drip marketing

Complete Guide To Drip Marketing Campaigns, Best Drip Marketing Tools & Services!

Drip marketing is one of the most efficient ways to create an impact for your brand in the mind of your potential customers, without going on board with too many emails or SMSs which leave a bad impression on your brand and annoy your customers. Competition is ever-rising in the digital world, and it has become challenging to retain existing customers or attain new customers. Email marketing is the most promising and pocket-friendly way to engage your customers and inform them about the latest offers, and product updates. In this article, we will discuss everything to know about drip campaigns and later discuss the best drip marketing tools to plan your campaigns!

Drip marketing is known by many names like email autoresponders, marketing automation, etc. Drip marketing is a marketing strategy, mostly referred to in the context of email marketing, but it can also be referred to as an SMS or WhatsApp marketing strategy. It is more of a method of carrying out marketing rather than being more medium-centric. In drip marketing, a business sends “drips” a communication message to your users, customers, or prospects over a period of time.

Clients have a tendency to bounce off at first after discovering your product and service, drip marketing is a method to make your mark and keep reminding your clients about your product or service. And in the long run, they will start recognising your brand and eventually after multiple interactions they will convert and become paying customers. – SMTPServers.co

In this article, we will cover everything about drip campaigns for your email marketing efforts. We will discuss the following topics –

  1. What is a Drip Campaign?
  2. When to Use Drip Campaigns?
  3. Best Drip Marketing Softwares
  4. Setting up a drip campaign

1. What is a drip campaign?

A drip campaign in email marketing parlance is a strategy in which you send emails at some predefined specified timelines. Drip marketing as summed up by many marketers is the best way to create your brand presence. It is an automated technique and can be carried out using free email autoresponder tools available online. Autoresponder sends automated emails depending on specified triggers that your visitors start with their actions. Eg. If a customer put’s a specific product on a wishlist (you can send an email notification if the price decreases or you can send a discount coupon after 5 days of inactivity to trigger a buying reaction).

Check out how to use Free SMTP Server to send out your drip campaigns!!

drip marketing

The biggest advantage of drip marketing is that the complete funnel can be created beforehand. You can create a set of triggers and set them to send particular emails according to actions taken by your visitors. All the drip emails come from a queue of already written emails and you don’t have to write each one manually. Like transactional emails, you can easily personalize these emails for each customer to have specified names for all your users, to have a better user experience. How to send free drip emails using best tools available?

When sending drip campaigns make sure that you send them at the right time so that you get optimum results. In the article Best time to send emails + Send time optimisation guide with steps! you can find out how to send emails according to each individual’s past opening habits along with steps also I have analysed data from over 10 best email marketing services

drip
Drip Marketing To Increase Your Revenue

Drip marketing can be summed up as a strategy in which you “give your visitors the right information at the time they need it the most”. I hope you will develop a better understanding of this through this Eg. For Someone subscribed to the newsletter of your blog so using a drip email marketing strategy, you usually send a welcome email at first, then after a couple of days, you can send a mail about your recent blog updates. If you have a potential prospect visiting your website and looking at a particular product or service from the past month you can send him a mail with something like “top reasons to purchase the plan or service”.

Best drip marketing tools and softwares-

  • Get Response – Welcome & thank you emails, Drip campaigns, Birthday emails, Click & open followups, Contact tagging (FREE PLAN) | Review

  • Aweber – Email Automation, Basic list segmentation (FREE PLAN) | Review

  • Benchmark Email – Basic drip campaigns, Basic List Segmentation (FREE PLAN)

  • Active Campaign – Email Automation, Basic list segmentation ($15/Month)

I receive these questions almost everyday that does a drip campaign work? Why all the companies are focusing to create sophisticated funnels?

BECAUSE THEY WORK BEAUTIFULLY!

PERIOD!

You must be wondering that is email such a big market that companies put so much effort in collecting the email addresses? Here’s an interesting fact to give you an idea, we will be sending and receiving almost 347 Billion emails by the year 2023 according to statista.com.

Number of emails sent per year
statista.com

Email marketing gives you a $39 return on $1 of investment made in email marketing.

