Yesware Drip Campaign
Drip Campaigns: The All-In-One Guide For Sales | Yesware
Email drip campaigns can be a gift and a curse. Done well, they can help you build trust with potential buyers over time, laying the groundwork to eventually convert them into customers.
Done wrong, however, drip emails look a lot like spam. For every great cold email you send, it only takes one impersonal or poorly timed follow-up message to lose a prospect (and damage your reputation) forever.
The idea is intimidating enough for marketing teams using complex marketing automation platforms. Lucky for them, there’s lots of great information out there explaining how to use drip marketing to nurture new leads.
But what about if you work in sales? Or real estate? Or customer support?
How do you build drip campaigns that work for you instead of against you?
If you’re unsure, you’re in the right place.
We’ve compiled everything you need to to know to write, build, and measure effective email drip campaigns — right from your inbox. These tactics are especially relevant to anyone working in b2b sales, real estate, account management, and any other profession that wants to use automated emails to build relationships and grow their business.
You’ll learn:
When and why you should use sales drip campaigns
7 real-world drip email templates
How to send drip campaigns from your Gmail inbox
How to schedule your drip emails (backed by Yesware research)
The top 5 mistakes that will sink your drip campaign
How to measure drip email results
3 tools to help you tackle email automation
What Is A Drip Campaign?
The likelihood that someone will trust you enough to buy from you the first time they “meet” you or your company online is very low.
Enter: Email drip campaigns.
A drip campaign is a series of automated, pre-written emails that are sent to people over time. The overall goal of these emails is to get someone to know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.
Drip campaigns in your inboxCreate multi-channel campaigns with email, calls, and social touches
Why should you use a sales drip campaign?
Marketing teams have been using this type of automated email — also known as lifecycle emails, autoresponders, behavioral emails, and lead nurturing campaigns — for years to onboard new users, build brand advocates, and fill the sales pipeline with qualified leads.
Today, thanks to the rise of sales acceleration tools, sales reps, and other customer-facing roles are also able to send their own highly targeted drip campaigns.
Two truths and a lie:1. “Drip campaigns” get their name from drip irrigation. 2. Drip irrigation is when plants are fed small amounts of water over a long period of time. 3. It’s safe to assume your prospect will appreciate this farming metaphor just as much as you do.
While similar to drip marketing, a sales drip campaign often differs in two key ways:
It is highly tailored to the unique deal being worked
Success is measured in email replies, with email opens and link clicks being secondary
Example drip campaign:
7 Drip Campaign Examples Worth Stealing (+ Free Email Templates)
Let’s look at 7 ways you can use email drip campaigns to create a clockwork system that moves prospects forward in the sales process. We’ve also included sample email templates you can one-click copy to jump start your own automated flows.
Prospecting
Top of mind
Pre-event
Cold sales lead
Upsell
Renewal
High-touch onboarding
1. Prospecting
The conversation around outbound sales prospecting has been misguided in recent years, thanks to this popular Internet meme.
The problem is that these stats are bogus. It’s fake data. The National Sales Executive Association doesn’t even exist.
It all goes to show that sending more and more emails does not necessarily lead to more sales.
But there is a “secret sauce” that is guaranteed to make your prospecting emails more effective: personalization.
Research shows that personalized emails lead to nearly 50% higher open rates and roughly 22% higher reply rates. This ultimately creates more opportunities to drum up new business.
The best prospecting emails put the spotlight on the buyer — not your product.
Pro tip: It can be time-consuming to find and reference personalized details in every email you send. Check out the handy tool below to speed up and keep everything organized.
Introductory (or “cold”) emails are the first step to starting business relationships. Both your initial outreach and additional follow-ups should be succinct yet sincere, showing that you can provide value without wasting their time.
One of the easiest ways to personalize prospecting drip emails is by scoping out recent job postings. The idea is to address the pain points that have prompted the company to hire additional resources, and then offer a more immediate solution than a new hire.
Here’s how to use this tactic in the first email of your outbound prospecting campaigns. If the person doesn’t reply, aim for four follow-up emails to automatically send over a period of seven days.
2. Top of Mind
On the highway to turning prospects into customers, top-of-mind drip emails are the road signs that move the sales process forward.
