Understanding drip email campaign
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The ROI of email marketing can be impressive, with up to $44 return for every $1 spent.
But to get such mouthwatering results, you must understand the types of email campaigns that help move your marketing needle up. One such campaign is called a drip email campaign or drip sequence.
Drip campaigns automate personalized outreach to nurture leads at scale, helping businesses guide prospects through the funnel with timely, relevant emails based on behaviors or triggers.
Effective drip sequences are built on segmentation, clear goals, and consistent cadence, and should be optimized continuously using KPIs like open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.
When paired with a CRM like Nutshell, drip campaigns become more powerful—enabling targeted, trackable, and conversion-focused communication that strengthens customer relationships and drives revenue.
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Used with the right techniques, drip email marketing campaigns can be a highly effective part of your marketing strategy.
So what is a drip campaign? Also known as a drip sequence, a drip email campaign is an automated email marketing strategy designed to deliver several emails to a subscriber over a specific period. The emails are triggered by an event or action performed by the customer and are set to go out at predetermined intervals.
For example, if a person subscribes to your blog, your drip campaign will include sending them a welcome email almost immediately. A day or two later, that subscriber will be sent another email highlighting some of your most popular blog posts. And if you have a course, your third email could be an introduction to that course.
The beauty of email drip campaigns is that they enable you to provide your subscribers with the exact information they need at the right time. And no matter when a person joins your email list (or a particular segment), everyone receives the exact same sequence.
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So why should you bother with drip email marketing campaigns?
Simple. Drip email campaigns can help you achieve your marketing and revenue goals. A few advantages of drip campaigns are:
One of the biggest advantages you get from drip email campaigns is that they help boost engagement. Especially if a prospect has just subscribed to your email list, this aspect is very important.
That’s because research shows that it takes about eight touchpoints to convert a prospect into a customer. And a drip email marketing campaign gives you a lot of opportunities to engage with your prospects.
Another advantage of drip campaigns is that they are the perfect tool for nurturing your leads. Business is all about managing customer relationships. Sadly, however, you can’t handhold each customer as you take them down your sales funnel.
But with drip email marketing campaigns, you can come close.
That’s because a drip campaign allows you to communicate with each lead in a personalized way, giving the impression that you’re with your lead at each step of the customer journey.
This results in higher chances of your leads converting into customers.
And thanks to technology, the whole buyer’s journey can be completed online, especially since you and your clients can sign your documents electronically.
Your main business goal is to generate revenue. And drip emails are one of the best tools to do this, thanks to their being automated.
Yes, that’s important as research shows that automated emails drive about 75% of the revenue of all email marketing campaigns. Automated emails are so effective because they enable you to send targeted and personalized messages to each of your subscribers.
The result, of course, is that you enjoy higher open and transaction rates.
Data shows that it costs 5x more to get a new customer than to retain an old one. This means building strong relationships with your customers should be one of your priorities if you’re to grow a successful business. You must increase your customer retention rates.
And drip email marketing campaigns help you build meaningful relationships with your customers.
The more your customers engage with your email content, the more they’ll value you as an authority and trusted resource in your field. For this to happen, you must:
Well executed, your drip email marketing will help you grow a tribe of loyal customers in no time. Customers who will not just be repeat buyers but will also be brand ambassadors.
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Despite newer forms of marketing (like SMS marketing), drip email marketing still gives one of the best ROIs.
And while implementing a drip email campaign may seem to be a daunting task, it isn’t. But thanks to automation software like email marketing software or CRMs, they are quite easy to pull off.
So, let’s get our hands dirty and design a drip email campaign that works.
For your drip email marketing campaign to be successful, you must identify who you’re sending it to.
Knowing your target customer is crucial as it will help you craft personalized emails that move them to take action. It also helps you know what triggers will work.
Once you’ve identified your target audience, create a segment for them. Segmentation will ensure that only the right subscribers on your email list get the message for the objectives you have for the drip email campaign.
And this brings us to the next stage of designing an effective drip email campaign—defining your objectives.
When designing your drip campaign, you must define your objectives right from the start. You must determine:
Once you’ve defined your objectives, the next important step in designing an effective email drip marketing campaign is to set your KPIs.
The purpose of a drip email campaign is to help your prospects move along the customer journey. For that to happen, they have to take specific actions.
Each email in your series must nudge your subscribers along their journey by having a call-to-action (CTA) that asks them to take an action that moves them down your funnel. And CTAs should be clearly defined and visible to recipients.
Examples of actions your subscribers can take can include:
The actions you want your subscribers to take must be tied to your business goals. But for your subscriber to make a move, you must tie a benefit to the action you want them to take.
