Email Drip Campaign Best Practices to Boost Your Sales

If you’re looking to put together a killer email drip campaign that boosts your sales and steals customers from your competitors you’re in the right spot.

Today I’m going to walk you through the process for putting together an email drip campaign that converts!

When Should You Use a Drip Email Campaign?

You should be adding email recipients to a drip campaign when they need to be nurtured along the purchase path. You could create a drip for securing a one-time sale or to nurture recipients along a path towards multiple upsells and cross-sells.

Who Should Be On Your Email Drip Campaign?

You should add anyone who raises their hand and says they are interested in what you have to offer. You would do this by asking them to opt-in for emails via your website or landing page.

As an example, let’s take a look at Flat Tummy Co. They sell teas, shakes, and other supplements that aid in weight loss. Because people are generally skeptical of weight loss products, Flat Tummy Co. uses email drip campaigns to nurture their recipients along the purchase path.

They ask people to opt-in to their email drip campaign by offering a 10% off discount.

Asking for an email address in exchange for a discount is a great way to grow your email list and get people onto your drip campaign.

Of course, if you’re going to use an offer in exchange for getting someone’s email address the first email in your drip campaign needs to pay off on that promise to send a discount code.

But what comes next? How do you decide what other emails to send in a drip campaign after the initial email? Let’s talk about that!

What Type of Emails Should You Send in Your Drip Campaign?

It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to sell enterprise-level software or a weight loss supplement, your drip campaign should include the same components: content that supports the sale.

Common components to include in a drip campaign include:

• Case studies
• Testimonials
• Before and after pictures
• Demo videos
• Offers for a free consultation
• Promotional offers

The second email in the Flat Tummy Co. drip campaign included before and after photos as well as customer testimonials.

While your product or service may not be right for before/after photos, most companies should have happy customer testimonials or a case study to share.

If you are running a startup and do not yet have testimonials, look to build some as soon as possible. Nothing can support the sale better than having happy customers willing to tell other customers that you are a good investment.

How Often Should You Send Emails in a Drip Campaign?

This is such a great question, and the answer will vary depending on your specific offering. You’ll want to space out the emails so that you’re not annoying your prospects, but at the same time, you want to stay top-of-mind while they are in the decision-making process.

The first email should go out immediately. It should be to pay off on whatever offer you made in exchange for an email address or to simply thank the recipient for requesting more information.

In this first email, let your prospects know about the next steps. For example, if they submitted their email to receive a sales demo, let them know what time frame they can expect for a person to reach out.

You’ll probably want to send the second and even the third emails within the first week that someone is added to the drip campaign. While you have their attention you should do everything possible to stay connected.

If they don’t purchase or otherwise engage with you in the first week, you can then begin to space out the frequency of your other drip emails so as to not be annoying. There is no set formula for how often you should be sending the drip emails.

My recommendation for most companies is to start with one email per week, and then increase or decrease the frequency based on the data. If you see that people are opening all of your emails then you might test sending them more frequently.

Where Should You Link Your Drip Emails?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is no set formula for where you should be linking your drip emails to. I can give you a few recommendations based on popular business types though.

In the Flat Tummy example, their 10% off drip email links to the Shop All page:

This makes a lot of sense for an e-commerce company because you don’t know the exact product that the person is interested in so you can’t drop them into a specific product page. However, you also don’t want to drop them onto the home page that includes all kinds of information that can get in the way of the sale.

I’m not saying that the home page isn’t important, but the person on your drip email campaign has likely already been to your home page during their first visit. They signed up for your emails, so they have already said “yes, this is cool, I’m interested.” Now you want to move them closer to the same by showing them a bunch of product choices.

If you are a software company, you might be sending drip emails that include references to:

• Case studies
• Testimonials
• Demo videos
• and similar

If you send a drip email for a case study, then you’ll want to link to the case study page. You always want to pay off on your promise.

It’s vitally important that you link directly to the case study (or whatever you promised) and not to the home page or some other page. Don’t want the prospect work to find the information that you want them to see to help move them closer to the sale.

Additionally, don’t put the content behind a form or some other gate. You should use gated content to move a prospect from anonymous to known. Once you already have the prospect’s contact information you should freely show them content to move them through your pipeline as smoothly as possible.

What Can I Do to Support Drip Campaigns?

While your drip campaigns are running you can, and in many cases should, still be maintaining other sales efforts.

Drip campaigns automate the email process, but there is still something to be said for picking up the phone and calling a prospect or networking with prospects at in-person events.

The most important thing you can do is have an outline for when your drip campaigns will go out and what the topic of those emails will be so that your other conversations with prospects can support the campaigns.

For example, if you send a case study email on Day 5 of the drip, you might follow up with a phone call on Day 6 to see what the prospect thought about the case study and to answer any questions he or she may have.

When Happens When a Drip Campaign Ends?

You’re only going to create so many emails for your drip campaign. When the drip ends what happens next?

If someone doesn’t purchase after you’ve sent them a series of emails you can push them into your newsletter campaign that way you can stay in touch with the prospect. You could also put them into a re-activation campaign.

A re-activation campaign can be a mix of email, phone, and retargeting ads that all work together to recapture the attention of the prospect. One great way to do this is to upload the emails that have exited your drip campaign and put them into a Custom Audience on Facebook.

A Custom Audience on Facebook matches email addresses to user accounts so that you can advertise to people specifically on your email list. You can show the people who exited without purchasing an ad or series of ads that get them excited about your product or service again.

Using ads is a key way to re-engage an email prospect that has gone cold because they may be purposely ignoring your emails. You could even be ending up in their Spam folder at this point, which means you’ll never reach them in their inbox again.

Running retargeting ads on social media gets you in front of them again without relying on them to open your email. Sure, they can scroll past your ad but they still saw it which means you had a chance to re-engage them. A chance is better than no chance at all.

Getting Started

Now that you know these key email drip campaign best practices it’s time to get to work.

Create an outline for all the emails you’d like to include in your drip campaign, and then start building them out!