Email marketing is still one of the best ways to keep your customers engaged in the buying process and involved with your business. As the owner of a successful company, odds are you don’t have time to track emails sent to customers and respond when appropriate manually.
Luckily for all of us, automated drip campaigns can be used to keep your customers in the loop based on their behavior on your website, or in a specific timed order when they directly sign up for your email list.
We want to explore the different ways you can use this email marketing strategy to grow your audience and help keep customers and subscribers engaged in the business.
Always Start with a Welcome Email
A basic welcome email can greatly increase the likelihood that subscribers will interact with the content you send them. On average, 74 percent of customers look for a welcome email when they join your email list. This means your subscribers are 33 percent more likely to engage with your business if they get a welcome email right after providing their email address.
Your welcome email doesn’t have to be extensive to be effective. In most cases, when a company sends out a welcome email, it’s just thanking the subscriber for signing up for the email list, and then perhaps giving them a small taste of things to come over the next few days, weeks, or even months.
Here’s a great example of a welcome email from LawTrades.
Some key points that you should notice here:
- The email has the company brand logo
- The headline is clear and concise
- They thank the subscriber
- There is a clear call-to-action
We will talk about calls-to-action soon enough, but it’s crucial that you start every single drip campaign to new subscribers with a friendly email that thanks them for their time and provides a sense of direction.
Use a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)
A clear CTA is a surefire way to increase engagement within your audience. As you’re writing up the emails that will eventually get sent to the people who subscriber, think about what purpose each email will serve.
As you progress through the drip campaign, your goal should be to navigate the user through your sales funnel and hopefully land a conversion. Since CTAs are the prime way to let customers know what you want them to do next, make sure you include one in every email that you send out.
Keep in mind that your CTA doesn’t necessarily have to involve money. Sometimes a simple action like “Read more on (topic) here!” in an alternate colored box can draw the lead down the path of engagement and click through to find out more about the topic you’re discussing.
Provide Value
If you want to make sure that prospects continue to read your emails and navigate through the sales funnel, you must provide something of value. There are some different approaches you could take in this situation.
Some of the most common ways business owners provide value to their readers is by offering information. Things like free e-books, access to exclusive webinar content, or even the ability to access certain parts of your site through gated content–unless they subscriber– is a great way to encourage the customers to follow through and sign up with your email list.
If you’re able to offer your customers something of value, chances are they will want to come back to your website to see what kind of valuable content, products, or services you can offer them in the future.
As you can see here, Overstock uses on-site advertising to draw customers into their email marketing list.
After the lead signs up, they are getting a 15 percent coupon code as well as “exclusive offers.” The value here is that the customer will save money on their order, and they may be eligible for future offers in their inbox. Overstock can now help this customer and send them relevant content as well as occasional coupons to keep them engaged with the brand and encourage them to check their inbox in anticipation of their next coupon or flash sale.
Conclusion
It’s hard to deny the success of drip campaigns in the email marketing world. More business owners than ever before are using these marketing techniques to bring in new customers as well as to keep current customers engaged. As you experiment with different drip campaigns within your lead segments, you’ll learn what kind of content your customers expect from your emails, and that will help you deliver excellent customer experiences.