Also, the actions your subscribers take (or don’t take) are used as the trigger for the next email in the campaign.
How many emails should be in your drip email marketing campaign?
How should you space them out?
These are important questions whose answers dependent on:
The team at GetResponse conducted a study to help guide marketers to determine how many emails they should include in their campaigns. Interestingly, the research revealed that an increase in the number of emails in an autoresponder sequence resulted in a reduction in engagement.
Does this mean shorter campaigns work best?
Not at all.
It all depends on your business type. However, there are a few guidelines to help you hit the sweet spot regarding the number of emails in your sequence and the intervals. Here are a few to get you started:
To find the sweet spot, you’ll have to experiment with a few drip sequences.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the metrics you’ll use to measure your drip email marketing campaigns’ success. They are determined by your objectives and can include:
The key to running an effective drip campaign is to know what you want to achieve and how you’re going to measure success.
Related: The 6 Most Important Email Marketing Metrics (And What They Really Mean.)
There are a lot of moving parts in a drip campaign. Manually keeping tabs on all of them is next to impossible.
That’s why you must automate your email drips.
Email automation software enables you to create drip campaign workflows that allow you to easily:
Automating your campaigns increases your efficiency, saves you time, and even increases your campaign’s profitability.
Once your campaign is running, you must monitor how your subscribers respond to your email drips. More importantly, you must evaluate whether your campaign is performing well or not.
This is where your KPIs come into play.
Using your automation software’s analytics dashboard (or third-party analytics tools), you can track your KPIs and use them to gauge whether your drip marketing campaign is performing well.
Keeping track of your KPIs will also help give you the agility to make changes in the parts of your campaign that seem to be underperforming.
For example, if the bounce rates are high in a particular email, you can fine-tune that email’s content to increase its effectiveness.
At the end of it all, the data you gather will also help you create more effective iterations of your drip campaign.
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You can use several types of drip campaigns in your email marketing to move your business forward. Here are some of the top ones:
The welcome email is probably one of the most critical types of drip email campaigns you can send.
This is because its primary purposes are to establish a relationship with your customer and foster brand awareness. Because of this, you just have to nail it.
So how do you design an effective welcome email sequence?
First, you must make sure that the first email is sent out immediately after a trigger is set off. In most cases, the trigger is submitting a form on your landing page or website.
Next, make sure that subsequent emails are sent out at two or three-day intervals. As for the number of emails in a welcome email sequence, 3-4 should do the job.
Executed well, this type of drip campaign will help you gain your subscribers’ trust, ensuring they open and read other emails you’ll send.
Another drip email marketing campaign type you should have in your email marketing toolbox is a lead nurture campaign. This is an email sequence designed to take a lead from the interest stage of your funnel to being a paying customer.
In short, it’s an email sequence that takes your lead from one end of the buyer’s journey to the other.
For an effective lead nurture campaign, use a relevant trigger like downloading a resource. This shows that the subscriber is interested in your solution.
As for the timing and number of emails, this largely depends on your industry, product, and length of your sales cycle. You’ll have to know your industry’s benchmarks to guide you.
However, for your lead nurturing email campaign to be effective, make sure you’re giving your subscribers enough valuable information to help them make an informed decision.
Onboarding emails are an essential type of email because they help you achieve two crucial business goals:
Triggers for this type of drip campaign can be signing up for a service, purchasing a product, or upgrading a subscription. The first email must be sent immediately and is usually in the form of a “Thank You” email. The rest of the emails in the sequence can be sent 2–3 days apart.
As for the number of emails, that depends on industry/product, but experts recommend 3–6 emails. A great touch would be to make the last email in the sequence a feedback email.
Other drip campaign types you can leverage include:
Drip email campaigns are a necessity for any business. From trust-building to revenue generation, you can use one type of drip campaign or another to achieve your business goals.
What a journey!
I’m sure you’re rearing to go and implement some of the things you’ve gleaned from this post. Before you run off to execute your next email drip campaign, here are a few best practices you need to follow. These will ensure that your chances of success are higher.
This is the process you take a person from the moment they subscribe till they make a purchase. Understanding the steps involved will help you know exactly where your customer is, where they need to go, and how to get them there.
Understanding your buyer journey starts with understanding your buyer. What are they looking for when they find your business? What do they need? What are their pain points?
However when you craft your email drip sequences, you should have a solid awareness of what’s going on in the minds of your buyers when they subscribe and where you want to take them.
