Mastering Email Marketing Drip Campaigns
What is a drip campaign, and why is it such an effective approach? Learn where the drip terminology comes from and discover how to send effective drip campaigns with Jarrang.
December 18 - 2024
Article 5 min read
Effective marketing campaigns rely on long-term vision. To draw customers through the buying funnel, you must address their needs and engage them at varying stages, from awareness and consideration through to purchase intent.
You can’t fully utilise your resources in any kind of cost or time-efficient way if you’re constantly scrambling to create and send campaigns reactively and ‘in the moment’. You need an approach that cultivates your customer’s interests and builds over time…
Meet the email ‘drip’ campaign. Named after a process called drip irrigation, where crops are watered using a drip method, this type of campaign is about creating a series of emails where content is ‘dripped’ out to customers over time. Rather than trying to capture attention with a one-size-fits-all email blast, a drip campaign allows you to develop engagement for your product/service and cultivate your customer’s interest.
What are email drip campaigns?
Here’s a quick overview of what a ‘drip’ campaign is:
- Automated, pre-written campaign
- Consists of multiple emails within a single campaign – from as few as 2 to more than 10 for complex, multi-stage events
- Relies on a key ‘trigger’ event such as a new sign-up or basket abandonment
- Sent to a pre-planned schedule or mapped to specific interaction points following the initial trigger
Email drip campaigns are all about sending timely, relevant communications based on a user’s interest. Each campaign leverages automation and should be planned around a specific trigger or journey, such as a welcome series sent to new subscribers or a cart abandonment series to someone who hasn’t completed a purchase.
Due to the automated nature of each campaign, you can effectively send targeted, personalised communications without having to invest the same time and energy into every individual customer. Once you’ve established the most relevant ‘triggers’, you can begin drip-feeding your content to audiences based on their specific actions.
Why are drip campaigns effective?
Drip campaigns are ideal for lead nurturing – they are sequential and driven towards a specific intended goal. Compared to sporadic one-off campaigns, they are more focused on encouraging users down a specific path. Better still, because the majority of drip campaigns are sent as a result of a certain trigger, your intended audience has already taken the first step and can now be encouraged rather than being contacted out of the blue.
Drip campaigns also save time because once you’ve set them up, you can leave them to run, making them scalable and efficient. This is crucial in an enterprise business where every minute saved can significantly boost productivity and cost-efficiency.
In short, while standard campaigns work well for announcements or promotions, drip campaigns build deeper connections and deliver ongoing value throughout the customer journey.
How to design an email drip campaign
If you’re interested in designing drip campaigns, you can either go it alone or talk to our team here at Jarrang. We’ll bring decades of experience to your campaign and ensure it matches your customer’s needs. If you do try it solo, here are the steps you need to take:
- Identify your objectives
What do you want from a drip campaign? Lead nurturing is the general goal, but what specific products or services do you want to advertise and what action/s do you want your audience to take at the end?
- Choose your trigger
Drip campaigns all begin with a ‘trigger’ event. This can be a variety of different actions, including (but not limited to):
- Signing up for your newsletter
- Basket abandonment
- Visiting a specific landing page
- Downloading a specific piece of content from your site, such as a PDF or product guide
- A date-based trigger such as a birthday
- Plan the campaign
Plan out how many emails will be included within a drip campaign. Generally speaking, a drip campaign will contain at least 3-4 emails – but be sure to refine your decision based on your audience segments and any previous data. Take some time to craft the content and copy within the campaign to ensure each send progresses customers towards your intended action.
- Schedule your emails
The frequency of your sends depends on your audience and what the specific trigger event tells you about their needs. For example, a drip campaign based on new sign-ups can take more time to share your brand story and maximise engagement – whereas a basket abandonment series will be shorter and more tightly scheduled.
- Proactively monitor and tweak
Once your drip campaign is live, you can begin tracking metrics and monitoring results. Unlike a traditional one-off email blast, you’ll be able to gather more insight into each email within the chain and build an understanding of what parts of your process are working better than others.
You can use this insight to adjust the campaign, perhaps even removing an unnecessary step or improving the CTAs within the final message to improve conversions.
Email drip campaign examples
The best way to help plan your own drip campaign is to learn from other successful examples. Here are some of the most well-established, effective drip campaign archetypes you can learn from…
Welcome series
The most common type of drip campaign is a welcome series, which begins whenever someone signs up for your mailing list. You’ll start with a thank you email and can then begin to nurture your leads by introducing them to specific products or services. With good segmentation and personalisation, you can also customise your content to target a customer’s interests and preferences.
Basket abandonment
Abandoning a cart is one of the most frustrating issues for any ecommerce seller to deal with – the buyer has shown clear intent to purchase and then decided against it. An abandoned cart series begins with a reminder to rule out any accidental bounces, and then, if the user fails to return and purchase, it begins to re-engage the customer and even encourage them via discount codes or personalised offers.
Re-engagement
For email marketing to maintain effectiveness, your audience lists have to be active. We’ve talked about list hygiene in the past, and it's vital that you remove any long-term disengaged users. Before you commit to removal, it’s worth trying a re-engagement campaign. This is a campaign triggered when a user fails to engage with a set number of campaigns - perhaps after they’ve ignored two or more of your emails.
Lead nurture
Lead nurturing campaigns are similar to a welcome series in that they usually trigger when a user first subscribes to your list. However, how they subscribe will be gated behind a specific landing page designed to funnel them into a certain action or process.
For example, signing up to download a PDF product sheet from your website. This allows you to be far more targeted in what content you send since the user’s interest has already been clearly defined.
Conversion follow-up
Once someone converts, they have the potential to become a retained customer. Consider creating an automated drip campaign that follows up on their purchase, perhaps asking them for a review initially before drip-feeding similar or complementary product/service offers. You can also advertise personalised deals and discounts based on their initial purchase. Doing this will help increase the chance of repeat spending and improve lifetime customer value.
Master drip email automation with Jarrang
Automated drip campaigns are the most sustainable way to scale your email marketing efforts and cater to a larger audience.
Here at Jarrang we are experts in the planning, design and deployment of email campaigns at scale. We’ll help you map out the best trigger opportunities to plan drip campaigns around and then build the automation you need to drive results.
Speak to our team today to get started.
Subscribe to our insights newsletter
Be the first to hear about what’s hot in e-marketing and straight to your inbox.