It could take a few weeks or months for your buyer to get internal buy-in, evaluate competitors, and make a final decision. In the meantime, you can continue to influence their thinking about what’s under consideration by setting up a drip campaign that unfolds over the course of an entire quarter.
Each email should include content that your prospect would find helpful or interesting, such as relevant industry news, blog posts that address problems they experience in their line of work. You can even consider recording personal video or use a (free) online course platform and get some “face time” while sharing info/insights.
Save these emails as templatesNever write the same email twice with Yesware
3. Pre-event
Attending industry conferences is a great way to get face time with busy decision-makers and push a deal through. Pre-event drip campaign examples like the one below can help you schedule these mission-critical meetings at scale, and automate follow-up emails to people who may not have seen your initial request to connect.
4. Cold Sales Lead
In an ideal world, all sales leads are piping hot and ready to buy.
Back here in the real world, it’s safe to say there are times when you may be working your way through what is known as a “cold database. ” Generally, these are leads that have not interacted with your company in a while, were acquired from a trade show list, or may have come in through a list buy.
Cold sales lead drips are targeted towards these inactive leads.
The key is to craft a series of emails that are compelling enough to prompt your prospect to reply, indicating they’re ready to enter the sales process.
The data-driven folks at InsightSquared offer a great example of how one of their sales reps used a 3-part email drip to turn cold database lemons into lemonade. The backstory:
“We were working through this huge list from a sales-specific event. It wasn’t a great list; everyone on it was pretty cold. So I created a 3-email drip using Yesware. The initial email asked if the person was free for lunch Wednesday…and it was sent on a Sunday. The second email was automated to send on Tuesday to anyone who did not reply; it asked “are we still on for tomorrow? ” If they didn’t respond, they received a third email on Thursday, saying “sorry that yesterday didn’t work out, happy to reschedule. ”
It’s been their most successful prospecting email series to date, bringing in 9 unique opportunities, along with some seriously impressive email performance stats:
Here’s the first email in that series:
5. Upsell
Upsell drip campaigns are used to generate more revenue from existing customers. For example, your emails could offer the chance to purchase upgrades (better features, more volume, etc. ). Or you could suggest a more expensive version of what they’re already buying from you.
Remember: No one likes the feeling of being sold to – especially someone who is already paying you. You absolutely must explain how your proposal is:
relevant to them
adds value
will improve their life
Upsell emails are an important part of the sales cycle at B2C2B companies (e. g. Expensify, Yesware) that use a bottoms-up sales approach, where they first convince a large number of employees in a company to use a product. Once enough end users are acquired, sales reps use upsell emails like the one below to eventually convert the entire team or business into a paying customer.
6. Renewal
Setting up a renewal drip email sequence is an easy way to automatically remind your customers that it’s almost time to renew their contract. Simply schedule an initial reminder email and subsequent follow-ups to send a month (or more) before their renewal date.
Just make sure that your email flow is turned off once they do renew to avoid any embarrassing overlaps.
7. High-Touch Onboarding
Sign ups and free trial users are great, but eventually you want that person to purchase something from you.
That’s when an onboarding drip strategy comes in. The goal behind these emails is to turn unengaged trial users into active prospects with whom you can build a relationship.
Once someone signs up for your product/app/service, the flow usually goes something like this:
Glad to hear you’re interested. Would love to tell you more. When can we connect?
Here’s more info. Let me know when we can chat.
Following up again. Is this still of interest?
I see this is heading nowhere. Goodbye. (Sob).
How To Set Up A Sales Email Drip
Once you’ve decided on a strategy, it’s time to start sending. To do this, you’ll want to find an off-the-shelf drip email tool that’ll have you up and running in minutes.
How To Schedule Your Drip Emails (Backed by Research)
How many emails should you send, when, and for how long?
There’s no “right” way sequence your drip campaign. You have to test, measure, and iterate to find which flow works best with your sales cycle, your goals, your contacts, etc.
But you don’t have to start at ground zero. Here’s what analyzing over 500, 000 sales emails has taught us about when to schedule email sends and follow-ups to maximize your reply rates.
