For many businesses, that email looks identical for each subscriber on their entire list. From working with clients, I’ve learned that sometimes your email sometimes lands in the inbox of a customer who just purchased the product being promoted.  You could be marketing something to them that they have zero interest in, have already purchased or are just not in the right step of your sales funnel to purchase - at least right now!

Segment instead of broadcast

With Drip email marketing, you turn emails into conversations. Lots of them. You start with a personalized email with a call to action. Oh, and make sure you only send that email to the segment of your list that it applies to.

"Dear Julie, how's your summer going? Thank you for signing up for my newsletter! Did you know we have a special offer for new subscribers? Click here to see the new subscriber items. I think you will love them! Cheers! Beth."

Without personalization, all 1,000 members in your database receive the email simultaneously. It’s ok if you are building your list and you don’t know if someone is a new subscriber or not.  You can remedy that, but more on that shortly.

Back to Julie.  Let's give her 48 hours to check out the email. If she clicks, she'll immediately get put into the queue for a follow-up email.

"Hi Julie, I'm so glad you are interested in our new subscriber items. If you haven’t purchased yet (technically I should know this and wouldn’t even include that, but stay with me), we are offering a 40% discount on your first order. You'll have your choice of colors, sizes and features..."

However, if Julie opened the email, but never clicked, we'll wait and then and schedule a different follow-up email. Or if she DID purchase we don’t want to send her a discount of 40% off, even more so if the initial discount was only 25%.

"Hi Julie, Earlier today, I shared a special discount code for new subscribers. These are items from our brand new line and they come in your choice of colors, sizes, and features! We're really excited about the new line. I don't want you to miss out on the new subscriber discount! Click here - to take advantage of our welcome offer. Cheers! Beth.”

Now, there are always reasons to reach out to a lead or customer directly - but generally, we use email to reach many people with a single message. However, that single message can vary for different segments of your list based on actions they have taken. I don’t know about you but nothing irks me more than getting an email reminding me to buy something that I just bought a day ago.

Do email campaigns really work?

The research is an overwhelming yes.

Properly executed, targeted emails are 18x more likely to receive a response than a generic newsletter or mass emailing, according to Zapier. That means instead of 10 responses from your 1,000-person newsletter, you might get 180 responses from a personalized drip campaign. That's a huge difference. And since it's automated, everything can be timed to happen exactly when you want to.

(By the way, did you know that WHEN your email lands in someone's inbox has HUGE implications for whether it will be successful?  That’s a topic for another day.)

What are the different applications for a drip campaign?

As stated earlier, there are many different applications for a drip campaign.

• Wake up dormant email addresses with a call-to-action offer: "I know you're busy and we all get a lot of emails, so tell me, what kind of offers/information do you want to receive from me?"
• Email every customer who hasn't bought from you in six months and invite them to try a new product. Be sure to give a clear call to action, make sure to record any pages they visit and actions they take: "It's been a while since you bought our product... did you know we have introduced an amazing accessory?"
• Nurture existing Welcome campaigns:  "Thanks for buying our product. Let me introduce you to our service team, our line of accessories and 100% money-back guarantee."
• You offer online courses, tutorials or other instructional programming: "Announcing a low-cost, online course that will help you love my product even more"

In order to send the right message to the appropriate group of subscribers you definitely will need software that is capable of allowing you to assign tags, record events or user actions. This is the “personalization” (or segmentation) that I keep mentioning. The software gets bonus points if it allows for setting up conditions based on that information. If segmenting your users is not something you started with, no worries, you can always start now - I can even help you if you’d like.

Tick... tick... tick. Don't let another minute go by without finding out more. If you want more information getting started with segmentation or setting up your first email marketing campaign you can reach me here!