Optimizing Customer Journeys with the Email Drip Campaign

Ninety-nine percent of consumers check their emails everyday; nearly eight in 10 consider email the best channel for company contact, preferring it by almost 200% to social media and other promotional and distribution methods. Of course, if you send the wrong email, or even the right email at the wrong time, you can damage your relationship — often permanently. My favorite example: when a high-value prospect clicks on a digital ad or social media post promoting ‘value-add’ custom content (thought leadership), completes the on-page form, converting to a (cold or warm) lead — and the brand responds with an immediate sales email, alienating the lead before there’s a chance to nurture them. That’s not how email marketing works; yes, there’s still a place for newsletters (for newsletter subscribers) and sales blasts (for existing customers and hot leads), but the marketing-sales funnel (and email drip campaign) is the real opportunity in email. In fact, if your CX and digital marketing teams aren’t expert in the sales funnel, they’ll never optimize the customer journey (or customer lifecycle).

What’s the difference? In short, the sales funnel falls within the marketing funnel, which falls within the customer journey. Here’s how it works — and how to optimize your email drip campaign…

The Customer Journey

Good business isn’t about closing a deal, it’s about developing a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with your customers; the goal is to maximize the customer lifetime value of each prospect. And the only way to achieve this goal is to nurture leads, demonstrating transparency, consistency, authenticity and empathy, and delivering predictive, personalized, interactive experiences at every touchpoint. 

The more often and more deeply a consumer engages with your brand across platforms and devices, the more likely they are to convert from a lead to a customer and then from a customer to a brand ambassador.

The Customer Lifecycle Stages

The customer lifecycle considers the value of a customer for the full length of the relationship, including any support they may need as well as any assistance they may provide in helping to promote the brand on social media. In other words, the customer lifecycle takes into account the customer’s experience, long after an initial purchase is made, which is why it requires seamless collaboration between marketing, sales and CX teams.

The customer lifecycle/journey has five stages: 

Stage 1: Reach

Before a consumer has any personal connection to your brand, they may: 

• Identify a problem, pain point or need that can be addressed by a product or service you provide
• Discover your brand, product or service through social media posts from your brand loyalists or influencers

During this first stage, the consumer is comparing products and brands, conducting research and reading customer reviews. This is your opportunity to reach them through social media (as well as digital ads and SEO). And if the consumer requests more information (or, obviously, makes a purchase), you’ve been successful. 

Stage 2: Acquisition

Once the consumer visits your website or sends you an email or social media direct message, they’ve entered the acquisition stage. As the name suggests, this is your opportunity to acquire a new customer. But first you must convert the user to a lead. 

If the prospect reaches out by email or social media message, you’ll need to: 

• Respond with answers to their questions and solutions to their problems
• Inquire about their needs and pain points so you can further personalize their experiences
• Offer the products or services that would best serve them
• Educate them on the uses of your products and services

If the prospect has made it to your website, they should be able to easily access interactive, personalized, value-add experiences and content that can help them better understand and relate to your brand — and, ideally, make an informed purchase decision. 

Of course, to convert website users to leads, you’ll need to ‘gate’ some of your most valuable content. Here’s one example of how it could work:

1. Post engaging content on social media (like a case study, a behind-the-scenes look, a user-generated video, or a repost from an influencer, for instance)
2. Boost that social media post with advertising dollars, adding a call to action to click the link for an exclusive download or other benefit (this link goes to the landing page, or squeeze page, you’ve already developed)
3. On your landing page, summarize the value proposition, and include a form above the fold (and every person who completes the form is automatically added as a lead to your CDP and DXP)

Stage 3: Conversion

Every customer makes purchase decisions on their own time. For a few, no nurturing is necessary at all. For most, a drip campaign of value-add content and (initially subtle) sales messaging is required; automated trigger emails can be sent based on the lead’s behaviors online and in response to emails (and texts).

No matter how long it takes or which tactics are deployed, once the lead has made a purchase they have been converted into a customer.

