One of our favorite tools for cultivating customer relationships for brands is email marketing. We’ve found that consistent email marketing is a powerful brand communication tool. However, it’s tricky to create consistent content, which is why we turn to drip campaigns to automate a lot of our email marketing.

What is a Drip Campaign?

Drip campaigns are a specific strategy for email marketing. They are emails that are sent when a user triggers them through a specified action. Each email is created to engage the user at a certain point in the communication. The idea is that you can set up all of the emails and then let them automatically send out after the setup is complete.

Because you can automate them, drip campaigns are a great way to keep up with interest in your business. They allow you to develop relationships with potential customers on an ongoing basis without creating or sending your messaging on an ongoing basis. The automatic emails are sent out as often as you want.

This consistent communication keeps your brand in constant contact with potential customers.

Creating Your Drip Campaign Marketing Strategy

Your business goals for the campaign will determine your drip campaign strategy. Your goals might be to promote your brand, further your brand’s connections, promote a certain feature or product, reinforce a sale, or build brand loyalty.

To start developing your strategy, think about how your emails will bring value to your readers. What does each email help them understand or offer them? Keep in mind how easy it is to unsubscribe these days. Make sure each email is worth your readers’ time.

The strategy of your drip campaign should reflect the strategies of your business overall. As an example, we do this in our own drip campaign for potential clients that are interested in working with us.

If someone submits a project inquiry on our site, the first thing we do is thank them for their interest, just like we would in person. Next, we reach out personally and communicate some reasons why we think that working with them would be pretty nice. Next, we send out an email that describes our services, explaining what sets us apart to encourage them to get on board.

To map out the flow of your drip campaign, we recommend sitting down to structure the normal flow of interaction between you and your customers. Here, you can identify where the gaps are and use your drip campaign to strengthen your communication in those places.

Pick an Email Marketing Platform

MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Emma are all popular platforms for sending drip campaigns. If you want to dive deeper into the features of each of our top-recommended platforms, we wrote a blog about the differentiators of each one.

Create Your Emails

Once your strategy is set, it’s time to create your emails. Reach out to Nice Branding Agency if you need some brainpower behind your emails. We can help you figure out your strategy, design and copy for each email. Since these emails will be sent out so many times, it’s important to get them perfect.

Each email needs on-brand copy, a call to action and eye catching headlines and graphics. We also prefer a personal approach and links to your social media profiles.

Organize Your List

The effectiveness of your drip campaign depends a lot on how well you can organize your email triggers and lists. For example, you want to make sure that your welcome email doesn’t end up going out to longstanding clients.

You can use organize your list of contacts into groups through most email automation platforms, like MailChimp, Emma, and Constant Contact.

Set Up Triggers

Once your emails are created and your lists are organized for sending, you’ll need to set up the triggers for your emails. The triggers are what will catalyze the sending of your email without you having to “send” out each one yourself from your inbox.

The easiest first trigger is when someone subscribes to your mailing list or fills out a form on your website. You can also set up your campaign so that the first email is sent out when you manually add a subscriber to your list.

After you send out your first email, you have a lot of options to trigger the next emails. You can tailor your campaign nearly any way you want. Common triggers for subsequent emails include sending to those who opened or didn’t open the last campaign, sending to those who opened a specific link, sending to those who purchase a specific product, or sending after a certain amount of days has passed.

If you’re ready to get off our blog and into some inboxes, contact us today to spearhead your strategy, design and scheduling of your drip campagin.