Email Marketing Drip Plugin WordPress has taken up the mantle of becoming the best email drip marketer in the industry. The company is not new, but it has only recently begun to attract the attention of people in the email marketing industry. Its ability to integrate with BigCommerce makes it one of the best tools out there for marketers who are looking to increase their success rate in converting customers into repeat buyers.
Email marketing is a great way to increase your sales and grow your customer base. It’s a reliable and efficient way for you to connect with your customers. Email marketing can make a positive impact on your business, but it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to set up. There are so many different tools, integrations, and other things you need to get started.
Email drip campaigns are an important component in your overall email marketing strategy that result in better email open-rates, click-throughs and engagement. They are one of the tried-and-tested email marketing techniques that simply work.
Email drip marketing campaigns can be applied to various forms of email marketing activities including newsletters, product/service updates, abandoned shopping cart emails, festive promotions, and many more.
In this article, we’re going to talk about the various types of email drip campaigns and how to build them using MailChimp. Finally, we’re going to create our very own email drip campaign for WPExplorer customers, illustrating how you can use drip marketing to promote and increase conversions for your own WordPress products.
Introduction to Email Drip Campaigns
Have you ever wondered why we use the word ‘drip’ in email drip campaigns? (I’ve always wondered about that.) Well, it’s inspired by drip irrigation – a water harvesting technique in agriculture, where water collected and passed into the soil, very slowly. The water is literally collected drop by drop and is made to reach directly at the root of the plant.
Drip campaigns aren’t only limited to email – the term also applies to direct mail and phone-based marketing, too. But let’s focus on email drip campaigns, shall we?
The Challenge with Simple Email Newsletters
When it comes to email newsletters, marketers have a common problem. When someone subscribes to the newsletter, they only see the new emails, and not the ones that were sent in the past. This problem is amplified in email marketing campaigns of various products and services. Without a email drip campaign, subscribers sometimes miss out on vital information such as how to get started, important announcements, product updates, and many more.
An email drip campaign enables a marketer to configure and personalize the emails that are sent to each new subscriber. They are known by many other names – drip marketing, automated email campaign, lifecycle emails, autoresponders and marketing automation, etc. The concept is the same – email drip campaigns are a set of marketing emails that will be sent out automatically on a schedule.
Segmentation and Personalization
These are the two great pillars of a good email drip campaign. Segmentation allows us to divide the subscribers into various groups, and personalization allows us to send more relevant emails to each of those segmented groups, thereby increasing chances of conversion.
Let’s take an example. We’ve all used Dropbox. Dropbox has two basic types of customers – free and paid. That’s their first level of segmentation. The objective with these two groups (or segments) are quite different.
- The email drip campaign sent to the first group would educate the customer of the various features and benefits of Dropbox, persuading the person to upgrade to a paid version.
- People in the second group are already paying customers, and thus the objective of the second group would be to engage and retain the paying customers.
Personalization enables you to send emails containing the actual first name of the person, products they’ve looked at and many more. Here’s a personalized email that’s sent by Airbnb, when Jimmy viewed a bed-and-breakfast urban treehouse in Portland.
As Jimmy points out in his blog post, this email was actually sent to him within a day after viewing the property. Airbnb has personalized the name, and the content of the email with the property Jimmy viewed the other day. They’ve also included some “recommended properties” which are similar to the ones Jimmy had sent earlier, and thus have a higher chance of being clicked.
Common Email Drip Campaign Strategies
Email drip campaigns have one goal in common: convert trial customers and keep them engaged. Why keep customers engaged? So that they keep using your product. Your product enjoys top-of-mind presence in your customer, which prevents them from running to the competition whenever they run a promotion. We’ve broken down email marketing campaigns into various use-cases and shared an example for each category.
Welcome Emails
These emails are sent whenever a customer signs up for your product or service. They should be crisp, engaging and should lead the customer to a CTA – which is either to open the app or the sign in to the website.
A welcome emails should contain the following:
- Clear CTA
- How to get started with the product – including links to the knowledge base, support forums and social profiles.
- Unsubscribe button – all emails should have this!
Let’s take a look at the welcome email sent by Asana – a kick-ass collaborative to-do app built by the founders of Facebook.
It includes one clear CTA – launch Asana. It also educates the user of how get started in three simple steps, and has a bunch of links under each step. The user might not necessarily click on them, but they’re there incase they need to.
If someone subscribes to your newsletter, you could use a welcome drip to automatically send that user some of your most-shared blog posts. Or, if you get a new trial-level signup for your service, try a drip featuring case studies on how other customers are using your product.
At the very least, welcome emails are a nice way to say, “Hey there, nice to meet you!”
Experian’s whitepaper on welcome emails shows that welcome emails enjoy a 58.7% open rate on average, while normal emails sit around 14.6%. When that welcome email is sent instantaneously (i.e. right after the user signs up), the open rate jumps to 88.3%.
Onboarding Emails
The purpose of the welcome email is to get the person to use or open the app. But that’s not the only thing your ideal user should do. In order to derive value from your product or service, your customer needs to actually use your product. Which means, they need to take the first step.
