How To Write Absolutely Irresistible Drip Campaign Emails

How To Write Absolutely Irresistible Drip Campaign Emails

A lot of businesses create drip campaigns that are automated emails sent as a result of a user’s actions. Each drip email is pre-planned and is sent over long periods of time in order to nurture leads, upsell a product and so on.

For example, a drip campaign could be a cart abandonment email, followed by an email promoting products similar to the ones you’ve abandoned in your shopping cart. There are also campaigns dedicated to promoting products, educating new customers, providing weekly newsletters and introducing updates.

But how do you create email campaigns that get opened and read? We’ve all had our ups and downs in email marketing. Trust me, it’s not the end of the world.

In this article, we’ll discuss the different types of drip campaigns and how you can create your own:

Common Types of Drip Campaigns

Welcoming

You did a great job at marketing your product, and you’ve gotten a lot of users to subscribe to your newsletters or sign-up to learn more about it. But how do you turn these new users into actual customers? How do you get them to try your product? Why should they be interested in what you have to offer?

 That’s where welcome emails shine?—?they introduce users to your products and highlight what you have to offer.

Most welcome emails begin with a classic introduction followed by a pitch that highlights your value. With the right words and a bit of luck, you can make a good first impression and get people interested. So, how do you impress?

If someone subscribes for a free trial of your CRM tool, you could give them an ebook or guide about sales and marketing. Or, if you got a new subscriber to your blog, you could send a few links to your best content.

User Onboarding

If welcome drip campaigns introduce your customers to your business, then onboarding campaigns are here to make them stay. They’re useful to software companies who encourage users to try their free trial first.

They are usually packed with tips, tutorials and detailed instructions that introduce new customers to the benefits of your product, with the aim of converting them to paying subscribers by the end of the trial period.

Nurturing Leads

Some users need a little push, or nurturing?—?engaging promotions until they’re ready to buy your product. As a result, most businesses nurture their leads by offering emails with links to relevant content such as newsletters and webinars.

An amazing example of this drip campaign are the newsletters by Apartment Therapy?—?a business dedicated to helping people decorate their own apartment.

Drip Campaigns Made Simple: A Step by Step Guide 

Most email marketers are familiar with the drip campaign — a series of triggered marketing emails to potential customers.

Generally speaking, the goal of a drip campaign is to turn a subscriber into a customer.

They are absolutely valuable to your marketing efforts.

But they’re only as good as the emails you write.

How do you create ultra-effective emails? How can your drip campaign move readers with purpose towards becoming customers? How do you write absolutely irresistible drip campaigns?

Let me share with you the advice that has helped me. I’ve seen these techniques reproduced in dozens of other effective drip sequences.

I have no doubt that they will work for you.

Understand How Drip Campaigns Fit Into Your Overall Marketing Campaign

I’m only providing advice on one component of your drip campaign — the writing.

The way you set up the drip campaign depends on your email marketing service. I’m not getting into the technicalities in this article. Why? Because setting it all up depends on the service you use.

The point that I want to make here is that you need to understand how your email drip campaign fits into your marketing efforts.

Basically, you need to get clear on this: Have a goal, and focus on moving recipients towards that goal.

Don’t let the complexity of drip campaigns throw you off. Sure, there may be triggered actions, varying sequence rates, autoresponder snafus, and whatever. But regardless of the technical differences, focus on your goal.

There are different types of drip campaigns. Your goal needs to be relevant to the type of drip campaign that you’re using.

Each drip campaign should move to an eventual conclusion. This doesn’t mean that you stop marketing to the prospect. Instead, it means that you move them to a final action point, which is presumably your goal.

 So, how exactly do you write these emails?

 Write Them All In One Session

Your drip campaign needs to have a unified feel to it.

Even though your prospect is going to read the emails several days or weeks apart, try to create them all in one session.

Why? Because it will be easier for you to remember how the sequence flows, what you wrote in the last email, what’s coming up in the next email, etc.

Additionally, make sure you’ve diagrammed your drip campaign.

These things can get pretty complicated, so sit down with a nice diagram and then start writing.

Don’t Skimp On Quality

If you can’t write, don’t want to write, or don’t think you have the time to write a drip campaign, please outsource it.

Your campaign is an incredibly important part of your marketing process. You don’t want low-quality work.

Be willing to invest considerable resources into hire a professional who can do the job for you.

 Use Short Lines

I’ve found that shorter lines, shorter words, and shorter emails work better for these email campaigns.

Why? It all comes down to attention span.