When I was doing research for this content I found that there have been several studies conducted on the effectiveness of drip marketing campaigns and it has been seen that drip campaigns give more than 10 times effective results rather than normal marketing emails. Also, the studies suggest that drip campaigns are more targeted and lead to better conversions.

The biggest advantage of email marketing, which I personally love is that you have the ability to reuse the content, unlike SEO! Duh!

Some of the ideas for segmentation of your drip can be like –

  1. For Educating Your Customers
  2. Discount Coupons – For Wishlists, Best Customers, Abandoned Carts
  3. Customers that visit a certain page but do not convert
  4. Announcements, New Features, Newsletters
  5. Password Reset, Update etc.

Advantage of drip marketing

As mentioned above that drip marketing is all about providing the information to your visitors at the time they are looking for it. When your users show a certain need or desire you can automate your funnels to provide them with the solution at that very moment. You can create drip email funnels on the basis of purchase history, demographics, landing page visit history, you can even send them on the basis of which emails they have read in the past. You can even automate a lot of these emails and send FREE EMAILS USING FREE EMAIL SERVERS.

For those who want to know what is an SMTP Server?

Drawback of drip marketing

When you send too many drip emails, your customers can get annoyed, so I recommend refraining from going overboard with your drip campaigns. It is a very powerful tool to drive up conversions, notify them about the new features etc.

Fact – The term Drip marketing is derived from drip irrigation in which you slowly provide the plants nutrients as and when it requires it with the help of an automated setup.

2.Best Drip Marketing Softwares

There are numerous email marketing companies across the world and every software “claims it to be the best”. But most of the players do not offer sophisticated email marketing funnels that actually let you conduct proper drip campaigns. There are actually dedicated drip marketing services available but please avoid those if you are just starting out they can be actually very tricky and difficult to understand at first.

Choosing the right email marketing software with good deliverability is most important and you can lose a lot of prospects if your emails do not reach the inbox that can directly affect the revenue.

If you are a technical person you can always implement your own custom email drip campaign.

I have chosen some of the most successful email marketing services around the world for your hassle free email campaigns.

Best Services for Sending Drip Marketing Campaigns –

  1. Get Response – Welcome & thank you emails, Drip campaigns, Birthday emails, Click & open followups, Contact tagging (FREE PLAN) | Review
  2. Aweber – Email Automation, Basic list segmentation (FREE PLAN) | Review
  3. Benchmark Email – Basic drip campaigns, Basic List Segmentation (FREE PLAN)
  4. Active Campaign – Email Automation, Basic list segmentation ($15/Month)
  5. Sendinblue Marketing automation workflows (Unlimited contacts) (FREE PLAN) | Review | Pricing | Discount Coupons | Alternatives | Vs Mailchimp
  6. Constant ContactReview | Pricing | Discount Coupons | Alternatives | Vs Mailchimp
  7. Elastic Email – Free UNLIMITED EMAILS TO 5000 Subscribers | Review
  8. Pepipost – 150,000 emails | $17 | Best For Developers
  9. Omnisend – 15000 free emails every month
  10. SendX – Unlimited emails for up to 1000 subscribers

SendinBlue – Send 9000 Free Emails Every Month

sendinblue website

Number one on our list is SendinBlue for sending drip campaigns. It has a very user-friendly UI to use and set up your drip campaigns. You can create powerful funnels using Sendinblue.

Sendinblue offers very pocket-friendly pricing and lets you sell 9000 free emails every month, but these are limited to 300 emails per day. If you opt for the paid plan then for $25 it lets you send 40,000 emails every month. You can check out the detailed Sendinblue pricing here.

Complete Guide To Drip Marketing Campaigns, Best Drip Marketing Tools & Services! 1
  1. Sendinblue offers very powerful email automation. You can create very powerful flows using SendinBlue.
  2. You can also use sendinblue to send transactional emails. You can check out Sendinblue’s Transactional email feature here.
  3. With Sendinblue CRM’s advanced features you can create lists like the time of visit, source of acquisition etc.
  • Constant Contact

constant contact new logo

Constant Contact is one of the most popular drip marketing services out there, it’s a jewel that needs no introduction. It is the Robert Downey jr of email marketing! Why? It’s Popular, Classy & Got Style!

