How to Set Up a Drip Email Campaign

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach new and existing customers. However, it’s slightly more complicated than writing a quick social media post while multitasking on other business needs. An email drip campaign takes careful planning to make sure the sequence of emails follows a narrative and that each message builds on the previous email.

How does a drip campaign work?

Drip campaigns come in many sizes and forms. These campaigns are highly customizable according to your business goals. Essentially, a drip campaign is just a series of emails sent out on a schedule that can change depending on what action the recipient takes when the message lands in their inbox.

Drip campaigns are designed to give someone the right information at the right time to motivate action. “If someone just subscribed to your blog newsletter, for example, a drip campaign could send a welcome email right away with another email two days later that shows off some of your most-read content,” wrote Zapier. “Or if a potential customer has been hovering around your ‘premium upgrade’ page for a few weeks but hasn't yet pulled the trigger, a drip campaign could send them an email with five reasons to purchase the premium plan.”

Drip campaigns are automated, making it easy to connect with people without having to manually reach out. Automation is just one of the many benefits of setting up this type of communication.

What are the benefits of a drip campaign?

Drip campaigns can be launched for very specific purposes or used to simply keep your brand top of mind. The flexibility of these series is what makes them attractive. Drip marketing enables your business to connect with customers without much manual effort from your sales and marketing teams.

And drip campaigns—when set up properly—work. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to engage with customers. According to Campaign Monitor, B2C companies that use automated emails see conversion rates increase by as much as 50%.

Go through these five steps to get your ducks (emails) in a row when planning your next drip email campaign.

1. Determine your trigger

Most email campaigns begin with an action taken by someone who interacts with your website or social media, or places an order online or in person. They might sign up for your email newsletter, register for a webinar, attend an event and give you their email address, or add items to their online cart. Determine your trigger and begin planning your email campaign in response to that action. What do you want to encourage your email audience to do when they open and read your message?

[Read more: How to Develop an Inexpensive Sales Strategy for Your Startup]

2. Segment your audience

Next, it’s important to segment your email list so that your campaign feels personal and relevant to each recipient. For instance, you wouldn’t send a welcome email to an existing customer. Dividing your email list into new and existing customers is an easy way to segment your audience. But there are plenty of other strategies you could use. Consider creating separate audience groups based on:

• How often someone visits your site.
• How recently someone shopped with you.
• How often someone visits your premium services page.
• How long someone has been a paying customer.
• What tier in your loyalty program someone has reached.

You may need to link the platform you use to send your emails (e.g., MailChimp or Zapier) and integrate it with your CRM or your existing customer lists to make sure each person is receiving the right message.

3. Create a narrative

Once you have your audience groups mapped out, it’s time to plan the series of messages someone will receive. Writing a drip campaign can be a little complicated. On one hand, each email you send should feel unique and build on previous messages. On the other hand, you can’t assume someone is reading every email they receive. Emails in your drip campaign also need to be easy to understand without the context of previous messages.

“When it comes to drip campaigns, one best practice is ensuring that each email in the campaign adds value to the recipient. This could mean providing helpful information, offering a discount or special offer, or simply reminding the recipient of your product or service,” Erik Emanuelli told GoDaddy.

4. Design your emails

Use design elements to create a consistent and engaging email campaign that builds excitement. Most email tools have templates that you can customize with your brand colors and logo. These platforms also offer elements you can personalize to address the recipient by their first name, for instance. Make sure the design you choose is responsive to mobile devices, desktops, laptops, and tablets.

5. Set up a schedule

Finally, it’s time to plan the cadence of your campaign: the timing and type of emails you send at different points. The frequency and timing of your emails depend on your messaging. For limited-time-only sales and discounts, consider sending a few emails over two weeks to promote the event. If you’re sending a regular newsletter, one email every month is more appropriate. The cadence of your emails can be tricky to get right, so pay attention to your stats to see if your open rates and unsubscribe rates are varying widely.

[Read more: A Beginner's Guide to Creating and Managing an Email Marketing List]

Best practices for running a drip campaign

First, figure out the goal of your drip campaign. These email series can serve many purposes: welcoming new customers, onboarding, prompting someone to revisit their cart, lead nurturing, and more. Define what success will look like by the end of your drip campaign. Are you hoping to boost sales, get people to sign up for a webinar, or increase engagement with your content?

Next, determine the specific action or the date that your drip campaign will be based on. Some companies use a drip campaign for seasonal promotions, such as Black Friday sales. In those scenarios, your email campaign would be triggered by a certain deadline, rather than an action someone has taken on your website.

It’s tricky to find the right balance between sending too many emails and sending enough emails for someone to take the desired action. According to Campaign Monitor’s data, sending an email every two weeks is the “sweet spot” for getting people to read your emails without unsubscribing from your email list. Most experts recommend limiting your email series to four to 11 emails, depending on whether you’re running a B2C or B2B campaign.

Cadence is one piece of the puzzle; timing is another. You will want to send your emails at moments when your audience is most likely to engage with your message. Data shows that emails received on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays have the best open and click-through rates; Saturdays have the worst. Timing can vary by industry, however. Keep track of your email marketing campaigns to see if this schedule holds true for your audience.

