5 Powerful Reasons Why You Need a Drip Email Campaign

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One of the most powerful ways of using email to grow your business is by creating a drip campaign. In this episode, I’ll walk you through a few different types of email series you can create and discuss five powerful benefits of using drip email.

What is drip email?

If you’ve ever signed up for anything on the internet, chances are you’ve seen an email drip campaign in action.

An email drip campaign is simply a series of emails dripped out over time.

Marketers have been using this tactic since the early days of the internet. The idea is to provide useful information to the people on your email list without deluging them all at once.

For example, it wouldn’t be a good idea to email them 30 articles you’ve written all on the same day. But you could send them one article a week, every week for the next six months. Now you’re providing value over time without being annoying.

You can slowly drip out all kinds of goodness, provide tons of value, and stay relevant in your audience’s eyes.

What kinds of drip email campaigns can you create?

You can get as creative as you like when coming up with ideas for your drip email campaigns. Just be thinking of how you can provide something that your ideal client or customer would find super helpful or valuable.

Here are a few ideas to consider:

Welcome series
This is the most basic type of email drip campaign. You create a series of emails that help to welcome your new subscriber. For example, you could set up a welcome series that people would get after they’ve downloaded your lead magnet. Your lead magnet might help them solve a particular problem, and your welcome series could help them further by providing more even information around that particular topic.

Follow-up series
Similar to a welcome series, a follow-up drip email campaign will serve to keep in touch after a subscription, transaction, or inquiry. Say you’re a consultant or coach and someone fills out a form on your website. You could follow-up with a series of emails providing information on how to schedule a session, how to prepare for their coaching call, and what it looks like to work with you.

Onboarding series
An onboarding series can be sent out after someone joins a group, a membership site, or signs up for a service plan. I recently upgraded my iPhone 6 to the new iPhone XS, and I also changed my Verizon plan at the same time. In the following days, I received a number of emails from Verizon. One email showed me how to login to my account and how to get support, another was showcasing accessories I could purchase, and another email even offered me 6 months of Apple music for free.

Educational series
You could create a series of emails around a particular topic to educate your audience. This is a fantastic way to showcase your expertise. For example, if you’re a physical therapist, you could send a series of emails around the topic of injury prevention. Give pointers on how to prevent injuries at home, at the gym, and at work.

Training series
This is a little more focused than a general education series. You can provide training on a very specific topic over the course of a few days or weeks. You could teach people how to get started knitting, or how to choose a great bottle of wine, or how to make the perfect pour-over coffee. Again, this is an amazing opportunity for you to share your expertise.

Course
You could create an entire course and send it out via email. I did this earlier this year with my 21 Days to Build a Better Brand course. Sign up and you’ll get one email each day for 21 days. Each email contains one simple action step for you to take each day to help you build a more successful, sustainable brand. I’ve received a lot of great feedback on the course. People have said it was very helpful. The beauty of it is that I didn’t have to create a full-blown online course. I just created the emails and set them up to go out automatically.

Challenge
Challenges are very popular these days. The idea here is to challenge your audience to try something or take some action for a period of time. I’ve seen some very effective challenges recently like Simple Green Smoothies 7-Day Smoothie challenge. You get 7 days of smoothie recipes, a shopping list, and a guidebook, all dripped out over the course of a week.

Post-purchase series
You could send a series of emails after someone purchases your product or service. Ask how everything is going with their purchase, if they are satisfied, or if they have any questions. This is also a great chance to ask them to write a review of your product or your business.

Upselling or cross-selling series
These are another variety of post-purchase emails. They could be part of your post-purchase series or you could create a stand-alone series. The idea here is to offer your customers additional products, similar to ones they’ve already purchased. If you own a yoga studio and someone signs up for one class, you could send emails offering a package of 10 classes, or a monthly membership.

Abandoned cart series
If you run an online store, abandoned carts are a problem. People add items to their cart and then never make the purchase. What if you could send these people a couple of emails nudging them to revisit their cart and finish purchasing? You’d recover a lot of lost revenue. This is also a great way to ask your customers why they didn’t buy. You might learn that your shopping cart process is clunky or your shipping prices are too high.

Event promotion series
If you have an event coming up, a drip email campaign is a good way to let people know what’s happening while also building excitement. You should plan these out well ahead of time and increase the excitement level as you get closer to the event. I’ve even seen conferences that send out early-bird pricing opportunities six months or a year before the actual event.

5 powerful reasons why you need a drip email campaign

Now that you have some ideas for the different types of drip email campaigns you can create, you might want to know how all of this can help you and help your customers. Here are five powerful reasons why you need a drip email campaign:

1. To create brand awareness

Perhaps the biggest benefit of setting up a drip email series is to create brand awareness. You can communicate directly with your audience over the course of weeks, months, or even years.

They will see you in their inbox regularly, and learn all about you and how you do business. This kind of brand awareness is much more effective than occasionally seeing your posts on social media.

2. To build trust and credibility

Another powerful reason why you need to use drip email is to instill trust and credibility in you and your brand. As I mentioned above, there are so many ways you can showcase your knowledge and expertise using drip email.

Keep being helpful, and keep providing real value for your audience. Give them something they want, something that helps them solve a problem or moves them from point A to point B.

Over time, they will start to trust you more and more, and that trust means that they’re more apt to purchase from you than from your competitors.

3. To create and nurture leads

“Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts.”

-SilverPop/DemandGen Report

When you create a series of emails, you are essentially generating leads for sales. Over time you can provide value, nurturing those leads.

Think of a drip email series like having a salesperson on your team dedicated to following up with potential clients. But, instead of paying a full-time employee, it’s all handled automatically via a well-thought-out email campaign.

4. To generate more revenue

Of course, the big idea behind all of this is to grow your business. Setting up an effective drip email series will definitely help you generate more revenue.

Increased brand awareness leads to more trust and credibility, which creates better leads, which result in more sales.

5. To save you time and effort

My favorite benefit of a drip email series (besides more sales of course) is the amount of time and effort I save. I can create a series, set it up once, and then the whole process is on auto-pilot.

A drip email series is an awesome tool for solopreneurs. It allows you to do a lot more with less, like automating most, if not all, of your sales process.

I use ConvertKit for all of my automated email needs. They specialize in these types of campaigns and make the whole process easy to set up and manage.

My big takeaways

• Drip email campaigns are a great way to help your audience and show off your expertise.
• There are many types of drip email series you can create. Pick one or two and try them out. See what works and what doesn’t, you can always change things up.
• Drip email is a must for small business owners, especially solo entrepreneurs. Automating this process allows you to do a lot more with less.
• If done properly, drip campaigns will lead to more sales and help you grow your business.

What types of email drip campaigns have you tried? Which sound appealing to you? Drop a comment and share your thoughts below or in our Facebook group.