Harnessing the power of drip campaigns allows you to reach a customer at the moment they want to engage with your brand. The right time to communicate with your audience is the mystery that all marketers try to solve, but automated emails can take away some of the guessing.
What is a drip campaign?
Drip campaigns, or automated email campaigns, give you the ability to reach a customer at planned times of engagement. You can welcome someone to your email list, send requested information like an ebook, or start an education series, all with a quick sign-up and a click of a button. These can be one-off emails or a series of emails that follow different triggers.
At Classic City Consulting, we strongly encourage our clients to manage email campaigns with MailChimp. Not only are they an Atlanta-based company, but they also have a wide array of tools allowing you to connect with customers in different ways depending on their needs and wants.
For automated campaigns, the setup is easy! Let’s walk through it together.
The Basics
Setup your Account
If you don’t already have a MailChimp account, the setup is free and easy. The forever free plan allows you up to 2,000 subscribers, and you have the ability to access all their campaign types with drag-and-drop sign-up forms.
Create a Subscriber List
Once your account is active, create a list for your subscribers. Within MailChimp, you to create a sign-up form that can be embedded on your website or included as a link that takes subscribers to the sign-up page.
Now, set up your campaign!
Click on “create an email” and choose “Automated” email. To keep it simple for now, this is where you will select “Welcome message”.
Campaign Triggers
You can select from a number of different triggers based on the information you already have about customers (like sending a “Happy Birthday” email) or it can be triggered by an activity that the customer engages in, like requesting more information. Let’s focus on emails that are triggered by signups to take a customer through an entire drip campaign cycle.
Importing subscribers
If you have a list of subscribers that you want to be included in your drip campaign, wait to import them until AFTER your campaign is ready to go. You will select “Trigger when subscribers are imported” on your setup page.
Time for Design
When designing your email, establishing the purpose is essential in making sure that important and relevant information in included and highlighted. Make sure that reason you are sending your email is above the fold.
If you are creating an email series, storyboard the desired path that a customer will take within this campaign. Decide how many emails you will be sending, what value the customer will gain from each email, how frequently they will be receiving emails, and when to stop trying to engage.
This is a good example:
Hit Start
Sometimes getting started is the scariest part of the entire process. Once all your emails are in place, you will select “Confirm”. Check that the list you are using is correct and that your trigger is set to what you want. If everything looks good, you can click “start workflow” and you are done! Import any contacts that you want included in the first email send to the list you created and then you can walk away knowing that you have set-up an automated marketing campaign that will work for you while you’re running your business.
Drip campaigns allow you to consistently engage with a customer at the touch of a button. They will help you keep customers up-to-date on events, provide them with discounts, or give them information they may be interested in. Making sure your campaign is setup right from the start will ensure that they are getting what is the most valuable to them and creating a positive association with your brand.