ConstntContract offers 60 days free trial to let you use all its features, Its core plan starts at $9.99, which lets you send unlimtied emails/month for upto 500 contacts. And if you go for its Plus plan then it starts with $45/month for upto 500 contacts with all features Check out all Constant Contact plans here

Constant Contact Pricing
constant contact pricing

If you opt to pay for annual plans you get a discount of 15%.

constant contact pricing plans
  • Trigger drip emails according to your customer’s responses. Like, Send emails for abandoned carts, send a welcome mail, send a discount coupon to a person that is visiting a particular product page for say 15 days, email resend emails to recipients who haven’t opened your emails etc. If you want to read more about constant contact features in detail.
    constant contact feature
  • Send segmented emails, create powerful lists, nurture leads, welcome your customers, engage your clients, etc. Check out all the constant contact automation features hereconstant contact automation
  • Elastic Email

elastic mail logo
elastic mail logo

Elastic Mail is one of the most reasonably priced services I have seen in my entire life! They Let you send UNLIMITED EMAILS to 5000 contacts for just $15 per month. 

Spend $60 for unlimited emails to 20,000 contacts! Isn’t it amazing? I know! Right?

For those who don’t trust me! Duh! Check out the pricing yourself!

Elastic Email Pricing
elastic mail pricing
  1. It offers some of the most powerful tools to help you increase sales. Design emails, create campaigns and set autoresponders. Read in detail about the feature here
  2. You can Automate your emails for triggering responses by sending personalized emails. Try Nowelastic mail automation
  3. You can even integrate it with WordPress website using Plugin 
  • PepiPost

pepipost
pepipost

Pepipost is a new entrant in the email world but it is equally effective as its counterparts. Pepipost with some of the most important features out there is surely the new fad of the email world. Pricing is just amazing. You can send 150,000 emails for just $25. You can also get if you buy their annual plan you get a 30% discount and the most basic plan will be for just $17.5 per month. Check It Out Here!

pepipost pricing
  1. The biggest feature of PepiPost is that your backup is stored for a full 90 days far more than what most of the other email services offer.
  2. You can even Send Drip emails with ease using its API. Read all about  integrating Pepipost with popular frameworks
  3. Pepipost even supports open-source software like the mautic & mailtrain. You can Read in detail here
  • Omnisend – 500 free emails every month

Omnisend logo

Omnisend in one more which you can use to create powerful drip marketing campaigns. Personally, I am more like a “looks sell” kinda guy but this particularly got my attention. I say they have a scope of changing their UI and look and feel of the website. But the features are powerful. Its standerd paid plans start with just $16 with upto 6000/emails for up to 500 contacts. And if your requirements are higher then you can go for its pro plan, starts with $59 unlimited emails for up to 2500 contacts, it also offers SMS Campaigns that lets you send Up to 3,933 SMS/month & Automation, Email Automation & Audience Segmentation and lets you send 15000 emails every month.

Check out there plans here.

Omnisend Pricing
Omnisend Pricing
  1. It offers some of the most powerful marketing automation features. You can send very narrow targeted email sequences and triggered emails. Powerful API’s for eCommerce for sending lightning fast email responses to each trigger. check out the Email Campaigns feature here.
  2. Target more interested customers differently and less interested customers differently based on their open rate. Customize your messages differently for prospects to improve your sales. Check out Omnisend’s Segmentation Feature Here.

SendX

Complete Guide To Drip Marketing Campaigns, Best Drip Marketing Tools & Services! 2

You can use SendX to create sophisticated email drip campaigns. They also offer features like A/B split testing and Deliverability Booster (for better open rates). You can create email web forms, form automation & page targeting using SendX. The best thing about SendX that I found was it gives you advanced automation & segmentation even in its business plan. Along with 24X7 email support.

The biggest drawback of SendX is the lack of any free plan. They offer trial plan just for 14 days.  You can avail up to a 25% discount on the annual plan.