Put these findings to the test, and see what works for you.
Schedule drip emails to send in the early morning or evening
People are more likely to respond to emails they receive early in the morning between 6 and 7 am) or later in the evening (around 8pm).
The chart above also shows us that significantly fewer emails are being sent during these hours. So with less to compete with, your message is more likely to stand out and get noticed, leading to better open and reply rates.
Don’t worry about specific weekdays, consider weekends
In the world of sales drip campaigns, where replies are king, there is absolutely no “best” weekday to send an automated email.
According to Yesware’s data, open and reply rates are pretty similar no matter what weekday an email is sent.
But here’s where things get interesting: Email open and reply rates are highest on the weekends.
Again, this likely has to do with the fact that inbox competition is lower on these days.
Have your follow-up email sent 24 hours after your first email
Most emails are toast after 24 hours. 90% of emails that get replies are replied to within one day after they are opened.
The good news is that sending a series of follow-up drip emails really can be worth the effort.
If you don’t receive a reply to your first email, Yesware found that you have a 21% chance of getting a reply to the second one. And if you continue to send even more follow-up emails, there’s still a 25% chance that you will eventually hear back from your recipient.
Automate your campaignsSet custom times and cadence for each touchHow To Avoid 5 Surprisingly Common Drip Email Mistakes
Ready…set…wait!
Before you start sending, it’s a good idea to do a quick check to make sure everything is a-ok and ready to go. Here’s five of the most common missteps to watch for.
1. Did I avoid using these words and phrases in my subject lines?
Research shows that they tend to trigger spam filters:
free
help% off
reminder
$$$
extra income
prices
apply now
limited time offer
A general rule of thumb is to avoid language that’s overly promotional. Write in a straightforward and concise manner and you should be just fine, provided you aren’t accidentally getting caught by any of these nine spam triggers.
2. Are my custom fields pulling in the correct information?
No one’s going to give you their time if they feel like you couldn’t be bothered to take time error proofing your own emails.
3. Are there any upcoming holidays I should avoid?
True: Open rates on US federal holidays – Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Columbus Day – are surprisingly similar to any other Monday.
But we wouldn’t advise purposefully scheduling a drip email to arrive in someone’s inbox on other widely celebrated days that are typically spent with friends and family. Everyone deserves a break from their inbox now and then;).
4. Does each email provide context on who I am and why I’m reaching out?
Each follow-up email in an automated drip sequence should provide context as to why you’re contacting them again. Otherwise, your reader has no idea what the heck you’re talking about and even less incentive to respond.
This brings us to the next very important check box…
5. Will my automated follow-ups be appended to my original email?
Always double-check that your drip email platform automatically appends each additional email to your original, so that it looks like a true threaded follow-up email chain.
If your second, third, and fourth emails are delivered as separate threads, you’re asking the reader to dig through their inbox to find the original for context. This is work. Nobody likes work.
Drip email tools that don’t have this capability may not be worth the low reply rate. If you’re interested in looking into alternatives, we’ve put together a handy checklist of what else is worth prioritizing when evaluating this type of software.
How To Measure Drip Email Campaigns
You’ve invested valuable time in setting the strategy, writing your emails, and scheduling your sends. It’s equally important to keep track of how things are going so you can continue to improve on your results.
At minimum, be sure to keep a close eye on these three metrics:
Open rate
Reply rate
Bounce rate
Open rate: How many people opened your drip email?
What this number tells you: The average cold email open rate is around 23%. If you’re seeing lower open rates across your automated drip campaigns, consider:
What times are emails being sent? We know that emails sent on weekends, early mornings, and in the evening have higher open rates.
What words are you using in your subject line? Some work better than others.
Reply rate: How many people responded to your drip emails?
What this number tells you: How effective is the message in the body of your email? Is your call to action compelling? What to watch for:
You see → High open rates, but low reply ratesIt could mean → There’s a mismatch between what your subject line is promising, and what the body of the email actually delivers. Something is grabbing their interest off the bat but doesn’t hold attention enough to warrant a reply.
You see → Low reply ratesIt could mean → Your email is too long. Shorter emails are proven to result in quicker response times. Your messages aren’t as personalized as they should be. Personalized emails typically see 22% higher reply rates.