Stage 4: Retention

Once you’ve converted a lead into a paying customer, you have the opportunity to begin developing loyalty, in the hopes of creating a brand ambassador. Of course, you also have the opportunity to turn them off completely. In other words: this stage represents a balancing act between continually engaging the customer and being perceived as pushy. 

The number-one way to maintain your customer relationships is to focus on the customer, and not the sale. To provide value on an ongoing basis, follow the seven steps to customer success — and:

• Ask questions and listen
• Conduct customer service surveys
• Develop and utilize a voice-of-the-customer program
• Create and provide easy access to self-service portals
• Offer exclusive perks, such as product/service discounts, referral bonuses, free swag and 24/7 human support
• Measure customer success using the most appropriate CX KPIs
• Use the information you obtain to continually improve your products and services, as well as your marketing and sales messaging and the customer experience you provide, leveraging resulting enhancements and growth to promote your customer centricity

Stage 5: Loyalty

You can't create brand loyalty out of nowhere. It must be nurtured and instilled throughout the customer lifecycle, on social media, via email and on your website. If you’ve provided consistent, personalized and empathic experiences from initial awareness through retention, you have the opportunity to amplify your reach exponentially by empowering your brand ambassadors to promote you on and offline. To ensure you’ve positioned yourself to benefit from brand loyalty, ask yourself the following questions: 

• Have you included social media follow and share buttons on your website and marketing emails?
• Do you engage with customers and prospects on social media, through chat, and in comments?
• Do you offer customers exclusive perks such as discounts and birthday gifts that keep them coming back?
• Do you have a referral program that makes it easy for customers to connect you with more prospects?
• Have you made your company easily accessible via email, phone and live chat?
• Have you developed and implemented an influencer marketing program?
• Do you put out requests for and then post user-generated content?

The Customer Lifecycle: A Real-Life Example

1. You post on TikTok an engaging new video from one of your influencers about your latest product
2. A TikTok user searching that influencer on the social media platform finds your post, follows your account, and clicks the link to visit your website 
3. On your homepage is an interactive questionnaire experience designed to gather user data and direct the user down the right path for an optimal user experience based on their pain points, needs and goals
4. For the user who has completed the questionnaire and proceeded to an area of your website that would best serve them, you have a library of value-add content that they can download by completing a form, providing you with additional data
5. For the user who downloaded your content, you’ve developed an email drip campaign to nurture the lead into a paying customer
6. In your email drip campaign and on your website, you offer a free demo of your product(s) or service(s), and collect additional, more specific information
7. With all of this first- and zero-party data, your sales team is equipped to not only pitch the right offerings but use the right messaging
8. Once a purchase has been made, you’re able to obtain additional data on user preferences and behaviors
9. With all of the data gathered through marketing and sales, the customer success and technical support teams are equipped to provide the best customer experience
10. Any conversations between the user and support teams are also documented and incorporated into your data warehousing, enabling your customer-facing teams to continue to develop the customer relationship and potentially create a brand evangelist, who will then promote on your behalf, bringing new users to your website (and social media accounts)

The Marketing-Sales Funnel

Sales funnel marketing can be defined as all the strategies and tactics associated with marketing efforts to nurture leads into conversion opportunities for sales. This can include:

• Top-of-funnel (ToFu) website pillar content
• More granular, targeted middle-of-funnel (MoFu) content
• Bottom-of-funnel (BoFu) content designed specifically for lead generation

The marketing-sales funnel consists of both the marketing funnel stages (nurturing) and sales funnel stages (conversions). While many sales funnel templates exist, it’s best to customize for your business based on your understanding of how to create a sales funnel that will generate the most conversions for your target audience(s).

For clarity, this doesn’t mean deprioritizing your sales funnel (because ‘we already know our customers’); quite the opposite: it means ensuring your digital marketing, sales and CX teams all fully embrace the importance of optimizing the marketing-sales funnel as part of the larger customer journey. If you don’t convert users to leads and then leads to customers, there’s no need for the fourth or fifth stage of the customer lifecycle anyway — and, ultimately (and quickly), your business will fail.