3. When to Use Drip Campaigns?

Drip marketing can be used for both SMS, WhatsApp, and Email marketing. But we will focus on drip marketing using email campaigns for this article. So let’s take up some practical examples on when you can use drip campaigns? I am sure you will have a good understanding of how you can use drip campaigns to get more conversions after reading this section –

  1. Welcoming Your Customers
  2. Teaching and Educating
  3. Abandoned Carts
  4. Order Confirmations
  5. Upselling Renewals
  6. Product Engagement
  • Welcoming Your Customers

Complete Guide To Drip Marketing Campaigns, Best Drip Marketing Tools & Services! 3

A welcome email is the first interaction that you do with your visitors. As the old idiom goes – the “first impression is the last impression“. A welcome email is a perfect place to introduce your product/service. Keep it simple and compact and to the point. Check out the example of Sendinblue’s welcome email that it sends when you sign up for their service –

welcome email sendinblue
SendinBlue Welcome Email

When someone signs up for your newsletter, product, or service, you can send an automated email using the drip marketing strategy to introduce them to your product. You can combine the latest achievements, latest blog updates, most visited pages, etc. in your welcome email.

Read about the best email services with our latest blog 

Sign-ups can be to your newsletter or your trial plan etc. If your leads sign up for your trial plan you can send a welcome email, educating them about your product and its features that can help them in increasing their revenue. You can share some case studies on how people are using your product etc. It has been seen through numerous studies that welcome email has one of the best opening rates for all emails.

  • Teaching and Educating

    Every business aspires to earn more revenue and that can be achieved by pursuing your prospects and educating them about the benefits of your product. The second step of any Drip campaign, after welcoming your leads, is educating and teaching your leads about what they can achieve by using your product. Each email should target something specific you can tell them how to increase more revenue, solve a problem etc.
Educating your customers
Getrevo.com

Here are some ways in which you can use the onboarding series of drip campaigns –

  • Upselling a more premium plan of your product
  • Telling success stories about your product
  • Most read blogs
  • Signing up, to get the latest blog updates
  • Free e-book
  • Abandoned Carts

Abandoned Cart Emails
Image by bronto.com

Abandoned cart emails is like a deal ready to close. Once your customers have shown their desire to buy something you can easily pursue them to give the little nudges they need to convert.

As per a study conducted on the abandoned cart statistics, which states that almost 80% of your visitors leave their items in carts. That’s a lot of potential customers!! As per barilliance.com in 2018 it was around 78%. That means that 3/4 of customers choose to leave the website without making a purchase.

stay at home email
flipkart

Drip campaigns can help you convert abandoned cart customers. You can automate the triggers to set off on the particular actions your visitors take. Eg. You can send them an email if the price drops, or a discount coupon.

You drip marketing efforts can lead to increased sales according to a SaleCycle study on abandoned carts that shows that your abandoned cart emails have an average 46.1% open rate which amounts to CTR of 13.3% and you increase your revenue by $5.64 per email. If you have a strong drip email in place for abandoned carts you can increase your revenue exponentially for sure.

  • Order Confirmations

When you close a deal or have retained your existing customer, you might think that your work is done but wait hold your horses!! The work never ends in digital marketing. Now is the time to send your drip email dose and show your customers that you care, just send a thank you email. Something that shows that you have and you are humbled by there renewal. You want to earn more revenue through your existing clients, you can start upselling your service or plan (tell your customers what they are missing out, by comparing their existing plan to the more premium plan). You can always enlighten them about the new feature that you have introduced or you are thinking of introducing. Additionally, you can even send free custom merch as a part of a loyalty program with your customers name on it.

Remember Each Email Is An Opportunity To Close a Sale – SMTPServers.co

The confirmation emails should be instant for sure otherwise your customers can get distressed once they have made a purchase and they haven’t received any confirmation.

order-confirmation-emails-Forvere21

God Forbid! It can have catastrophic outcomes! You don’t want your customers to have a bad experience, do you?

Trust me this is utmost important | Been There! Done That! The outcome wasn’t Pretty!