Whether you’re trying to improve your open or reply rates, you’ll want to make sure your messages are being effectively measured against one another. This is known as A/B testing. Here are 18 A/B testing email ideas to get you started.
Bounce rate: The percentage of email addresses that did not receive your sent message.
Email bounces can happen if an email address was incorrect or fake (known as a hard bounce), or if the server rejects an email because the recipient’s inbox is already full, a connection cannot be established, or other temporary conditions (known as a soft bounce).
What this number tells you: Industry benchmarks estimate that bounce rates for “average companies” hover between 2-5%. If you’re noticing a number higher than that on any of your outbound email campaigns, it’s time to sit down and review your lists to make sure they’re accurate.
If you’re still seeing less-than-ideal numbers in this department, LeadGenius has a great article we recommend taking a look at. It covers eight of the most common reasons why email bounces may continue to occur.
Email Drip Campaign Examples [UPDATED 2021] – Yesware
Open rates for drip campaigns are 80% higher than single send emails. Why? They’re more timely, relevant, and targeted.
That being said, if your sales team isn’t taking advantage of email drip campaigns, you’re missing out on an enormous potential to engage with customers, scale business, and increase revenue.
Drip campaigns help you schedule mission-critical messages at scale and stay at the forefront of prospect’s minds and drive engagement.
Wondering how to get more out of your drip campaigns?
Below are 8 real-world drip campaign examples that show how other sales teams are using automated email to get in front of prospects and convert them into customers.
Drip campaigns in your inboxAutomated campaigns with email, calls, and social touches
1. Drift Utilizes Onboarding Drip Campaign for Re-engagement and Growth
Not having a strategy to nurture free users is a huge missed opportunity. As a user, if you’re not shown the value of the more premium package, then there’s nothing convincing you to leave your no-strings-attached state.
In a highlights article that analyzes Drift’s drip campaigns – Drift’s onboarding campaign significantly stands out. The drip campaign effectively engages customers with useful content and information – all before the final ask.
Take a look: Here’s an onboarding drip campaign provided by highlights that Drift sent out to new users a week after they signed up for an account. These emails help re-engage leads by providing a variety of content and different ways to experience the value of Drift, highlighting its benefits and even highlighting a customer story.
Engaging new trial users significantly increases the likelihood they’ll convert to paid, remain top-of-mind, and provide value.
Tip: The timing and pace of your onboarding email flow ultimately depend on your trial length and standard sales cycle. Be sure to experiment.
2. Yesware Schedules Pre-Event Drip Campaigns To Book Meetings Before The Big Day
Attending industry conferences is a great opportunity to get face time with busy decision-makers and push a deal through. A pre-event drip campaign can help you send personal invites to your top prospects and follow up if they don’t reply — hands-free.
Take a look: Here’s a previous pre-event drip campaign example from the Yesware sales team. This particular series received a reply for every single open.
Ideally, you want to have at least two emails in this sequence. Yesware sales reps have found success in spacing these emails five days apart, but be sure to A/B test what works best with your recipients.
Tip: Try scheduling pre-event follow-up emails 5 days apart.
3. Salesforce Uses a Trial Expiration Sequence to Grab Users Attention Before It’s Too Late
We can thank Neil Patel for providing this powerful drip campaign example.
Drip campaigns are crucial when users are on a trail, never forget to send these automated emails out that let your users know their trial is about to end, informing them how to purchase, and why they should purchase.
Salesforce sets up a sequence that grabs users’ attention in the right way before their trial is expired.
Take a look: The first email in this drip campaign goes for the soft-sell to get you back into the product. The tone of the email is friendly and helpful, offering a hand in this process.
After a few days, the email’s tone switches to a more direct and hard sell. And the third message, when your trial has expired, lets you know your information is still saved and tone switches to a more generic re-engagement campaign with a compelling subject line and call-to-action.
Drip campaigns made easyPersonal, multi-channel sales touches
4. Kapost Uses Prospecting Drip Emails To Stand Out From The Competition
The most common mistake that people make when setting up a drip campaign is to offer the same thing and make the same ask, in so many words—every time.