If your email is one of the 81 emails that the prospect has opened that day, they want the information quickly. What do they need to know? What do they need to do?

Shorter lines allow them to get that information as rapidly as possible.

Stephen Esketzis is the king of short lines. His marketing emails often have one, two, or three words on a single line.

It may seem disjointed, but in reality, this helps users move through the email quickly. They feel like it’s moving along and they are making progress. Plus, they are being pulled into the information.

t’s smart, and it works.

Short Emails Work Best

Most of the time, you want to write short emails.

Normally, I produce massive blog articles. These longform articles work best for me and my readers.

But my emails? Different story.

I usually pull a few short paragraphs from the blog post, and that’s it.

Don’t be afraid of long emails, though. It simply depends on your users.

Ramit Sethi writes super long emails.

Some of these emails clock in at 1k+ words.

I wouldn’t read an email from my best friend if it was 1k words. But Ramit is different. This guy knows how to write emails.

General rule of thumb:

New users want short emails.

Longtime subscribers don’t mind long emails.

The longer your subscribers have been receiving your emails, the longer your emails can be.

Add A P.S. Or Two To Each Email

Have you ever seen drip emails with a P.S.? Of course you have. Tons of drip campaigns use it.

What is the P.S.? It stands for postscript. Back in the day, when they didn’t have Gmail and Infusionsoft, people had to actually write their emails by hand. And they weren’t even emails!

If you wrote a letter with ink and paper, you couldn’t go up to paragraph three, press “return” a few times and add a new thought or two. So you would pop it in at the end, as long as you had some paper left.

It’s an old-fashioned hangover from the horse-and-buggy days.

And you see it all the time.

So, why are sophisticated marketers using P.S. and P.P.S in their emails?

Why does this work?

It’s called the “serial position effect,” specifically, the recency effect.

What does this mean?

Your mind can’t remember everything in the email you just read. But if there’s a P.S. at the end, then you might remember that. It’s the last thing that you read, so it’s more likely to stick.

Here’s how most minds work. We tend to remember the stuff at the beginning and the stuff at the end.

he stuff in the middle? Not so much.

Therefore, if you drop a P.S. or two at the end of your email, readers are more likely to remember it.

You can add as many P.Ss as you want. Technically, you’re supposed to add another “P” with each extra P.S., like this:

P.S.

P.P.S.

P.P.P.S.

P.P.P.P.S.

Etc.

I usually stick with just one.

Focus on creating a Personal Tone

You might be selling the most unsexy and impersonal product in the world. But you still need to have a personal tone.

Remember, people are reading your emails. These people have souls, emotions, a bagel for breakfast, and a 3-year old kid at home. Real folks.

So, write them an email. To them. From you. Personally.

Again, the exact tone depends on your audience. Here’s how Amy Porterfield wrote her drip sequence email. It’s just an excerpt, and I’ve highlighted the personal-feeling sections:

email recipients name

Add Suspense

Here’s one killer tip that I’ve used with amazing success.

Create some suspense.

How does this work?

In each email, tell the recipient that something good is coming. Or, tell them that they will receive something special. Whatever it is, promise some good things in the future.

An email sequence can turn into something boring. If you’re not keeping readers engaged, then they might unsubscribe.

Keep the momentum going with promises of what’s to come. Here’s another example from Stephen Esketzis:

sales funnel email

Stephen withholds some information and promises some future information, which compels me, the recipient, to stay subscribed. When I see his email the next day, I’ll be more likely to read it.

Include A Call To Action

Here’s one of the most important ingredients in an effective drip campaign email.

The call to action.

Every email you send in your drip campaign should have at least two things:

Valuable information, or

Call to action

The call to action, or CTA, is what you want the recipient to do as a result of reading your email.

Here’s an example of Olark’s CTA.

But there’s also a line you can cross.

If you keep using the person’s name, or use it at weird spots in the email, it just feels awkward.

Sometimes, people put false names on their opt-in forms, so they might be seeing this in their “personalized” email:

“Dear apwiguh apwhuefawe”

I borrowed this email screenshot from someone. It’s an example of awkward personalization:

Just write your email in the same way you’d talk to the person in real life. Don’t overuse their name. Once at the beginning is fine.

Conclusion

There’s no one-size-fits-all for email drip campaigns. Every marketing strategy is different, and every business has different goals.

The most important point is this — have a drip campaign. They are invaluable! Second, know what you’re doing with your drip campaign.

You’ve got your goal.

 10 Email Drip Campaign Examples To Steal Today   

Wondering how to get more out of your email marketing and drip campaigns?