There are plenty of statistics that can even dial down to the best time of day to send emails, but ultimately, it’s consistency that matters most to email audiences. “Set clear expectations for your list. Disappointment is the distance between expectation and reality. If expectations are clear, it reduces disappointment and frustration,” wrote CoSchedule.

[Read more: 6 Essential Steps to Creating an Effective Email Marketing Campaign]

Finally, make sure your emails are not too repetitive. Consider that someone might open one email out of five, but that email might not be the first email they receive. Provide enough context so that someone can understand the point of your campaign without having to follow along the whole way through. And include a call to action in each message.

Tools for automating your drip email campaigns

There are dozens of tools out there for automating your drip email campaigns. As you assess your options, consider price, integrations, ease of use, and what the platform offers in terms of segmentation and personalization. Here are a few popular tools for automating these sequences.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email tools on the market. It’s affordable, feature-rich, and easy to navigate. MailChimp also boasts a library of email drip campaign templates, meaning you can quickly set up and automate your campaign to find and welcome contacts, nurture leads, and re-engage lapsed customers. MailChimp integrates with many CRM tools and uses AI to ensure your campaign is as impactful as possible. MailChimp has a free plan; pricing for more features starts at $13/month.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign offers a number of different marketing automations, including email. “[You] can add a subscriber to a drip campaign when they forward an email, visit a page on your website, or their lead score changes. And that's just the tip of the iceberg—when you dive in, you'll find over 500 automation recipes to explore,” wrote Zapier. If you’re looking to put your email campaigns on autopilot, ActiveCampaign is a good option. Pricing starts at $15/month with a free trial available.

Klayvio

Klayvio serves B2C clients, focusing on building customer loyalty through email, SMS, and mobile app marketing. Not only can you use their platform for highly personalized email drip campaigns, but it also allows you to create “flows” with SMS. For example, you can set up series of messages that push to the best channel for each alert, such as email for product recommendations or SMS for shipping updates. If you’re ready to create advanced drip campaigns, Klayvio is your best option. Pricing starts at $45/month for email with a free option available.

Brevo

Brevo is one of the most affordable options on this list, with a free plan for up to 300 emails per day. In addition to email drip campaigns, you can also manage SMS, WhatsApp, chat, and more. Brevo offers all the features you need for solid, straightforward email marketing: segmentation tools, email marketing templates, and basic analytics. If you’re looking for a simple, straightforward tool that gets the job done at an affordable price point, this is your best option.

Kit

Kit is an email and marketing platform for solopreneurs and creators. In Kit, you set up a user flow that outlines the path your subscriber will take through your funnel. Then, you create emails for each stage and set them to automatically deliver. You can organize your subscribers into segments or create tags based on what you know about each fan. The most basic version of Kit is free; paid plans start at $25/month.

Drip campaign examples for different industries

Many marketing teams launch drip campaigns in response to a visitor's actions on the business website. Actions that can trigger a drip campaign include:

• Placing an order.
• Signing up for a newsletter.
• Registering for a webinar.
• Abandoning a shopping cart.
• Joining a loyalty program.
• Signing up for a product demo.

In e-commerce, for instance, common drip campaign examples aim to make sure customers complete their order, sign up for a loyalty program, or track their delivery. An abandoned cart drip campaign might include a reminder to return to the cart, followed by a small discount to finish checking out, and end with an urgency message (such as “Your cart is selling out fast!”).

B2B drip campaigns tend to focus on fostering leads. “Drip email campaigns essentially guide leads through the sales funnel until they’re ready to buy. Each message in the drip campaign is tailored to individual customers according to where they are in the buying process,” wrote MailChimp.

Metrics to track for evaluating campaign success

While it’s tempting to set and forget your email drip campaign, you’ll want to monitor ongoing sequences to evaluate your success. Keep an eye on performance metrics to determine if you need to shorten your campaign, adjust your messaging, or change up your cadence.

Here are a few key performance metrics to track:

1. Bounce rate tells you how many email addresses your email could not be sent to. High bounce rates are a sign that you have problems with your subscriber list. “As a guideline, a well maintained, permission-based list should typically see bounce rates of 2% or less for each email campaign sent,” wrote Campaign Monitor.
2. Open rate tells you how many people opened your email. This stat can be a good indicator of engagement: only interested readers will open your emails consistently. If your open rate decreases, it can be a sign you’re sending too many or your messages aren’t relevant.
3. Unsubscribe rate is similar to open rate; it’s an indicator of engagement. If you see people actively unsubscribing from your email list, it’s a signal your strategy is off the mark. Revisit your content, campaign cadence, frequency, and segmentation.
4. Click-through rate is a classic metric that tells you whether your content is having the desired impact. When you see readers clicking on a link in the body of your email, it’s a good sign that your content resonates.
5. Forward and sharing rates tell you how many people click on a “share” or “forward” button in the body of your email. Not every business includes these CTAs in their campaigns, but they can be useful in tracking whether your message is spreading. “Understanding the rate of recipients that forward or share your emails is important because it’s how you generate new contacts since your recipients are already part of your mailing list,” wrote Adobe.

Many of these metrics are automatically tracked by your email marketing platform. If you see one of these metrics dip, dig a little deeper to see what could be the issue. It’s not always cause for alarm to see a sharing rate decrease or a bounce rate increase. However, if you’re seeing a persistent issue with any of these metrics, adjust your campaign accordingly.

CO— aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected experts. However, before making any business decision, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.