Each email that you send needs to provide new value. It’s what makes you relevant, and what gets people to actually read versus open and delete.
Take a look: Below is an example from a past email drip campaign by Kapost. Notice how the emails hit major pain points for their target persona, and they also build trust by providing useful content that is directly applicable in my day-to-day role.
A good rule of thumb is to space each follow-up email in a prospecting email series within one or two days of each other, seeing as any replies will most likely occur within 24 hours of sending.
5. Neil Patel Keeps Recipients Engaged With Helpful Content Following His Master Class Webinar
After webinars/blog subscriptions/ebook downloads, etc – always make sure all viewers hear from you after. The best way to do this? By continuing to provide helpful content to your audience.
Take a look: Neil Patel does this in an engaging way that hooks readers in. He continues to provide the insights mentioned in the Master Class, linking to the webinar plus more tips and helpful content.
6. Contently Uses Drip Emails To Drive Retention
When someone gives you something or does something nice for you, there’s a good chance that you’re going to feel obliged to return the favor. This innate desire to even the scales is known as the reciprocity effect, and it can have a profound impact on customer loyalty, advocacy, and retention.
For example, one of the best ways to retain current customers is to help them get more value out of their investment. You can use a drip campaign to share useful information about emerging trends impacting their work, inspiration reasons to use your product, and other helpful resources long after the deal has closed.
By going out of your way to show a customer you care, you make it more likely that they’ll feel the need to reciprocate. Each email is a chance to bring them back to your product and retain their business.
Take a look: In a previous Retention drip campaign, Contently sales reps send customers weekly emails sharing blog posts that add value. In this example, Corey keeps it casual and to the point (no automated robot-speak here).
7. LeadGenius Stays Persistent In This Inbound Lead Drip Campaign Example
Inbound leads have a short shelf life. You’re seven times more likely to qualify an inbound lead if you follow up within less than an hour, according to research cited in the Harvard Business Review.
But that’s not to say it’s one shot or nothing. It often takes more than one attempt to connect, qualify the lead, and turn it into a sales-qualified opportunity. The best way to stay persistent is to set up a drip campaign that makes it easy for someone to agree to a call or meeting as soon as possible.
Take a look: This drip campaign example comes from an account executive at LeadGenius. They insert an automatic meeting scheduler in the body of their first email to enable prospects to immediately commit to getting a meeting on the calendar and continue to follow up over the next few weeks.
Eliminate the guessworkKnow when recipients read your emails, click on links, and view attachments
8. Yesware Provides Valuable Insights and Helpful Content to Small Businesses on a Trial
When a user starts a trial, it’s important to stay top-of-mind and provide them value that will ensure the user makes the most out of their trial. It helps both you and your product/service by providing a helping hand.
Take a look: The emails below not only provide content that will help the user accelerate their experience with your service but also increases the likelihood of them getting on a call to discuss more. Getting users on a call during their trial is extremely helpful for converting them to a customer.
In your last email, make sure to inform the recipient about offers and how to purchase.
Use These Drip Campaign Examples to Create Your Own
Email drip campaigns present a great opportunity to engage with your customers, generate new leads, and ultimately convert more sales.
Use these examples to help you boost your drip campaigns and apply new techniques to experiment with. Don’t be afraid to test out different strategies to see what resonates best.
Every email drip campaign is an opportunity to take your customers on a journey through your brand. When you optimize your messaging and target specific subgroups of your customer base – you significantly increase your chances of turning leads into happy customers.
Drip vs. Nurture: What marketers need to know about email campaigns
Digital Marketing
Email marketing can be as simple as a monthly eNewsletter, or as complex as the plotlines of your favorite daytime drama (seriously. It’s even called the “soap opera sequence. ”)
The more complex types of email campaigns are known as “drip campaigns” and “nurture campaigns. ”
Drip campaigns are typically a series of messages (emails… although these days they can include text messages, direct mail and social, too) sent at a regular interval you define to develop a relationship with your contacts. The full series in a drip campaign is sent regardless of recipient interaction (unless of course, they unsubscribe).