Here are 10 drip campaign examples to dig deeper and get more by doing less!

The primary goal of an email drip marketing campaign is to attract the right subscribers. Send subscribers highly relevant emails that encourage them to commit to your call to action.

However, the usual “sign up to receive my newsletter” opt-in box won’t cut it anymore. Nor will sending subscribers emails intermittently about topics they didn’t sign up for.

In today’s marketing landscape, the audience has the power. Your visitors can ignore your opt-in boxes and unsubscribe to your list if the emails become spammy or annoying to them. These instances spell disaster for your online business; you want to build on generating more prospective customers, not losing them.

Therefore, striking the perfect balance while list building and keeping your subscribers engaged allows you to appease your target audience, which is crucial in a sustainable email marketing strategy. To consolidate both needs (building a mailing list AND user engagement at the same time), one way to do this is by launching drip email campaigns.

What is a drip campaign?

Drip marketing campaigns are composed of multiple emails sent out at specific times and dates. To receive drip emails, your readers need to subscribe to your opt-in form first. Upon signing up, they will receive the emails in a timely fashion until the campaign ends.

Drip campaigns are implemented using marketing automation so you can set up the emails and schedule when each will be sent to the subscribers. This campaign type is what our marketing automation feature will help you achieve if you signed up for an account with us (if you haven’t already).

What makes drip campaigns creative compared to other types of email marketing tactic is they combine the ability to build your list while sending them emails that they signed up for in the first place. As a result, there is a greater chance for more sign-ups and a lower risk of people unsubscribing.

If you have no idea how to come up with a drip program for your business, then you’re in luck. Below are different examples of successful drip email campaigns to help inspire you to come up with your own.

 What makes a drip campaign successful?

To create an effective email drip campaign, first, you need to pinpoint your pain: Do you need more checkouts? Drive back to your website your one-off website visitors? Do you need to increase engagement among your existing subscribers? Or onboard users smoothly so that they set up their accounts and start using your service?

All of these can be automated via the right drip campaign! On ’s platform, there is a growing list of preset drip campaigns to jump-start your list-building, automate your checkouts, and deal with every possible problem your business is facing.

The secret to creating the perfect drip is to revisit it along the way; feed your insights and results into your existing drips and customize them accordingly. This way, you will streamline every single aspect of your business – automatically!

 Why drip campaigns?

Drip campaigns are an excellent way to achieve consistent growth and automate time-consuming, demanding, or delicate manual tasks which otherwise could incur mistakes.

Drip campaigns by industry

If you are wondering “Do I need to set up drip campaigns?”, the answer is “Absolutely!” if you are in:

 Drip campaigns for Real Estate

Realtors need exceptional management and monitoring skills, and a team running secondary administrative tasks and scheduling. Stay ahead of the curve and don’t get swallowed up by follow-up calls, viewings and so on; drip campaigns take care of these, as well as all recurring processes.

Have automation triggered when users click/don’t click a specific/random link, for instance, and send them more information on the same house, or a different house altogether, and so on. The sky is the limit, really. Drip campaigns do the work for you.

 Drip campaigns for the Blogging Business

Unsure how famous influencers and bloggers grow their fanbase? No, they don’t have a team of 10 because they don’t need it; they can run everything themselves with a little help from drip campaigns. One of the top drip campaign examples for bloggers is that of Website Re-engagement, to drive users back to the website.

Another email sequence example is the Welcome drip campaigns, a series of emails which show the subscriber around the blog and help them get familiar with the actions they can take.

Drip campaigns for the Fashion Industry

Chances are that if you are in Fashion Marketing you have already implemented drip campaigns. If you haven’t, your competitors have, for one thing. Set up drip campaigns to send out Happy Birthday emails to every subscriber, send out carefully crafted surveys, or website re-engagement drip emails, to name a few.

Also, I take it that you will like the Ultimate Marketing Pack for Fashion Marketing Professional. I wrote it based on my personal (and hard-earned) experiences in the exciting world of Fashion Marketing, and I tried to squeeze everything in!

Drip campaigns for the Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

Keep track of and (automatically) reward your most loyal customers, upsell and cross-sell on auto-pilot, or send weather-based recommendations; all of these (and many more) are readily available as drip campaign templates in your  account.

But you can always create your own automation for custom actions! Bonus: I’m sure you’ll find our How-to guide on successfully using Email Marketing in the beauty industry extremely useful!

