You can’t do email marketing without automation in 2018, which means you need to have all of your basic drip campaigns in place, running on autopilot.
How many do you have running right now?
In this post, I’ll share 3 drip campaign examples that every business needs to have
Drip campaigns can really simplify your life, automate your email marketing, AND achieve your email marketing goals much more effectively than you doing it with manual one-off emails, also referred to as “newsletters” or “broadcasts”.
Below are 3 drip marketing campaign “recipes” for every B2B business, no matter how big or small your email list is at the moment.
3 Must-Have Email Drip Campaigns For Your Business
EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGN #1. WELCOME NEW SUBSCRIBERS
Every time a new person subscribes to your list, you need to make sure they see you in the best light, right? So don’t leave that first impression up to chance.
Instead, you may want to try to take your new subscribers through a welcome email sequence (3-5 emails) highlighting your best content and important steps they need to take to get the most out of what you offer.
If you offer a few different products or services, customize your welcome drip campaigns to match the subscriber’s interest based on the type of content that led them to you. For example, if you’re a sporting goods retailer and you offer a special on baseball equipment, make sure the welcome email sequence is composed of baseball content. Eventually, you may have a chance to sell them basketball or running equipment, but not at the outset.
When you do that, you’ll see higher engagement and retention rates. You can take it a step further, and turn your welcome sequence into a drip campaign that ends with an offer, and watch your sales numbers soar as you offer your new subscribers exactly what they need.
Here’s a template for a “welcome” email drip campaign:
Welcome Email Drip Campaign – Structure
Email #1: Thanks for subscribing!
Thanks for subscribing, here’s what to expect from this list. Focus on the benefits you will provide for them, not just what you’ll write about and provide links to the best content.
Email #2: Your best content
Ways they can use free content / tools on your website for their business OR one piece of the best content in the email format.
Email #3: Nurture & engage
More nurturing content OR invitation to a webinar OR ask them a question so you can understand your audience and segment it better.
You can also structure the welcome drip campaign to be a mini-course that teaches a topic that is highly relevant to what you sell.
EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGN #2. SELL YOUR STUFF
Once your subscribers are welcomed and nurtured, you can offer them your paid product or service.
However, it’s not enough to just say, “Hey, I have this – do you want it?” If you’d tried this approach, you probably felt like your conversion rate could be much better.
Here’s a more effective approach: take your subscribers on a journey called “problem – agitate – solve” (PAS).
The PAS framework works because it increases your readers’ desire for your product. It takes them from something they would “kind of like to have one day” to something they “must have right now.”
Here’s how you do it in an email drip campaign:
Sales Email Drip Campaign – Structure
Email #1: Problem
Introduce the problem your offer solves and tell a before/after story about it.
Email #2: Agitate
So your subscribers have this problem, but it’s probably #10 or #15 on their list of priorities. Use this email to make it go to the Top 5.
Talk about common mistakes people make to exacerbate the problem or what could potentially happen if they chose to ignore the problem.
Email #3: Solve
Tell a story about how someone solved their problem and how that impacted them.
Email #4: Action
Give your subscribers an easy win: provide one easy-to-accomplish first action step to solving the problem. They need to feel confident that they can solve this problem, that it’s achievable.
Email #5: Sell
Now that you’ve have educated your new subscriber, increased urgency, and they feel confident that they can solve the problem at hand, tell them how your offer can help them solve the big problem.
Email #6: Q&A
Answer most frequently asked questions about your offer and use this opportunity to sell again.
These are the bare bones of a sales drip campaign, and you can always enhance it by adding case studies and increasing urgency with early bird discounts, bonuses, close carts, etc.
EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGN #3: RE-ENGAGE DORMANT SUBSCRIBERS
There is a big portion of your list that is not seeing ANY of your emails, all the while you’re continuing to pay for them to be on your list.
Use this email drip campaign to get subscribers who haven’t opened an email in the last 90 days to take action. It will send a series of CTAs to get them back in the fold.
Re-engagement Email Drip Campaign – Structure
Email #1: Hey, you there?
Friendly poke, acknowledging that you noticed they haven’t been active lately, and linking to 1-3 BEST pieces of content (bonus points: if your list is segmented, provide links to content most relevant for that segment).
Email #2: Best email for you?
Explore what might have happened and offer an easy way back in — maybe they changed their email address, got stuck with something you can help with, etc.
Email #3: Should I unsubscribe you?
Let them know that if they don’t take any action, you’ll unsubscribe them.
Email #4: You are now unsubscribed
Let them know they are unsubscribed and provide an easy way to re-subscribe.
Email once they’re re-engaged (don’t forget this one!):
Best recent content + ask them a question about how you can be helpful.
When done right, these 3 drip campaigns will put you ahead of the majority of your competition. They automate important phases of your customer experience, so you can focus on enhancing your marketing efforts or adding new products and services.
If you don’t have these 3 email campaigns running, go add them right now! Open a Google Doc, and start writing. Your drip e-mails should be under 200 words each, so writing a 3-5 email sequence shouldn’t take too long.
EMAIL MARKETING SERVICES & MARKETING AUTOMATION TOOLS
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of email service providers and marketing automation tools that offer drip campaign features right now. I’m going to list some of the most prominent ones:
MailChimp
MailChimp drip campaigns are called “ongoing campaigns”. You are limited in the choice of your triggers and rules, so I only recommend using MailChimp for your drip campaigns if you don’t have complex rules for who should receive your emails and when.
Drip
Drip is one of my favorite tools for email automation. Unlike MailChimp, which started as a newsletter tool and then added automation features on top of their product, Drip started as a pure automation platform, which makes their features robust and comprehensive.
Autopilot
Autopilot does much more than email — it’s a comprehensive marketing automation and customer journey platform. They go beyond email by integration SMS and on-site events into their campaigns. I recommend checking it out if you are ready for that level of automation in your business.
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