That’s why I have compiled a list of best email marketing services for sending emails

via GIPHY

  • Upselling Renewals

Upselling
Image by Getresponse.com

Let’s take an example for your better understanding. Eg. Suppose you have a platform for booking tickets. Here’s how you can use drip campaigns to boost your revenue through upselling –

  • STEP 1 – Send a confirmation email just a couple of days before the event and pitch additional services you offer.
  • STEP 2 – Once the event has occurred ask your customers for reviews whether they like your service? Suggestions if they have any? Perhaps a coupon for future travels!
  • STEP 3 – When a customer decides to do a renewal with you that means he is happy with your service and needs a little nudge to get him to buy a more premium service or product so it is absolutely the right time to pitch him about your a notch higher plan. What additional features your upgraded plan has.

Read more about Upselling here

  • Product Engagement

Marketing is all about content creation, the more focused and problem-solving content you produce the more you will be able to engage your prospects. Marketers have been struggling with the attention span of the visitors, to achieve this email marketing is the best way to engage your visitors. Product engagement emails refer to emails that trigger a response to your customers to visit your website and check out your website.

Grammarly re-engagement

Let’s take an example of how you can use product engagement emails to your benefit, lets take Social media sites as an example, social media sites use product engagement emails as a very successful way to drive traffic to their websites. Eg – Suppose someone on Facebook tagged you, FB send’s you an alert immediately. It is a part of their drip marketing strategy in which they are trying to solicit a response from you. These type of messages can help you improve your brand presence.

As per an article on marketing land in which it is explained how LinkedIn uses autoresponders for skill endorsements where it is highlighted why drip marketing is important? Because it gives a positive warm feeling!

Similarly, “We miss you” emails can work to triggering a guilt feeling, so you don’t leave the subscribers list, you can try it yourself and check out the results for yourself.

We-miss-you-emails
Duolingo

4.Setting Up a Drip Campaign

Now that you have developed a better understanding of What are drip campaigns and drip marketing? Let’s look at how you can set up your drip campaigns in 5 easy steps-

A word of caution: Never send too many emails or irrelevant emails they will start dropping out like a swamp of bees, your customers should start enjoying receiving a mail from you (Send relevant emails, Be funny it helps, keep  it simple and clean)

1. Identifying Your Prospects

Drip campaigns give optimum results when you can identify small sections and provide them will relevant information. Identifying their groups is the utmost important recipe for a successful email campaign. Thus increasing your revenue. Let’s discuss some email drip campaign examples as well.

According to me, your drip campaign can be broadly divided on the basis of two factors –

  1. Actions are taken on your website
  2. Demographic targetting

Actions are taken on your website

Action taken on your website means that your customer has performed the desired task and set off a trigger email on your website. Learn how to get people to take specif actions here. Let’s look at some of the actions –

  1. A user through pop-up form subscribe to your newsletter – Set’s off a welcome email trigger
  2. A customer either renew a service or buys a new product or service. – Send a purchase receipt using a well-designed receipt template that reinforces brand identity and provides important details.
  3. Prospect has opted for your free plan – Send an educational email about the features they get in the paid plan
  4. A visitor downloads your app – Educated them about your app through a series of emails

Demographic targetting

It means targetting your prospects as per the timeline of there actions For Example-

  1. Suppose the user has signed up for your product, but you haven’t heard from them – Send them an email telling about the next step
  2. A user is hovering on a particular product page but hasn’t bought it yet – Send them something about how it adds to there life

A study conducted by Vero in which they have covered a great way to customise your drip marketing emails and provide users with the information at the time they need it the most.  It is very important to track your users and analyse the trends to server them in an efficient way.

Try segmenting your audience on the basis of loyalty, how often they visit, duration of their presence with you, how often they buy your product? etc

Here’s a guide on lead nurturing

2. Customising your emails for a better experience

I think you have a fair idea about how to target your customers? Once you know how frequently or how many emails you want to send them? Let’s begin with how to write those emails to have a better user experience?

The big question is what does a user want or expect? and to fulfil his need is the primary concern!