Drip campaigns for Ecommerce

Need I say anything more than Cart Abandonment drip campaigns, Repeat Purchase Reminder drips, VIP Customer Reward campaigns, and Upselling/Cross-selling drips? I thought so.

10 drip campaign examples to steal today

1. Sark eMedia’s 30-day blogging challenge

Blogging can be frustrating if you don’t have a clear goal in mind. With Sark eMedia’s 30-Day Blogging Challenge, you will learn the different ways on how to write content for your blog while targeting a particular objective. Just like email marketing, blogging is not necessarily about creating the longest content and driving the most traffic – it’s all about increasing your conversion rate so you can make money off your blog.

Upon signing up, you will receive emails from Sark eMedia for the next 30 days. You will be asked to write content and develop pages on your blog to help you master the complexities involved in blogging.

The online course is an excellent example of a drip campaign that is highly focused on a particular subject. Subscribers won’t expect any other email except the blogging challenges, and Sark eMedia doesn’t disappoint. The emails are jam-packed with valuable information so you can set up your blog the right way.

 2. Leah Kalamakis at Freelancing to Freedom Project

Leah Kalamakis has made a living as a freelance web designer. She wants to impart her knowledge and success to other people, which is why she set up the Freelancing to Freedom Project School. Through this online course, she offers paid subscribers access to exclusive content that contains blueprints to her success that they could emulate.

To get a taste of what she offers, you can sign up to receive Leah’s Freelancer’s Toolkit. From there, she will send emails on a regular basis to upsell her online course.

However, what makes Leah’s drip marketing remarkable is the personal tone she sets on each email. She shares her day-to-day musings with her subscribers and manages to connect events in her life with her online course. It’s a pretty smart strategy on her part; by opening up and being more personable, she gains the trust of her subscribers, giving them more reason to shell out cash for her course.

 3. Drift’s welcome drip email

Let’s step back from the drip campaign ideas and look deeper into the parts that make an automated email sequence. One of those parts is the Welcome email, which is the first thing subscribers receive after signing up to the list.

These are important because they set the tone for the rest of your email campaign. If it doesn’t resonate with your audience, there’s a good chance that they’ll click the unsubscribe button then and there. Therefore, you have to get this right if you want to retain your subscribers and bring them down your sales funnel.

One of the better examples of a welcome email is from Drift, a live chat application that can be embedded on your site. Usually, welcome emails take the form of a landing page that thanks you for signing up and the benefits you’ll get while signed up.

However, Drift foregoes the formality by getting down and dirty with what truly matters: useful content.

Upon signing up to their blog, you will receive this email from them that curates the best blog posts that you need to read. There’s an icon for each of the popular posts, and the number of views each has accumulated since it was first published. Since many people read it, it means that there’s probably value in the post, which is an incentive enough for you to read.

More importantly, the beginning of the copy sets the tone of the email and perhaps the succeeding emails you will receive in the future. It says that Drift is unlike any other tool and dives directly into the meat and the bones of the subject.

Their welcome email is a fantastic example of how you can approach your drip campaign because it is so simple yet so effective. You can replicate this type of email for your drip sequence – all you need to do is write a compelling intro and links to your best posts.

4. Twelve Days to Trello

If you want your drip campaign emails to generate the conversion you’re expecting from subscribers, then you might as well try a more aggressive sales approach as well. By featuring the overwhelming benefits of your products or services, you might persuade subscribers to give in and become one of your customers.

An interesting and unique approach to this method was implemented by Trello recently through its Twelve Days to Trello. The campaign was launched during the holiday seasons, and the title is a play on words to the song “12 Days of Christmas.”

The email contains links to pages on how to use Trello not only as a project management tool but also as a productivity tool to help you become more efficient in life, especially during the holidays. The approach also matches well with the holiday season, which is the perfect fit for what Trello was trying to achieve with this email. By creating a timely email as part of your drip campaign, you can maximize your sales and generate more interest in your product.

5. Smiley Cookie’s cart abandonment recovery

If you’re running an ecommerce site, then you’re fully aware of the difficulties involved in closing a sale with potential a buyer. Even if you shortened the sales process, it still leaves you with at least one more step too many in closing a transaction.

One of the biggest pitfalls of ecommerce is cart abandonment. There are many reasons why people abandon their carts – it is up to you to prevent them from forgetting about their carts.

The best way to combat cart abandonment is by sending them an automated email reminding them that they forgot to check out their shopping cart. In fact, you may need to send out more than one email to convert these deserters into buyers.

