One of the most significant challenges a small business must overcome is finding a way to reach a targeted audience and turn them into paying customers. Most people won’t engage with or even pay much attention to a single advertisement, which ends up wasting valuable money and resources. Enter the drip campaign: a series of pre-planned advertisements, presented in a way that’s designed to increase awareness and engagement.
In this blog post, we’ll cover five ideas designed to increase the effectiveness of your first drip campaign.
What Exactly is a Drip Campaign?
In its simplest form a drip campaign is a series of emails sent to your targeted audience over a specified period of time. These emails are triggered after a person submits their info through an opt-in form. You will sometimes see these forms pop-up while visiting a website, asking if you’d like to subscribe to an email list for more information on a certain service or product, etc.
Depending on your goal, drip campaigns can be a great way to build brand awareness and engage your readers by providing useful and relevant content – with the intention (in most cases) of converting them into a paying customer.
According to Pinpointe, “Open rates for email drip campaigns are roughly 80% higher than single-send emails, with three times the average click-through rates.”
The reason drip campaigns are so successful is that unlike blanket newsletter campaigns, drip emails are constantly flowing, can be tested, and even customized based on where, when, and how a reader interacts with the content of the actual email.
Email marketing platforms such as Mailchimp offer an awesome service to create drip campaigns. It’s simple, and they also offer a variety of email templates to choose from. Test it out!
What makes for a killer drip campaign? Read on and I will give you 6 top tips for creating a world-class drip for your next digital marketing promotion.
Tip #1: Knowing The Different Types of Campaigns
Before setting a goal for your drip campaign, it’s important to identify what type of campaign you plan on using. The below example displays a number of different campaign types that can be used.
Choosing the right type of campaign can lead you down the right path to success.
Once you’ve selected the type of drip campaign, it’s important to understand the process your customer will go through by offering information and resources associated with your product or service. Below is a good example of a classic drip campaign decision tree and the various type of content that can be included within each.
Tip #2: Setting Your Goal
When setting up your drip, it’s important to understand your goal or goals. Basically ask yourself what action you want your subscriber to take. Mapping out each step of your email sequence with useful and enticing information will ensure your readers get closer to your intended goal.
This actually happened to me recently. Amazon Prime offered me 30-day free shipping as a new subscriber. Of course, it was something I couldn’t say no to. During my Prime trial, Amazon would send emails informing me of their “latest deals.” Essentially, their goal was to convert me into a paying customer by enticing me with a free membership to start and sweetening the pot with amazing deals throughout my trial. Pretty smart.
Tip #3: Simplify the Content in Your Email
It can be tough to pack a whole bunch of information into just a few sentences. But the simpler your email is, the better the response. According to an article on Dataman Group Direct, people spend 15 to 20 seconds on average reading a marketing email.
If you can get to the point in just a few sentences, the level of engagement may be in your favour. For instance, in the email below Autopilot highlights its features in a few short bullet points and then uses the hyperlink “Let’s get started” to entice action by the reader. It’s seamless, simple, and concise.
Bonus tip! The Daily Egg suggests that it’s best to send shorter emails to new users and longer emails to subscribers that have been with you for a longer period of time.
Tip #4: Keep It Interesting
Sometimes an email sequence can get very dull and boring. You want to ensure that you’ve created enough interest by providing suspenseful content. For instance, including a top tips list, video, or FAQ along with a “stay tuned ” in your email can be a great way to consistently generate reader interest.
According to Statistica, almost 50% of respondents enjoyed reading suspenseful material that included mystery or thriller content.
In this example from The Daily Egg, Stephen Esketzis adds a bit of suspense in his email by adding the “stay tuned” towards the end.
Keep it exciting!
Tip #5: Don’t Forget the Call-to-Action
Including a Call to Action (CTA) is one of the most important aspects of your email. It can be a button or a link and its purpose is to engage users to take the next step in your drip. The CTA can be simple but powerful. For example, offer a free download, a coupon code, a free trial, etc. Anything that will get your reader to click!
Style and placement matter! Campaign Monitor found that their CTR increased by 28% when using a button compared to a hyperlinked call to action.
While Canopy Labs noticed that placing the CTA on the bottom of your email results in a significantly higher CTR.
Tip #6: Test, Test, and Retest your Campaign
Let the testing begin!
After finalizing your drip, you can start performing your A/B testing. According to Campaign Monitor, 39% of brands don’t even consider testing their emails. So you’ll have the upper hand when you do.
It’s worth noting that Mailchimp allows A/B testing for campaigns, but not for drip campaigns.
Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor offer A/B testing. By selecting a single variable, such as content, subject line, etc. You can find out exactly what your readers are responding to and how best to modify your ongoing emails.
When you determine your highest performance metric based on your selected variable, Mailchimp will allow you to send the winning campaign to the rest of your list. You can also connect your campaign to your online store (if you have one) to track your return-on-investment revenue (ROI) and click rates.
Kind of cool, right?
To Wrap It All Up
Your campaign should build brand awareness, while enticing your readers to take the next step. It’s also important to stay laser-focused when it comes to organizing your goals: after all, it is the starting point of your campaign.
It’s also important to test your campaign in order to better understand what is working and what isn’t. Remember, you can always switch it up so don’t be afraid to try different things!
Have a cool drip campaign you want to share? Need help creating a higher performing drip campaign? Contact us! We would love to chat.
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Article Written by:
Sharon Espinal
Content and Digital Marketing Specialist | Digital Marketing Collective
Connect With Sharon on LinkedIn 