Writing an email that connects and hits the right spot!

Write an email copy that is elegant, simple and your user connects! Now you should have a synergy with the emails that you send with the brand image that you have created. I have found an amazing article on how to write emails!

3. Planning Your Campaign

Now that you have figgered out how to write your emails? and What points to consider when customizing your email?

Now comes the logical questions (Most Important Part) it can make or break your email drip campaigns!

From when to send your first email? to how frequently you should send your emails?

Your email drip campaign goal should be clear in your mind. Let’s answer some of your questions?

How frequently you should send the emails?

If you send too many you will see lot’s of unsubscribers, if you send an appropriate amount as and when it will increase your revenue. So it does play a very important role! Just imagine in your mind first before compiling your campaign what does your user requires?

I have just the appropriate article for you that will help you figure out the frequency of your emails

Figuring out the sequence of your emails?

Imagine sitting on a branch and cutting it off by mistake!

drawn-business-man-cutting-branch-sitting-freehand-drawing-off-dollar-tree-crosscut-saw-metaphor-166844803

Sound’s lame but this is how marketers feel when they get entangles in their email drip campaigns. I have seen that happen more often than imagined.

Imagine getting a discount coupon for some products that you have bought?

Make sure you send your emails on the basis of the segmentation we discussed above.

How do I find out if my campaigns are working?

While setting up complex email drip campaigns it can be confusing to check if your campaigns are working? How can you check if there is an improvement in your conversions?  That is goal setting and tracking conversions is very important. You can start with analyzing the CTP, open rate, conversions etc. for starters.

General FAQ

What is drip marketing?

Drip Marketing is a technique in which you slowly send drips (communications via Email, SMS, or WhatsApp, etc) at the right time to trigger a reaction from your prospects. It helps you increase your sales drastically when taken into practice properly. Examples of drip campaigns – Welcome Email, Account Verification, Abandoned Cart emails, Educational Emails.

What does drip stand for in marketing?

Drip means a strand of communication (messages, emails or SMS) that you send to your customers and prospects. It helps create your brand presence in the mind of consumers and they are likely to convert when they see your brand again once they bounce off. Drip marketing can be used for various purposes like educating your customers, telling them about your latest deals etc.

What is the drip model?

A drip model refers to a model where you send communications or drips to your customers in an orderly manner as and when they require the information. Like, Nudge your customers about features of your paid version when they signup for a free trial, If a person is visiting a particular product page for the last one month but not purchasing send him a discount coupon, etc.

How does a drip campaign work?

A drip campaign works by sending short engaging and relevant information to your users at the time when they are expecting it. It leads to triggering an action from them. Like downloading an app, upgrading to more premium plans, etc. A Drip campaign is a powerful tool that marketers use to increase there sales. I would say if done properly get ready to see a spike in revenue for sure. Drip Campaigns work magically. They help in creating a brand presence. It works simply by targeting your customers on the basis of triggers that they trigger. You create a drip campaign flowchart. Each trigger leads to a set of email series. Example If customers signed for a free trial – Educate them about the features of your paid version, how your product is superior to your competitors etc.

How long should a drip campaign be?

It totally depends on your product, but I would suggest a drip campaign message should be short, engaging and relevant. When you talk about the duration of a complete drip campaign, you shouldn’t stop pursuing your client’s until they unsubscribe. If your prospect has completed an event like completing a trip ask them to review the hotel, give them a discount coupon for the next trip.etc.

What are some drip campaign examples?

Purchase order receipts, password resets, abandoned carts, welcome mails, educational emails, upselling emails, targeting customers that visit a particular product page by sending a discount coupon.

How do you do drip email marketing?

Send relevant emails at the right time. It is as simple as the right information at the right time! You can easily perform a drip marketing campaign using any of the good emails services. Eg – SendinBlue, Constant Contact.

What is the marketing drip campaign?

Marketing drip campaign refers to a campaign where you target your prospects or customers slowly by sending them the relevant information at the appropriate time when they most expect it. The drip campaigns are focused on triggering a reaction from users. It also helps smartly create your brand presence in the mind of consumers.