Email drip campaigns (also known as nurture campaigns) help you maximize the value of your ads by keeping leads warm and preparing them for your sales pitch.
Part of the appeal of these automated campaigns is that you can “set it and forget it.” Once you’ve created a nurture campaign and turned it on, it can run in the background for months—or even years.
But even the best email campaigns can use a little improvement now and then. If you’ve had a few thousand subscribers make it all the way through your drip campaign, or a significant amount of time has passed since its creation, it’s probably worth taking another look at it to see how you can make it better.
Here are four ways to make sure you’re getting the most from your drip campaigns.
1. Cut emails people aren’t reading
One of the goals of a drip campaign is to provide a steady stream of content so that your brand consistently appears in people’s inboxes. But if people are consistently ignoring your brand, that’s a problem.
You want people to get used to hearing from you. You don’t want them to get used to tuning you out.
As you look through your drip campaign, you may find that some emails just aren’t getting significant engagement. If nobody is opening or clicking through an email, it’s time to reevaluate whether it belongs there.
You may not have to abandon it altogether, though. It’s possible that the right subject line, better segmentation, or a more cohesive message could be enough to increase clicks. But if you’ve been running A/B tests all along (which you should be), you may need to just pull the plug on that email.
2. Refresh outdated information
When you write your drip campaign, you want it to be evergreen so that it stays relevant. Still, the emails you wound up with come from a specific moment in time. In the months or years since you first rolled them out, it’s possible that your products, services, or website changed, or that some of the information your emails were based on has been updated.
Comb through your emails for any statistics–those are often the first pieces of information that become outdated. Any time your emails give a recommendation, make sure those still align with your organization’s current practices and values.
3. Identify knowledge gaps
You can’t always tell what people know and don’t know about your brand, product category, or services. But if your sales reps are consistently hearing the same questions and concerns–especially from leads who have been through your drip campaign–that’s a good sign there’s more ground to cover before you make your pitch.
The more your marketing materials close knowledge gaps, the more time your sales staff has for what they do best: selling.
This could be as simple as adding another point or two to an existing email. Or you may need to add a completely new email. If you’ve already “trimmed the fat” and cut any emails that aren’t performing, this might not even make your campaign any longer than it was.
4. Test better subject lines
Most people test subject lines by pitting the first one that came to mind against the second one that came to mind. Or else it’s one team member’s idea against another. But there are lots of ways to test subject lines, and it helps to try a few different ways to frame your emails. You might try:
- A question vs. a statement
- A numbered list vs. a general title
- Punctuation!? vs. no punctuation
- Clarity vs. creativity
- Emojis vs. no emojis
- One emotion (like fear) vs. another (like curiosity)
If you want to get the most from your drip campaigns, you need to experiment with different types of subject lines until you find the ones that truly work the best.
Better drip campaigns lead to better ad campaigns
A good drip campaign helps you convert more leads. It keeps the conversation going between pitches, so that your leads aren’t blindsided when you make a hard sell a few weeks after your initial ad.
But if your drip campaign isn’t valuable to your subscribers, it’s not going to be very valuable to you. So it’s important to keep it optimized.