Marketing Funnel Stages and Sales Funnel Stages

The truth is, there’s no reason to separate your marketing funnel stages and sales funnel stages, or even to necessarily think of the marketing-sales funnel as distinct from the customer journey. They share the same trajectory, and purpose. Nevertheless, demonstrating the breakdown of the marketing-sales funnel is ideally suited to showcasing the strategy behind an optimal email drip campaign. And with only 2% of website users making a purchase on their first visit to your website, the email drip campaign is your most powerful tool for enabling sales.

Stage 1: Top of Funnel: Awareness/Discovery

Like the first stage of the customer lifecycle (or customer journey), the first stage of the marketing-sales funnel finds the consumer in research mode. These potential customers (prospects) enter your funnel after discovering your brand during their search for answers or solutions. At this point, they know very little about you, or what you do. 

This is your opportunity to demonstrate your thought leadership and trustworthiness. At the top of the funnel, aggressive sales messaging turns prospects away; the goal of your digital marketing team should be to guide passive website users through the topics that matter to them — and then convert them to leads (i.e., lead generation). 

Stage 2: Middle of Funnel: Interest/Consideration

In the middle of the marketing-sales funnel, you’re halfway toward the sale; this is your chance to demonstrate:

• Your ability to listen, empathize and personalize based on each lead’s needs and goals
• The ways your product or service would meet each lead’s needs and goals

Or, the opposite; if you’re not careful, you can also alienate your potential customers, as today’s increasingly sophisticated consumers continue to consider their options and compare your brand and offerings to that of your competitors. 

At this stage, your ability to develop, implement and automate an optimized email drip campaign will differentiate you from your peers. 

Stage 3: Bottom of Funnel: Decision/Purchase

At the bottom of the funnel, you need to close the deal. This is when consumer questions become more specific and vendor oriented; content showcasing product features and comparisons is most effective; and marketing passes off to sales. In this stage, the sales team’s job is to leverage all the customer data obtained during the previous two stages to convert qualified (warm, or hot) leads into new customers.

The Email Drip Campaign

Hence the name, an email drip campaign isn’t a race — it’s a strategically scheduled, automated series of emails designed to methodically hand-hold the consumer from lead to customer, down the marketing-sales funnel. More holistic, comprehensive email drip campaigns don’t stop there, either, continuing to: 

• Provide value via thought leadership, exclusive offers and customer support
• Nurture existing customers into repeat customers and brand ambassadors
• Expand customer relationships through cross-selling and upselling opportunities

The two key elements of an email drip campaign are:

1. Email marketing automation, or the automated delivery of a specific email communication based either on a predetermined schedule (the foundation of your drip campaign) or in response to one of a set of predetermined user behaviors, actions or status changes (triggered emails with more specific focus)
2. Drip marketing, or the slow and steady release of a series of communications designed to maintain engagement and expand relationships without over-communicating 

Most importantly, with drip marketing and email automation, you write and design the emails once, and then your CRM — powered by your CDP or DXP — uses AI to leverage customer data and their behaviors/actions to automate the personalization and delivery of your emails. Which frees up your digital marketing team to focus on: 

• Drip campaign testing, monitoring, iteration and optimization
• Other, larger strategic initiatives

Although there’s no set rule on the number or types of emails to include in a drip campaign, there are established best practices based on at least a decade of experiential research. The biggest one: don’t be pushy; educate, nurture, then sell.

Needless to say, B2B drip campaigns and campaigns for higher-ticket items typically require more effort, time, and resources. However, most brands selling most things could adhere to the following for any lead signing up to download content or learn more about their offerings:

1. The first email in the sequence should be sent immediately, establishing the relationship, thanking and/or congratulating them for/on their enrollment, outlining what they can expect from future communications (including the cadence), and offering an opportunity to unsubscribe
2. The second email should be sent either 24 or 48 hours after the initial signup, providing exclusive content to help in their research and offering personalized support
3. The third email should be sent one week after the initial signup, providing more granular, brand-specific information and links for product details, demos and comparisons
4. The fourth email should be sent 10 days from the initial signup, offering an exclusive discount or other buyer’s motivation
5. Follow-up marketing/nurture/educational emails should continue to be sent automatically and periodically over the course of the first month to any non-converted lead who hasn’t unsubscribed but also hasn’t taken any action to trigger sales
6. Any lead that takes no action in 30 days should be segmented out as “cold” — and can be communicated to quarterly, via monthly newsletter, during major promotions, or on a birthday or anniversary

