What is drip marketing?

Drip marketing involves sending emails to in­ter­ested users over a period of time. The emails in a drip campaign build on each other and give the reader more and more in­form­a­tion on your products and services each time.

What is drip marketing?

Drip marketing, also referred to as a drip campaign or drip email marketing, is the process of sys­tem­at­ic­ally getting through to potential customers using email marketing. It involves sending regular, automatic emails (or ‘drips’) to customers and potential customers.

The goal of this marketing strategy is to ensure a con­tinu­ous flow of in­form­a­tion with good, relevant news­let­ter content like upcoming sales. The desired outcome of a drip campaign is en­gage­ment and in­ter­ac­tion with content, with the ultimate goal of sales con­ver­sions.

The intervals in which emails are sent are de­term­ined in advance. They’re usually based on the user’s behaviour. So, when a user takes a certain action, the next step in the drip process is activated. If the user reacts to this, then the next step is triggered.

What’s involved in a drip campaign?

The most important part of a drip campaign or drip marketing campaign is defining the in­di­vidu­al steps in the flow of com­mu­nic­a­tion content. This also involves deciding on which actions on the part of users should trigger the next step in the process. A simple drip campaign might look as follows:

• Welcome email: After someone has signed up for your news­let­ter or created a profile with their email address, you should send a welcome email. The email should contain a welcome offer, service in­form­a­tion, etc.

• Follow-up email: After the welcome message, you should send a follow-up email with more detailed in­form­a­tion about your company’s products or services. This can include trust-building in­form­a­tion like reviews, case studies and tips and tricks.

• Ac­tiv­a­tion email: After a user has got ac­quain­ted with your products and services, they should receive more targeted in­form­a­tion. This can include emails with discounts and sales or new releases, which can be used to test sales op­por­tun­it­ies.

• In­form­a­tion email: If the ac­tiv­a­tion email didn’t result in the reaction you were hoping for, you can send an email with more service content. The goal is to foster more interest on the part of the user and dispel any doubts they might have.

• Re­act­iv­a­tion email: This email serves as another attempt at ac­tiv­at­ing the user and con­vert­ing their interest into a sale. The re­act­iv­a­tion email can contain better offers or more in­form­a­tion.

Drip campaigns involve a marketing auto­ma­tion workflow, which auto­mat­ic­ally executes the email sequence you’ve defined. The advantage of this is that you don’t need to spend any time manually sending emails. All the content is created in advance, and the emails build on each other.

Why should you use drip emails?

Drip campaigns are useful for a number of reasons. They’re very effective at leading users to a purchase due to their granular structure and in­ter­ven­tion at basic decision-making points:

• Per­son­al­ised contact: Per­son­al­ised news­let­ters not only result in more clicks but also increase the chances of a purchase in the end. You can per­son­al­ise based on users’ pref­er­ences or previous in­ter­ac­tions, which will increase the relevance of your content for them.

• Stronger customer retention: A drip campaign can help companies build a re­la­tion­ship with their customers or strengthen existing customer loyalty. Main­tain­ing regular contact with customers can be es­pe­cially be­ne­fi­cial for in­dus­tries with products that require a lot of research before pur­chas­ing.

• High-quality leads: Lead nurturing also benefits from drip marketing. The step-by-step nature of drip campaigns means that your business has contact with customers through­out their decision-making process, making it easier to collect various kinds of in­form­a­tion on user behaviour.

• Better con­ver­sion rates: Since drip marketing es­sen­tially involves a con­tinu­ous flow of relevant in­form­a­tion to the user, it comes with a higher chance of getting the reaction you’re looking for.

• User friendly: Once a drip campaign has been started, it runs auto­mat­ic­ally and doesn’t require any further resources. At the same time, you can easily add or adjust content without causing any problems for the campaign as a whole.

• Constant chance for op­tim­isa­tion: The multitude of KPIs on the overall campaign level and the in­di­vidu­al emails make it possible to optimise content and improve the per­form­ance of each step in the campaign.

Drip campaign examples

We’ve already touched on the basics of building a drip campaign above. Below we’ll use the example of an online shoe shop to il­lus­trate the main ideas again. The objective is to attract sub­scribers to your news­let­ter, get them en­thu­si­ast­ic about your product and in­dir­ectly promote sales.

• Welcome email on day one: After re­gis­ter­ing for the news­let­ter and con­firm­ing their email address, the new sub­scriber receives an email with a welcome discount of 10%.

• Follow-up emails on days three and six: In the first week, the news­let­ter will be fresh in the user’s mind — two emails are sent to them in quick suc­ces­sion to keep the momentum going. The first email provides an overview of recently released shoes. The next email features insights and re­com­mend­a­tions from the shop’s employees.

• Specials email after two weeks: The next phase features offers for select shoes, including discounts for first-time customers. The offer in this email is a special for sub­scribers and is only valid for a limited time, which will add some pressure to make a decision.

• Content email after three and four weeks: To keep up the flow of com­mu­nic­a­tion, the shop sends out emails with in­form­a­tion about current trends or shoe-outfit combos.

• Reminder email after five weeks: If the customer hasn’t taken any action towards a purchase, the last email will signal the end of the campaign. The welcome discount is mentioned again, with a reminder that it’s only valid for a limited time.

Note that it’s important that the content in a campaign an­ti­cip­ates and adapts to users’ potential reactions. Users’ email tracking also needs to be complete. Re­com­mend­ing a certain product doesn’t make any sense if the user has already bought that product based on a previous email.