Make it easy for your prospects to select frequency of messages, type of content, and how they receive that content.

Measure Your Campaign’s Effectiveness and Raise the Game
  • Be consistent in tracking the results of your drip campaigns. Try A/B test to send multiple emails with a variety of variables that includes:
  • Send time
  • Sender’s “From” name
  • CTA placement
  • Subject line & Preview text
  • Email content copy, placement & layout
  • Create call / chat / contact now option

Common mistakes that can hamper the crop growth

Imagine the drip system placed wrongly or not utilized as per the requirement, the crop fails to grow! Likewise, drip email campaigns should abide by the certain rules and avoid the common mistakes.

  • Doing just email and relaxing. Not considering omni-channel approach over and above emails
  • Not striking out the inactive prospects
  • Stopping drip at the conversion and not considering post conversion drips
  • Segmenting the email list from drip campaigns wrongly which also means sending irrelevant communication and increasing unsubscribe
  • Improper data management or confusion in the data sets leading to mismatch in the buying cycle

Lead nurturing

Hand-in-hand with drips for nurturing crops!

Just drips never work if they don’t integrate well with other factors. Here are a few more things that go hand-in-hand with drip campaigns.

  • Goal setting with qualitative and quantitative objectives
  • Set up a lead nurturing team
  • Score the leads to nurture them differently through drips
  • Evaluate vendors for drip campaigns and plan the technology and timeline (if different from existing ESP)
  • Sync the drips with overall marketing calendar
  • Define leads to identify the ones who require nurturing

Better Drip yields Superior Crop

Email Creation Best Practices

Here are some specific recommendations for email creation from our recently launched email design best practices infographic mentioning old age and new age email design practices:

  • Use relevant, specific, unique, and urgency based subject lines
  • Subject lines with 6-10 words have an open rate of about 21%
  • Mention how they received this drip labeling “E-Book Download” etc.
  • Use combination of company name and product/service name for easy recognition
  • Experiment different styles of email to see what works best
  • Use bulletproof buttons that look like images but are actually cleverly formatted HTML
  • Use creative alt text for users having images off by default
  • Have a clear CTA – but remember all drips might not have a CTA
  • Consider mobile first design to eliminate spam complaints and unsubscribe eventually
  • Maintain list hygiene through buying stages and buying profiles