Without an email campaign, your marketing strategy is incomplete. Emails, whether in the form of regular newsletters or occasional offers, keep your leads engaged. There is no better tool for lead retention.
One of the most effective methods of email marketing is to use a drip email campaign. This refers to automated emails that are sent to leads at relevant moments. Email drip campaign examples include emails sent after a client has been using your product for a while, offers for leads who have stopped engaging, and reminders to individuals who left items in their carts without checking out.
Email drip campaigns are significantly more effective than your regular emails. That said, to get the most out of one of these campaigns, you need to develop it according to certain standards.
Here is how you can design your email drip campaigns to optimize your content marketing.
Strategize
The first step in developing an email drip campaign is to create a strategy. This strategy cannot simply be a carbon copy of other companies’ drip campaigns. Your business has particular targets, brand expectations, and certain strengths. Your strategy needs to take all these things into account or it will come across as disingenuous at best.
Think about your strategy as if you are one of your leads. When would you like to hear from your company and when would an email frustrate you? Does the message you’re sending sound authentic to a customer, or does it seem manipulative? Would you respect the company more if its communications were written more formally, or is yours a company that has a personal touch?
Once you know what kind of emails you’re trying to send, you need to decide who you’re sending them to.
Separate Your Lead Pool
The factor that makes drip campaigns work is that they are relevant and particular to the recipient. Your emails should reach someone at the right moment for them to make a decision, and should be geared towards whatever stage of the process they’re currently in.
For this reason, a large part of designing your campaign is separating your lead pool and choosing markers to identify the different groups. These markers should be quantitative, even if sometimes they seem arbitrary. Those at the boundaries of each category could go either way, but you need to draw the line clearly.
Determine Outcomes
Before figuring out what kind of content you want to send to your leads, you need to determine what outcomes you want to achieve from this campaign. These outcomes will differ according to each category of leads.
For leads who have yet to purchase a product or service, your outcome may be to make a first purchase. For returning clients, customer retention might be key. Alternatively, boosting engagement might be the most important outcome. Engagement can be a hugely effective means for converting leads, as they end up converting into sales.
Whatever the case, you need clear outcomes before you’re ready to decide on the content.
Design the Content
With your outcomes in mind, start designing the content. You may be working on emails that give more information about a certain product or service. You may be writing copy that engages its readers and gets them to participate in a conversation. You might just be reminding them to renew a subscription or to check out what is already in their carts.
If you’re targeting particularly well-educated clients – as is often the case when you’re selling very technical products or services – you need to consider that they will most likely engage with high-quality content that adds value. Showing that you’re committed to moving the industry forward with high-end conversation is an excellent way of generating loyalty.
Automate It
Finally, you need to automate your content. This process should be easy with good software and the strategies and content you’ve already created. The software should identify your separate types of leads according to the quantitative data you give it, and track each lead according to timeframes or actions. You should be confident that the content will speak to its intended audience. And you should have at least one more pair of eyes ensuring you have set the right emails to send at the right times.
Email drip campaigns can be incredibly effective at converting leads and they’re not too difficult to design. As long as you’re thinking of the mindset of your leads, you’ll be able to design a campaign that really speaks and at the right times.
email campaign concept -DepositPhotos