- In case of Asana, that’s creating the first task.
- In case of Dropbox, its downloading and installing the Dropbox desktop app. (No, not the mobile app, but the desktop one).
Here’s an example of the onboarding email from Asana. Take a look at how it includes two CTAs, both pointing to the same action!
Recommendation Emails
Recommendation emails are the backbone of keeping users engaged. Everyone from Netflix, to Spotify, to Instagram, to Quora uses personalized recommendations to keep their users engaged. A greater the degree of personalization usually results in better open rates.
Let’s take Quora for example. I follow certain topics on Quora, which are of interest to me. Quora uses this data to send me daily recommendation emails, hoping that I keep checking them every day. If I like something that catches my eye, I could click on it and it would take me straight to the app.
The subject line used in this email is actually the question that’s featured at the top. Not how the email opens with “Sourav’s digest”. That’s personalization 101 right there!
Quora’s algorithm decided that based on my recent activity at Quora, putting this question at the top of the email would most likely earn my click. And guess what? It did!
Renewal Emails
The task of a renewal email is to entice the user to renew your service offering. You should send renewal emails to your customers well before the expiry date, so that they’re aware of the commitment.
Marketo has an awesome blog post on how to create renewal emails that actually get opened up. Other than the basic and intermediate stuff, one key takeaway for me was the fact one could build an entire campaign around the renewal email. You could start with a reminder. As the renewal date approaches, you could increase your sense of urgency. This could be some 2-3 emails. If nothing works, try sending an incentive – such as a discount coupon. Once the renewal date has passed, and the customer did not convert, you could try sending a greater incentive, encouraging the (potentially lost) user to reactivate the service.
iThemes sent a renewal email with an incentive, coupled with a sense of urgency. They’re offering a whopping 60% discount to their lifetime pro subscription, to existing customers. And if that’s not enough, they’re also offering a download link to a brand new eBook they’ve launched!
The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) Technique:
In this screenshot we see how the email induces a sense of urgency to the reader, by making this a limited time offer, which expires on May 5, 2017. This email was sent on April 27, which makes the offer period 10 days.
Here’s a slight room for improvement – the copy could have also mentioned that the offer lasts for only 10 days (or less than 2 weeks). This would create a greater sense of urgency in the reader’s mind, compared to mentioning a later date. The FOMO technique is a tried and tested marketing technique known to improve open-rates, click-throughs and conversions.
Confirmation Emails
Confirmation emails are transactional in nature, which inform the user about their recent activity. These could range from anything from purchases to reservations. Some organizations send confirmation emails from the security perspective. For example, when you login to your Google account from a new device, you get a “new signup” confirmation email.
Confirmation emails are mostly transactional in nature, and convey information to the user. Double opt-in newsletters send a confirmation email, to verify that the user has actually signed up to the mailing list. Let’s take a look at some of the confirmation emails from my inbox.
In this email, Jetpack monitors a WordPress site’s uptime and emails the user immediately when a downtime is detected.
Drip for WordPress
Description
Do you sell online? If so you need our new Drip for WooCommerce Plugin instead of this one. It includes your entire product catalog, order history integration, revenue tracking, and much more.
Drip is an email and SMS marketing automation platform for growing ecommerce brands who want to take their email marketing to the next level.
Part of Drip’s power comes from its JavaScript web tracking code, which lets you build a direct link between your WordPress site and your Drip account. Once your code is all set up, you can start triggering automations and display popups based on who’s on your site and which pages they’re checking out.
The best part? It’s the easiest thing you’ll set up all day. It takes just one click to install the Drip plugin. And once it’s in, you’re ready to start collecting more leads, gaining new insights, and triggering more automations all across your website.
Check out Drip.com to learn more about how we can help you and your business.
LET’S GET STARTED
Ready to start building customer relationships the way they were meant to be? Here’s what you have to do next:
1. Sign up for a Drip account
Signing up is easy. Just head here, tell us a little bit about yourself, and let the fun begin.
2. Install the Drip plugin, and select “Drip” from the Settings menu in your WordPress sidebar.
3. Enter your Drip Account ID, click “Save Changes,” and you’re done!
FAQS
DO YOU OFFER A FREE TRIAL?
Yes, we offer a free 14-day trial for new users. Sign up for a free trial here: https://www.getdrip.com/signup/basic
HOW MUCH DOES DRIP COST?
Plans start at $19/mo. Find your monthly cost on our pricing page: https://www.drip.com/pricing
DO YOU OFFER SUPPORT? HOW DO I CONTACT THEM?
Our support team is available via email between 9 am – 5 pm CT Monday through Friday at support@drip.com. We offer live chat during that time for customers on the $99/mo+ plan.
Screenshots
Conclusions
Drip Marketing is a highly effective way to deal with your email lists, however it is pretty hard to execute right. There are loads of ways to go wrong and many mistakes that you can make. However, the EDRP (Email Drip and Retargeting Plugin) is a complete Email Marketing drip solution which takes care of every aspect of running a successful campaign.