Email is still the most powerful tool a marketer can use. 

Even though more companies are making the shift to social media to engage with their customers and prospects, and even using social media as a marketplace, email is still the most reliable and cost-effective way to communicate with your audience.

However, email campaigns can really only be successful if they are properly planned and executed.

For instance, you would never manually email each of your contacts as they continue down your sales funnel. Well, you could, but it would be tedious and time-consuming, and you would be wasting valuable resources and man-hours. It would also, unfortunately, lead to diminishing returns.

Email is a marketer’s best tool.

Email is still the most dependable and cost-effective method to interact with your audience, even if more firms are adopting social media to engage with customers and prospects.

Successful email campaigns need careful planning and execution.

You wouldn’t manually email each person in your sales funnel, for example. You could, but it would be tiresome, time-consuming, and wasteful. It would also reduce profits.

If you’re serious about your emails, build up automatic and customised processes that are delivered to your contacts at various points of their buyer’s journey to trigger a purchase, referral, review, etc.

You need drip email.

Why drip email programs matter

Drip email campaigns are pre-written messages you deliver to recipients.

Instead of sending an email to your whole audience at once (which isn’t the greatest practice since your contacts are at various stages of the sales funnel), drip email campaigns automatically distribute relevant content at appropriate moments.

If your company rents apartments and the average customer takes 60 days from the start of their search to moving in, you might set up your drip campaign so customers get emails about finding the right apartment at the beginning, emails about moving costs 30 days in, and emails about setting up utilities 45 days in.

If done effectively, drip email marketing may benefit organizations. Drip campaigns have greater open and click-through rates than single emails. 2015 automated emails earned 320% more money than non-automated emails.

Successful drip emailing

Like any campaign, you can’t hurry and presume victory. Drip email campaigns need preparation, strategy, and updates.

Here are six key factors for successful automated emails:

1. Focus on your objectives

You can’t evaluate drip email campaigns without knowing your goals. Do industry research to see what your campaign can achieve. Industry, firm size, B2B vs. B2C, and the product or service may affect the benchmark.

Depending on your aim, use a drip email campaign. Options include:

Every new contact or email list subscriber should get a welcome campaign. Successful welcome drip email campaigns contain a series of emails that promote your goods or services and create expectations.

This sort of drip marketing sends a confirmation message once someone registers up for a webinar and numerous relevant communications leading up to the online course with reminders and information. This sort of marketing may include a follow-up email with a webinar recording and a call to action.

This drip campaign type is useful for retargeting. When a consumer abandons their cart or fills out a lead generating form but doesn’t act, you may retarget them.

A re-engagement campaign, like a retargeting drip email campaign, tries to entice previous consumers to buy again. New customers are 5 to 25 times more costly than existing ones.

Customer journey automation

Once you decide the sort of email drip campaign you want to construct and which target group to deliver it to, build automated customer journeys.

Your drip campaigns’ automated journeys follow your consumers’ activities. If you send an email with a call to action requesting your audience to download an eBook and a customer completes that action, they may get an automated email with related information.

If they don’t download the eBook, they’ll be asked again a week later.

Automated journeys enable you to modify your audience’s communications depending on where they are in your campaign.

3. Perfect first email

First impressions count.

Your email drip campaign must include an engaging welcome email. Welcome emails have greater open and click rates than mass marketing emails, according to Entrepreneur.

Creating a successful welcome email will effect the success of your drip campaign.

When a new (or existing) contact starts a campaign, the first email should be automated. The longer you wait to contact new customers, the less engaged they will be.

Customize: Theirs! Include their name or particular demands.

Message: Explain what they’ll receive and why it’s advantageous. Be upfront to avoid surprises (and spam complaints).

Keep your email brief. You don’t need to barrage recipients with product material or advice yet; they’ll receive them in drip emails.

Email layout is customizable. BBC welcome email:

This email uses simple, easy-to-read images to explain what they’ll deliver and when. The longer the reader uses the service, the more tailored the ideas and communications will be.

An introduction email doesn’t require beautiful visuals. Harvest’s welcome email:

This basic email gives the user everything they need to get started and a place to ask questions. If a client doesn’t check in after a particular number of days or click “Create a project,” you may send a follow-up email.

Find your cadence.

There’s no right or wrong answer, so things may become sticky. Each campaign’s email cadence will depend on audience, company, and objectives.

New nurturing or welcome email drip campaigns may start with six emails over 30 days before transitioning to something more aligned with buyer journeys or decision-making moments.

Allowing consumers to select email frequency also helps personalize messages.

You must test what works for your audience.

5. Testing/revisions

If you’re not testing your emails, why send them? Successful drip email marketing managers evaluate open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes to improve their efforts.

A/B testing are an easy approach to test your email performance (and most automated email providers provide these). You may compare anything from subject lines to email content (which will help determine click-through rates).

You can increase email performance and ROI by testing and changing depending on what works for your audience.

Finish

While creating a drip email campaign isn’t tough, creating a successful one is. What works for one firm may not work for another, even for two segmented lists within the same company.

It’s good to study best practices, necessary aspects, and tools for drip email campaigns, but ultimately it’s up to you to experiment with your plan and execution to meet your objectives and enhance sales.