For your drip email marketing campaign to be effective, you must send personalized emails. And one way to do this is by segmenting your email list. Doing this helps you find common traits among your subscribers that you can leverage to create personalized email content.
Personalization can also go a long way in getting recipients to even open and read your email. Nutshell Marketing lets you use a smart field in your email copy that autofills the recipient’s name or company name, or add placeholders that require you to fill in personalized information before clicking send.
A workflow is the blueprint you use to determine which emails to send and when. If the workflow doesn’t offer a positive user experience (UX), the chances of losing some subscribers along the way are high.
Your email drip campaign workflow should consider elements like:
Email A/B testing is a method for testing whether one version of an email produces better results than another. These tests are important for determining whether an email’s body copy, image or video placement, subject line, preview text, or something else will impact how recipients react to it.
Here are a few A/B testing strategies to implement:
Email drip sequences should be relevant, timely, and specific to the recipient’s needs or wants. Because email drip campaigns have specific goals, you should always remove someone from the recipient list when they’ve completed the action you wanted them to complete.
Automation is a great way to handle this, especially when you have large email lists or multiple drip sequences running at the same time. Some email marketing platforms allow you to automatically stop sending a drip sequence when the recipient responds, clicks on a specific link, or fills out a form.
That way you can keep all your messaging relevant and give recipients a good experience with your messages and company.
It’s also important to follow general email marketing best practices when setting up your drip email marketing sequences.
Refine your drip email marketing strategy using analytics to track key performance indicators such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates. By analyzing these metrics, you can assess the effectiveness of your drip campaigns and pinpoint areas for improvement.
You can also use analytic tools to group subscribers based on their behavior, demographics and engagement, allowing for relevant and personalized messaging. Additionally, data insights can determine the optimal timing and frequency for sending drip emails, maximizing engagement and conversions.
In today’s digital space, the majority of email users access their inboxes on their mobile devices, making mobile optimization essential for drip email campaigns. Drip email marketing campaigns should have a mobile-friendly design that ensures a seamless user-experience by enhancing readability, fast loading times, and proper display across all screen sizes. By optimizing your drip sequence improves engagement, boosts click-through rates, and maximizes conversions.
Nutshell’s email marketing software plugs directly into your CRM data, so you can create highly targeted audience segments, track the impact of your emails in real-time, and manage all your communications out of a single tool. Get started for free!
The email marketing platform you choose plays a crucial role in the success of your drip campaigns, impacting both ease of execution and the ability to leverage data for meaningful business results. When selecting the right platform for your drip email marketing sequences, consider these key features:
Nutshell is a great platform to consider for drip email marketing because it seamlessly combines CRM and email drip sequence automation into one user-friendly system. Nutshell Marketing allows businesses to create trigger-based drip campaigns, segment contacts for personalized messaging, and track engagement with detailed analytics.
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No matter your industry or business model, email drip sequences should be a big part of your marketing strategy.
Particularly in the digital age we’re living in, you just can’t do without drip emails. They are the perfect tool for:
So yes.
You do need to run email drip campaigns. They’re the lifeblood of your email marketing.
Not a Nutshell subscriber yet? Try Nutshell and its email marketing features for free when you sign up for a 14-day trial—no credit card required. To see Nutshell’s features in action, register for a free 30-minute demo and product tour.
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The number of emails in your drip sequence will depend on lots of factors, like whether recipients are customers or prospects, the goal of your campaign, your industry, and more. Generally, drip sequences include between three and 10 emails, all with their own unique goal.
Like the number of emails in your drip campaign, the answer to this question depends on lots of things like the goal of your campaign. An email drip sequence should be long enough to successfully nurture a lead into completing the action you want them to take.
You can optimize a drip campaign in lots of ways, including tracking email metrics, leveraging A/B testing, and building everything in your campaigns around your goals.
The best triggers depend on your goals. Common high-performing triggers include form submissions, email sign-ups, content downloads, purchase completions, cart abandonment, website page visits, inactivity periods, and milestone events like anniversaries. Match your trigger to where leads are in their buyer journey for maximum relevance.
Drip campaigns typically perform better than broadcast emails. Aim for 45-55% open rates—anything above 50% is exceptional. Click rates average around 4-5% for automated sequences. If your rates are lower, focus on improving subject lines, sender names, and ensuring your content matches subscriber expectations and interests.
Drip campaigns are automated email sequences triggered by specific actions (like downloading a guide) and tailored to individual behavior. Newsletters are scheduled broadcasts sent to your entire list with the same content. Use drip campaigns to nurture leads through your sales funnel and newsletters to maintain ongoing relationships.
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