Drip Email Series Timing and Strategy

Your business wants to build an email list that promotes your product and helps you to gain loyal customers. Simply sending proactive emails won’t help your business break through the barrier of competitors’ emails piling into your subscribers’ inboxes. If you’re wanting to raise your click open rate and boost sales then it’s time to implement a drip email series.

Before you set out to create your drip email series, it’s important that you get the timing down right. Your digital marketing team will need to set a purpose for the drip campaign, design it for easy readability, and know when your email series needs to be adjusted. An automated drip campaign is more than a mass emailing tactic. If done correctly, it offers a personalized experience to readers beyond that of your social media and blog post efforts. 

Drip email series is an investment of time and money, but it may just lead you into a wider profit margin. 

What Is a Drip Email Series?

An email drip campaign is a form of automated sales outreach. It’s an email series that is automatically sent to a specific audience after they take a specific action (what is considered email triggers). 

This email campaign is highly effective if you carefully strategize your content and the timing that emails are sent. Drip emails typically follow similar sequences:

The welcome email. This first email begins your drip email series. It’s usually following a potential customer’s purchase or enrollment with a service you provide. It’s a chance to show customer appreciation and introduce your brand’s voice in a more meaningful way.

The focused series unfolds. This email sequence digs deeper into the objective of your series. It may be promoting the future reveal of a new product or an upcoming remote training series your business will be hosting. This is an opportunity to feed information in bite sizes rather than one overwhelming ad. 

The clear call to action. All of the previous emails have led to this final call to action. The CTA will give readers the opportunity to click-through to your website, donation or registration page, to leave a review, etc. 

All drip emails in an email sequence are equally as important. The introduction allows subscribers to get to know your brand better, the focused series empowers readers to become educated on what your business does and why they should care, and the call to action enables a new customer to invest in your product, service, or cause.

Establish The Goal Of Your Drip Series

Will your email drip campaign be successful? In order to ensure that it is, your digital marketing team needs a clear vision on what it is you’re setting out to accomplish. Just like any other marketing strategy, you need to know the target of your automated drip campaign before you can try to hit the mark. For example:

• Are you aiming to promote a new product?
• Is your intention to increase brand awareness?
• Will your business use the drip campaign to conduct a customer survey?
• Are you hoping to use drip campaigns to reduce cart abandonment or sales reminders?
• Will your email drip marketing center around boosting sales via click-throughs?

Now, imagine trying to accomplish all of those goals in one marketing campaign. It would quickly become hectic; causing your campaign to fall flat. Your unsubscribe rate would rise and loyal customer gain would be minimal.

Drip Email Series Timing

Many of us have willingly entered our email addresses at checkout only to regret it six weeks later. We got added to an automated email list and emails just kept popping into our inboxes and after week two, we finally stopped opening them and opted to unsubscribe. 

Even though the timing of the drip marketing campaign is completely up to your business, there are best practices to consider. The old adage “Timing is everything.” plays a huge role in running a successful drip email series.

How can your team perfect the content going out and the timing? 

Coschedule has some guidelines for businesses after conducting research on drip email marketing campaigns.

B2C Marketer: Consider sending email bi-weekly to weekly. 67% of B2C companies send an automated email 2-5 times per month. That would loosely fit a bi-weekly or weekly schedule.

B2B Marketer: At least one automated email per month, and no more than five, appears to be considered an acceptable range. Tweak your approach, and adjust according to results.

It can be difficult to find the perfect balance of being consistent in your drip email series while also not saturating your customers’ inboxes. By creating an email marketing calendar, you can help your team focus on the timing that is right for your email drip marketing campaign.

Building Your Drip Email Series

Your drip email marketing series isn’t meant to replace your other email marketing efforts. The marketing campaign is like holding a magnifying glass to the central marketing needs of your business at the moment. There are vital parts to a successful drip email series.

Personalize your series. We all know the makings of a cold mass email versus those that are personalized. Your team can think of ways to personalize each email while making sure that your brand voice is evident. This can be done by adding the recipient’s first name and internal links based on their interests. For example, let’s say that someone downloads your newest free ebook  25 Self Care Tips for the Busy Professional. Your drip email series can kick off with a personalized email that includes links to your company’s latest blogs on self-care.

Eye-catching subject lines. The sentence in your subject line needs to be attention-grabbing without being sensational. It should be relevant to the content inside and not merely a teaser. This can take time to perfect, but it will be worth every minute that you invest in it. Using our ebook download example, the instant email to go out may have one of these subject lines: 

• We’re stoked you’re taking time for yourself
• Wait! Add these free bonus tips to your reading time!

Be precise. Having a captive audience to your drip email series can tempt your team to be too wordy and take up too much space. The emails in your series need to have minimal noise and be precise. Ask yourself what readers need to hear for you to accomplish your goal. Remember, you have multiple platforms to share your information. What is absolutely necessary for customers to know through your drip email series?

State your call to action. Presenting a clear CTA may be the most important part of your drip email series. The CTA is the bridge between what you want from readers and what they want to do. Keep your call to action brief. A branded button or click through that is clearly labeled is ideal. Keep the CTA visible in your email. Consider sprinkling the CTA throughout the email if your content is longer. Customers should know exactly what they are clicking through to. Use simple phrases like: 

• Get my copy!
• Download now!
• Get my 25% off!

Know when to adjust. Your open and click-through rates will tell you plainly how your drip email campaign is performing. Adjust your sails as necessary. It may mean tweaking the content or simply the email subject lines. Perhaps your call to action isn’t working. Make sure that your CTA buttons are large enough and placed strategically. 

Key Takeaways

Timing really is everything when it comes to drip marketing. Keep emails brief and always give customers a visible option to unsubscribe. The key to a successful drip email series is setting a specific goal before you start forming the email marketing campaign. What you need from customers will help you know what to say to them.

Your series hinges on timing—know your audience and what they are looking for. Base your drip email series on the fact that things change and your email campaign will need to be adjusted from time to time. Without a clear call to action, your customers won’t know what is expected of them or see any reason for your emails. 

Drip marketing is a powerful tool to use for your eCommerce business. It allows your customers to get to know you and provides space for you to get to know their needs better.