The idea behind this campaign is to encourage people to close the transaction by not only reminding them about the abandoned cart but also offering a much larger discount as time passes. As valuable as cart abandonment recovery is, you should never condition buyers to leave their carts on purpose for the discount fee to kick in.

The ecommerce site for inspirational products takes a minimalist approach with their email. However, the substance more than makes up for its straightforwardness. The polite and good-natured tone of the email plays into the site’s branding. It also asked if there are any problems with their checkout process and sought for advice on how to improve the shopping experience.

6. Becca Cartice’s free “step-by-step” workshop

Are you holding a series of instructional or how-to videos? Some resources require a higher level of commitment on the user’s part, as well. So, you want to make it as easy as possible on subscribers to check out your new content and remain as engaged as possible.

This drip campaign example is the first of the email sequence I signed up for on Becca’s website. This email is immensely personable, like actually meeting her in real life! Why is personal tone so important? Because, at a time when the average user receives anything from 10-50 newsletters a day, your newsletters must stand out.

Attending a free workshop should require no extra incentives- I know, right? Only, the majority of your users are working a 9-5 job, pick up the kids from school/hit the gym, and they have a personal life to factor in, so… When life happens, your users’ goals might not quite work out for you(r subscribers). This is where drip campaigns come in:

i) Drip campaigns can serve as a series of reminders for your subscribers.

ii) Another example of email drip campaign perfection is that they help users keep track of the work, keep up with the content and the rest of the team, and feel good about themselves.

This is the Day 4 email I received just minutes ago (right in time for this blog post). Becca is checking up on her subscribers with juuuust the right amount of encouragement to get us going! The greatest thing about this email drip campaign is that Becca had to take the time to set up this series of emails without having to repeat the process manually day in day out. This way, she can focus on more creative tasks and development of processes.

7. RyanAir’s drip campaign for new offer launches

Arguably one of the most iconic tactics of RyanAir is that of mega seat sales. But digital marketers over at RyanAir HQs don’t need to go through the same process every time. This qualifies as one of the top email drip campaign best practices:

In the following drip emails, subscribers are i) first notified of the mega seat sale, valid for bookings by March 6th, ii) then updated on the extension of the sale with no “book by” limitation, and iii) lastly, the absolute latest by when the offer will stand. Not for a second should you think that someone actively put together these emails every couple of days. At least, they shouldn’t; not with all these drip campaign templates available!

8. SkinnyDip’s website re-engagement drip campaign

It’s nice to be thought of, isn’t it? That warm, fuzzy feeling when one of your fave brands checks up on you to find out if everything’s all right? Whether you’re out and about, or feeling under the weather, or maybe to see whether you’re handling the breakup well (some would say there is a correlation between the amount of money you spend on clothing and your breakup phase, *smh*).

Well, this set of website re-engagement drip marketing campaigns is beautifully crafted, and very customer-oriented. Here’s what they sent me a couple of months ago:

Set up a re-engagement drip campaign to show you care about your customers. Build on this chance to revive your relationship with every dropout of your Highly Engaged segment members. One of the most essential drip campaigns to set up is this. Help your subscribers find their way back to your eshop and reward them with a sweet discount coupon!

discount coupon

By the way, I usually advise that your coupon codes and discounts come with an expiration date, only in this case, SkinnyDip just sent me over a code, and even though I checked my mailbox quite later I still managed to get my discount! *frantic laugh*

 9. SkinnyDip’s cart abandonment email drip campaign

Aaaand no, we’re not done with SkinnyDip just yet. This is another cart abandonment drip campaign that you could steal for your company. As soon as I used my discount code but got caught up in work and didn’t complete checkout, I got a aaaaawesome reminder email that segmented me in automatically to the cart abandonment campaign…which gave me 10% off my next purchase- oh so lovely! Truth be told, I haven’t always gotten these cart abandonment drip campaign emails. This adds a veil of mystery to the process and keeps me intrigued to unveil the trigger pattern for the brand. But maybe that’s just me!

10. Qualaroo’s onboarding drip campaign

Thinking of how to use drip campaigns for onboarding subscribers or website users? Set up a simple drip campaign to show users what to do next!

No need to wonder what successful drip campaigns look like: Number all of the steps you need your users to take a set up a drip campaign that is triggered based on their activity 

Give your users a guided demo of the actions you want them to take! In the case of user onboarding for Qualaroo, from creating my account to building my survey and installing the code on my website, I enjoyed a smooth user experience! A positive first experience with your product or service is highly likely to elicit confidence in users, and consequently, positive reviews and referrals.