This is the foundation of your email drip campaign. For optimal results, your email drip campaign must be supported by pre-determined trigger emails built in to deliver automatically based on a lead’s behaviors (e.g., clicking a link, watching a video, abandoning cart, completing a survey, opening an email but not clicking, unsubscribing). These types of actions, for instance, are what trigger the sales team to nurture the lead from middle to bottom of funnel and then from consumer to customer.

Like your initial drip marketing, these sales emails should also funnel recipients in one direction — by moving from a simple offer of assistance to a direct sales pitch. (Many times, a phone call is necessary to close the deal — but if managed correctly, your sales agents should be well equipped to move from automated messaging to one-on-one, person-to-person contact.)

Of course, the final trigger is the sale — while the sale, meanwhile, should initiate a second email drip campaign, structured similarly, to:

• Provide ongoing value 
• Not only retain but cross-sell and/or upsell the customer
• Develop brand ambassadors to do your promo for you

In other words: stages four and five of the customer journey.

Setting Up Your Email Drip Campaign: 8 Steps to Perfection

In case it wasn’t already clear, you may have to create a multitude of drip campaigns; e.g., triggered by:

• A newsletter subscription or unsubscribe
• A contact form completion
• A gated content download
• A demo request
• An ad-generated website visit and bounce
• An extended on-site session duration
• A completed survey
• An abandoned cart
• An initial purchase
• A birthday or anniversary
• An extended period of inactivity

No matter what, follow these eight steps in developing each email drip campaign:

1. Choose your trigger
2. Identify and segment your audience, based on the trigger
3. Map out your drip campaign and all the prospective paths, noting when and where along each path emails should be delivered
4. Write and design all your drip campaign emails and mid-campaign triggered emails
5. Create A/B tests with email subject lines, email preview lines, in-email messaging (e.g., tone, voice, length, etc.), and design elements (e.g., CTA buttons, image placements, headers and footers, etc.)
6. Turn on your drip campaign to begin dissemination and data collection
7. Measure and adjust based on performance, using the most tried and true digital marketing metrics but also moving beyond vanity KPIs like open rates to truly understanding sentiment and other key factors
8. Conduct periodic reviews to ensure your messaging and the experiences you provide do not go stale or become out of date

Committing to Email Drip Campaign Best Practices Across the Customer Journey: The CRM

Without the right email automation software, you won’t be able to achieve any of your desired results via email. Long gone are the days of dropping hundreds of addresses into the Bcc section of a text email and mass-blasting your contacts from a browser-based email provider. Everyone knows you need an email marketing tool. 

A CRM, or customer relationship management tool, tracks and reacts to direct lead and customer interactions like new purchases, email link clicks and customer service communications. Coupled with a CDP (and/or DXP), this marketing, sales and CX tool empowers you to optimize all of your communications.

Here are the best CRMs and email marketing platforms (in alphabetical order; demo them all):

1. ActiveCampaign
2. Campaigner
3. EmailOctopus
4. EngageBay
5. GetResponse
6. Keap
7. MailerLite
8. Omnisend
9. Sendinblue
10. SMTP

Putting Your Email Drip Campaign in Perspective

Email automation and drip marketing are only two elements of email marketing. Download The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing to learn how to develop your email marketing strategy based on the latest trends, data and customer feedback.

Image Credits (in order of appearance) 

1. Photo by Luis Tosta on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/SVeCm5KF_ho
2. Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/_g1WdcKcV3w
3. Photo by Unsplash+ in collaboration with Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/-KKUqbkWmZo
4. Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/U5y077qrMdI
5. Photo by Vladimir Mun on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/lrMyood2ZVc
6. Photo by Mert Kahveci on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/uOjIbPvW5J0
7. Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/cPiKUJkTWWA
8. Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/p2ifKHu3dXM
9. Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/--kQ4tBklJI