Automating Your Emails With a Drip Campaign

January 22, 2020

When your site and customer service take center stage, it’s easy for your email strategy to fall through the cracks. As your audience begins to grow, it may feel overwhelming to keep up with all the emails you want to send and to deliver them in a timely manner. Although this process can be daunting, there are automation tools that make it much easier. Keep reading to learn how automating your email with a drip campaign can bring the results you’ve been looking for – and how you can do it without lifting a finger. 

Drip Email Marketing: Your New Best Friend

Drip marketing – also known as automated emails, lifecycle emails, autoresponders, and email marketing automation, are emails that are automatically sent out on a schedule or in reaction to a certain action taken on your website. You can personalize these pre-written emails with customer-specific information. This includes the recipients’ name, references to the content they showed interest in, and more. Drip campaigns allow your audience to receive the right information at the right time. You won’t have to worry about missing someone or telling everyone something that only pertains to a small portion. A few instances where you may use an email drip campaign include:

Welcome Emails:

If you recently ran an ad on Facebook directing your audience to sign up for your monthly newsletter and they followed the ad to your landing page and signed up, you’ll want to thank them. A short thank you/welcome email can start your relationship off on the right foot.

Abandoned Shopping Carts:

So you got them on your site and they even added something to their cart, but they suddenly leave. This can be heartbreaking, but a simple “nudge” email may remind your potential customer why they added that item to their shopping cart – and could even finalize the sale. 

Recommendations:

Whether you’re a retailer, homebuilder, or entertainment service, after the customer spends a little time on your website, you can recommend products and services based on their activity. Try sending your customer an email that brings their attention back to something they showed interest in. This may not only encourage them to purchase that product or service, but will build your relationship.

Confirmations:

When you make a purchase on a website, whether it’s a new pair of shoes or a hotel reservation, confirmation that your purchase was successful is always a good feeling. Don’t take that satisfaction away from your customers. A brief email outlining a recent purchase is not only reassuring, but a good opportunity to express your gratitude.

Campaign Killers

As you are creating your email drip campaign, there are some simple practices that you’ll want to stay away from. 

Generic Messages:

These emails are written ahead of time and it may be easy to create super simple emails that aren’t customer-specific, but this will stick out in a customer’s mind immediately and will discourage them from building a relationship with your company. Your emails should speak directly to the individual customer’s needs so they feel important. 

Bland Subject Lines:

The subject line is going to be the first impression your reader gets of the email, so you want it to grab their attention. Also, try not to use the same subject line for more than one email. Customers will notice this and will stop opening your emails.

Unsegmented Audiences:

Whether your audience is comprised of 50, 100, 1000, or 10,000 people, you want to have different segments created from that audience. Why? Because each member of your audience is different and has different motives behind their decisions. 

Sporadic Emails:

Find a schedule that works for your audience and stick to it. This may be difficult in the beginning, but after some trial and error, you should find something that works. Having a schedule will allow your audience to expect your emails, making them more likely to engage with your content.

Create Order From the Chaos

No matter what kind of business you have, a comprehensive drip campaign is sure to be of benefit. However, now that you understand what a drip campaign is, you may be wondering how to stay ahead. You’ve probably selected a platform to help manage your new email campaign – Mailchimp, Salesforce, Pardot, Zoho, Klaviyo, or another. These tools will help you to create and design your campaign, audiences, and forms. These platforms will smooth out the automation process so that once the emails are written, you will know your audience is hearing from you in a timely manner. Once you start sending emails, you will get reports that show how your audience is engaging with your content; for instance, how many people opened your email and if they then clicked through to your landing page. 

Picked out a platform? Ready to start sending amazing emails to all your potential customers? Once you dive in, you might find it’s difficult to create consistent, stellar copy and design for your campaigns. Rearview Advertising can help. Without having to lift a finger, you’ll have thoughtful, compelling drip campaigns pushed out to your entire email list. You’ll get to stay top-of-mind for your customers, and you’ll build lasting relationships. Contact us to learn more about how you can level up your email marketing with Rearview.