How drip campaigns are used
Drip campaigns are designed to reach out with a targeted message to your target audience at the right time. Since they’re automated marketing emails like welcome messages, birthday emails, and order notifications, they work for your business while you focus on other things.
Automated drip campaigns make it easy to connect with the right person at the right moment without doing the work every time. Whether they’re triggered by dates or user actions, there are many examples of drip campaigns that could work for your business.
Drip emails can accompany prospective customers and loyal customers through your sales cycle. From welcome drips, onboarding email sequences, lead nurturing campaigns, and abandoned shopping carts (cart campaign) to new product recommendations or reactivation emails.
Date-based automations, such as monthly emails or weekly emails, make it possible to communicate with your email list on the days that matter to them. You can use these automations on many kinds of occasions, like:
- Subscription renewal or reordering prompts. If your business has products on a subscription or membership basis such as a gym, yoga studio, paid newsletter, farm delivery service, or regular delivery of staples like toothpaste or shaving cream, a drip email sequence is a great way to notify your audience when their subscription is up for renewal. Remind them of the value you provide and how they’ve benefited from your services. If possible, entice them with new offerings or additional educational content.
- Birthdays, anniversaries, and other events. While you may not turn these into an entire campaign, personalized birthday emails or separate event-triggered emails—such as celebrating the anniversary of their first purchase—can reinforce your brand value and prompt a purchase.
Communicate based on a user’s behaviors
Many drip campaigns can be triggered by user actions someone in your target audience takes (or doesn’t take). Here are a few drip campaign examples:
Welcome emails. When someone new joins your email list, it’s a key moment to make a good impression. With welcome drips, you can share important educational content, like company insights or popular blog posts, that a newcomer needs to know. You can also use welcome emails to follow up with someone you met in person, like at an event you hosted—for example, a trunk show, wine tasting, or sale. A drip email sequence can effectively keep new prospective customers informed about upcoming events, sales, or other activities, and make them feel like you share their values.
First purchase automations. When someone makes their first purchase, it’s a great opportunity to thank them for their business, remind them of the product features and quality, give them tips on how to get the most from their purchase, suggest complementary items often bought by other shoppers, and reinforce that they made a good decision. Saying thank you at this early stage helps convert buyers into loyal customers.
Product recommendations. After someone makes a purchase, a great way to boost sales and reduce bounce rates is to suggest related items in your personalized emails. These recommendations can be part of an order confirmation or shipment notification. For example, if someone buys a dress, you might suggest accessories recommended by your in-house experts. Alternatively, you might follow up with separate monthly emails or timed email sequences recommending complementary products or refills, keeping your audience engaged throughout the sales cycle.
Follow-up emails to educate and onboard your audience. If someone engages with your customer service or sales team—for example, to inquire about order status, shipping timing, or some other concern—a drip campaign can prompt them to do more. For example, if they call about a missing invoice or payment, a drip campaign might encourage them to sign up for emailed invoices or online or automatic payment. Likewise, if they started but didn’t complete a tutorial video on using your product or a product registration, a drip campaign can encourage them to finish—and better tie them to your business.
Abandoned shopping carts. Online shoppers often put something in their cart, then remove it before purchase—or abandon the purchase altogether. A well-executed abandoned cart email can encourage them to reassess the purchase. Be careful, though, not to be too “big brother”-ish—you don’t want to appear overly intrusive. For example, if the shopper abandoned a particular skirt, you might send an email promoting your whole spring line, or a line from that designer, without mentioning the specific item they selected.
Lead nurture. Active interest from prospects is particularly well suited to drip campaigns. If someone registers for a webinar or a content element like a white paper or interactive tool, that’s your cue to reach out to them with relevant content. For example, if you provide lawn care, and a prospect signs up for your guide to winter-proofing their yard, you can send them emails with additional tips and include promotions of your yard care products and services. Lead Nurturing can take many forms, like giving them more details about product features, or what they will learn from your online course, or educating them on your service. Either way, a lead nurturing campaign can not only increase your sales but the purchase value as well.
Unsubscribe emails. If someone unsubscribes from your e-newsletter, you might follow up with an email asking them for feedback. If they unsubscribe from your subscription service (such as a gym), in addition to asking for feedback, you might provide a special “we want you back” offer or incentive. You can also follow up with them 3 or 6 months later, when their situation may have changed, to woo them back.