Complete guide to drip campaigns for your small business

Significance of drip campaigns

Drip campaigns are used by both well-established brands and small businesses. There are various reasons why drip campaigns are significant. For starters, they perform certain functions vital for a small business to survive.

Firstly, drip campaigns play a huge role in building trust between businesses and existing or prospective customers. This happens through constant communication with customers and prospects.

Constant communication is essential in building a relationship with customers and leads. It’ll help new leads know more about your business. That way, you’ll gradually show leads that your services can be trusted. Once you build trust with your customers, they are more likely to try your products and even stay loyal to your business.

Also, drip campaign emails are important in ensuring precision. They ensure prospects at different stages of the sales funnel can get the right email content at the right time. After segmenting your email list, you can run highly personalised drip campaigns that resonate with your target audience.

Benefits of drip campaigns

When implemented correctly, drip marketing campaigns offer numerous benefits to small and large businesses. Here are some key benefits of using drip campaigns for your business:

Automation

Drip campaigns involve email marketing automation, a valuable time-saving feature. Through email automation, you can remain in constant touch with consumers and prospects without having to send each message to your email list manually.

Also, through drip campaigns, you can implement an automated-follow up process. You can use follow-up emails to stay in touch with regular customers and leads at different stages of the sales cycle.

Once you’ve set the format, the automation tool will take care of the rest based on the triggers and schedule you have set. This frees more time for sales and marketing teams to focus on other tasks. In addition, when combined with other tools like task management software solutions, it leads to more team productivity and efficiency.

Improved engagement and customer loyalty

Customer engagement and loyalty are vital to businesses. A successful drip email campaign can result in better customer engagement. According to a study by Statista, there are 4 billion daily email users. With drip campaigns, you can effectively reach a good number of these email users.

Drip campaigns allow you to get timely and relevant content to your prospects and customers. In addition, since drip emails can be triggered by specific user actions, it becomes easier to get a response from customers and prospects.

For example, email sequences triggered after a purchase can inform customers about the product or other related products. This makes drip emails an effective communication strategy.

You can also pass across valuable content to new customers through drip sequences. This can influence your click rate positively with minimal effort. Sending personalised content to your target audience makes it easy to keep them interested.

Also, drip campaigns help in efficiently building relationships with customers. Keeping loyal customers is easier once they feel connected to your business. This makes drip campaigns an effective marketing strategy.

Nurturing leads

A consistent stream of relevant content is important in turning leads into customers. Effective drip campaigns nurture leads through personalised and scheduled content—enabling you to connect with prospects throughout the customer journey.

While potential customers may not always be ready to purchase at the initial stage, they’d need more time to get familiar with your business before making a buying decision.

Also, sending outdated information can be detrimental to your marketing campaign. With a drip campaign, you can ensure that doesn’t happen. Instead, you can easily edit or update your email content so that prospects receive relevant information when you want them to.

Drip campaigns are an effective method of promoting content such as articles, company newsletters, or product recommendations. Even better, they help you promote the right content to the right prospects. You can do this by segmenting email leads based on specific attributes, interests, or marketing goals.

To attract prospects, you need to make sure your business is visible. You can promote your content to the right prospects through a drip campaign. You can also incorporate other strategies that can help improve your business's visibility.

Strategies such as SEO and citation-building services can improve the visibility of your business. Increased visibility allows you to generate more leads and add them to your funnel. You can then proceed to nurture these leads through personalised drip campaigns.

Let’s now look at examples of drip campaigns.

Four types of drip campaigns to use

There are different types of drip campaigns that can be used in different situations. For example, drip campaigns can be used to contact customers after a purchase, welcome new customers, nurture prospects, and more. Here are four vital types of drip campaigns you can create for your business:

Welcome campaign

Welcome campaigns usually serve as the beginning of a relationship between a business and customers. After prospects have visited your website and entered an email address, the next step is to send welcome emails.

The primary goal of welcome campaigns is to introduce your business to prospects. It is important to provide valuable content at this stage to make a good first impression. You should provide content that will capture the customer’s interest.

For example, details about your business and links to key landing pages or helpful blog posts. TradeGecko’s welcome email is an excellent example of this:

The welcome campaign can determine whether your prospects will move your messages to the spam folder. The welcome campaign should include a series of personalised content. Many businesses offer incentives, such as special discounts and promos, along with a welcome campaign.

Abandoned cart campaign

At times, prospects may add items to their shopping cart only to end up abandoning the cart. This affects the sales funnel negatively.

Prospects abandon items in the cart for several reasons. For example, they might come across an unexpected charge during checkout. They may also abandon their cart if they’re not convinced by the security of your website.

An abandoned cart campaign seeks to reduce the cart abandonment rate and increase checkouts. This campaign encourages customers to complete the checkout and purchase the items in their cart.

To do this, create an automated email sequence that’s activated whenever a customer adds items to their cart but doesn’t check out. Here’s an example of an abandoned cart campaign by Zulily:

The first email can be sent some hours after the customer abandons their cart. This should include a friendly reminder about the product, the benefits, and other valuable information. You can also send a follow-up a day or so later.

Consider introducing incentives to make your cart abandonment drip emails more effective. For example, you could offer a time-limited discount of 5% if the prospect checks out within the next 48 hours.

Post purchase campaign

A post-purchase campaign is influential in customer retention. While making sales is important, what happens after customers make purchases is even more instrumental. To build brand loyalty, it is crucial to maintain a connection with customers after they make purchases.

A post-purchase drip campaign is a means of keeping your business fresh in the minds of your customers. This increases the likelihood that they will make another purchase in the future.

According to a study by Bain and Company, increasing customer retention rates by 5% leads to an increase in profits of at least 25%. A post-purchase campaign also increases the chances of getting referrals from your current customers. Check out the example below:

An effective post-purchase campaign includes a series of targeted emails to keep the customer’s attention on your business. For example, the message sequence can include related products, special deals, tutorials, or video content. A post-purchase campaign can also be an avenue to ask for customer feedback or reviews.

Promotional offers campaign

Consumers love good offers and discounts. You can take advantage of this through a promotional offers campaign. A promotional drip campaign includes a series of emails containing product offers, deals, or a sale.

Limited-time promos are a way to increase customer interaction and conversion. However, they can only be effective if they are communicated to customers on time. Drip campaigns can help you with that.

A promotional campaign should be specific and include a clear call to action. It should clearly state the benefits customers stand to gain from the offer. They should also create a sense of urgency.

Moo’s promotional campaign is a good example of this. It states a compelling offer and includes a clear call to action.

Many brands include a timer or countdown in their promotional campaigns to remind customers to take action.

In closing

Drip campaigns are effective for businesses that want to take their email marketing campaigns to the next level. The key benefits of drip campaigns include automation and improved engagement, and customer loyalty. They can also help you nurture leads and promote your content more effectively.

Examples of effective drip campaigns include welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, and promotional offer campaigns. You can use these campaigns to target both old and new customers.

Remember to track the performance of your campaigns and adjust them accordingly. Good luck.

About author

Daryl Bush is the Business Development Manager at Authority.Builders. The company helps businesses acquire more customers through improved online search rankings. He has extensive knowledge of SEO and business development.