Nurture campaigns are a series of messages sent based on the lead/contact’s behavior. They are sent via trigger vs. on a schedule. Triggers could be links clicked, pages viewed, forms filled out, videos watched, webinars registered for.
If you’ve ever done a little online window shopping, and then received an email reminding you about items left in your virtual cart, that’s a Nurture campaign.
do you know which is the right campaign to use?
Know your audience and set your goals
Like any marketing effort, the first step should be identifying your target audience, and setting goals for the initiative.
Start with the basics by answering these questions:
Who is the audience and what do you know about them?
Are these contacts that are already in your database, or newly generated?
What are your goals? (For this audience, with this campaign. )
How long is your (average) sales process?
What technology is involved? (Marketing Automation, CRM, etc. )
Then, take the time to revisit your customer persona(s) and journey map to determine the best ways to reach your targets. Ask yourself:
How long is the journey?
What do we need them to know along the way?
Who’s going to help them get there?
Understand where your leads are ultimately going and what tools your sales team will have to assist in converting them. If you want to get real next-level about it, ensure that your marketing and sales team have a shared definition of a qualified lead and a service level agreement in place for hand-off and follow-up.
Figure out who is following up with your leads and how
If “know your audience” and “set your goals” are numbers 1 and 2 on the list of “Most Important Things To Do Before Building An Email Campaign, ” figuring out who is following up with these leads (and how) would be #3.
We can’t stress enough how critical this is. An email campaign can generate leads—and with the right content it can even help qualify those leads—but it alone can’t guarantee those leads will convert. That’s up to you and your brilliant sales team.
Determine whom on your staff will be responsible for following up with the leads your email campaign creates, what that follow-up will look like (meeting, phone call, etc. ), and how this process will be documented for both your sales and marketing teams to see.
Is there such a thing as a Drip-Nurture Hybrid Campaign?
In short, yes.
You can use both drip and nurture strategies to keep your leads warm. But, you should use a nurture strategy when you have a clearly defined buyer’s journey and want to get your lead to a conversion destination like requesting a demo, downloading content, or completing a purchase.
For example, here are a few ways you could set up your nurture campaign:
Build off of initial offer
Training/education series (deliver a lesson each week)
Channel-based (i. e. tradeshow-specific)
And Last, But Not Least…
Regardless of the email campaign style you ultimately choose, don’t forget to use attention-getting subject lines to help push open rates and engagement. Here are a couple of examples to consider
Are you ready?
Here’s the thing:
Are you there? Have you been eaten by dragons?
Questions, hinting at something big, or just using unexpected phrasing are all great ways to get attention and create a bit of intrigue for your prospect.
You’ll also want to make sure your Calls-To-Action (CTAs) truly let the reader know what action they should be taking. Again, refer back to the customer journey as well as your goals for this campaign to determine what this audience should be doing and where that click should go.
Before you hit send on your next email marketing campaign, connect with the digital marketing team at CID. We’ll help you develop the right strategy and content plan for your goals.
Heather Vaughn
Marketing Services Director
Heather Vaughn is CI Design’s Marketing Services Director. Her marketing career has been split with equal time on the agency and client sides, giving her a 360 perspective on marketing, and a keen understanding of how to use all its glorious data. With a blend of account, project management, and content strategy skills, she loves working with teams to connect the dots and craft marketing solutions that work.
Frequently Asked Questions about yesware drip campaign
What is a nurture drip campaign?
Drip campaigns are typically a series of messages (emails… although these days they can include text messages, direct mail and social, too) sent at a regular interval you define to develop a relationship with your contacts. … Nurture campaigns are a series of messages sent based on the lead/contact’s behavior.Jan 31, 2020
What is a yesware campaign?
Yesware Campaigns lets you create multi-touch, multi-channel campaigns. These Campaigns help you and your teams comply with the company’s messaging and process at scale. Campaigns provides you with an always-up-to-date and prioritized list of next actions to take, all within the workflow of your email inbox.Mar 18, 2021
What is an internal drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a single series of marketing messages used to usher customers through the sales funnel. … That’s why drip marketing has become so successful. Both big and small businesses can use it to segment their audiences and deliver relevant messages that resonate with their subscribers.
