What Is an Email Drip Marketing Campaign?

You may think that email is a thing of the past, but you’d be wrong. In 2024, there were 361.6 billion emails sent globally — per day! The number of email users is also steadily growing and is expected to hit 4.6 billion by 2025. Email click-through rates are also scoring higher than social media and other channels simply because, if you do your job well, your emails are almost guaranteed to get seen. 

Now, what is an email drip marketing campaign? It’s simply an automated, pre-scheduled series of emails sent over time to your subscribers. When done correctly, drip campaigns can help build brand awareness, nurture your leads, and increase engagement without overwhelming your audience.  

However, not all drip emails are made equal. Here, we dive deep into everything you need to know about building an effective drip email campaign and how to incorporate it into your larger, signal-based marketing strategy to nurture your audience and convert them to customers.  

Drip Email vs. Mass Email Campaigns 

While in both cases you hit your subscribers’ inboxes with an email, there’s a massive difference between the two campaign approaches.  

Mass emails are one-time blasts sent to a large audience simultaneously, delivering the same message to everyone. They’re easier to build (since it’s the same message for everyone), but they’re also less effective as they don’t speak directly to the needs and challenges of your audience.  

Drip email campaigns, on the other hand, are automated sequences of emails sent to subscribers based on their actions, preferences, or stages in the customer journey. Here you can segment your audience based on their gender, age, location, or previous actions to determine the timing and content of your next email.  

How Email Drip Campaigns Work 

Drip campaigns consist of a series of automated, behavior-driven emails designed to guide recipients through a specific journey. They leverage triggers, personalization, and automation tools to deliver targeted, timely messages that resonate with your audience.  

Some of these trigger points could be: 

• Filling out a form to download a whitepaper or case study. 

• Registering for a webinar or virtual event. 

• Viewing high-value content, such as pricing pages or product demo videos. 

• Cart abandonment. 

• Browsing a specific product category. 

Personalization Techniques 

Personalization is at the core of a successful drip campaign. The more relevant the message, the higher the chances of engagement. Techniques you can use here are segmenting your audience by demographics (job role, company size, region, etc.), purchase history, and engagement levels.  

Using a mix of first-, second-, and third-party firmographic data can help you build a nuanced understanding of your audience and decide what kind of messaging would work best. 

Automation Tools 

The good news is that you don’t have to do all this work manually. You can use readily available email automation platforms like Mailchimp, Marketo, or Mailerlite and integrate them with your CRM to track lead behavior and collect data. Platforms like Intentsify can also help you leverage more in-depth intent data and use AI to identify and reach ready-to-buy accounts beyond their inbox.  

Benefits of Drip Campaigns 

In a world where all buyers expect personalization, drip campaigns can be a godsend for your sales and marketing teams. Carefully crafted drip campaigns can nurture your leads through the marketing funnel with relevant and personalized content that resonates with their needs.  

Automating this process while keeping tabs on key metrics (open rates, click-through rates, and conversions) can help you achieve markedly better results than mass emails without the extra legwork.  

Types of Drip Campaigns 

There are many different scenarios in which drip campaigns can help you move the needle toward a happier and more engaged pipeline. Here are just a few examples to get your creative juices flowing, but there are many, many more you can come up with:  

Welcome Series 

This drip campaign does what it says on the tin — it introduces your new subscribers to your brand and sets the tone for your relationship. You can use this sequence to set the scene for what subscribers can expect from your emails, share your company values, or share case studies or services that may be relevant to them.  

Lead Nurturing  

This type of campaign is designed to educate and build trust with early-stage leads who are not ready to buy yet. The goal is to guide them through the sales funnel with relevant, value-driven content. Things you may want to cover here are industry pain points, free resources like webinars or eBooks, or highlight product benefits as they relate to that specific lead. 

Cart Abandonment  

Uh oh! Did they abandon your cart at the last minute? Don’t fret! A cart abandonment drip campaign can visit their inbox and remind them that they didn’t finish the job. Linking your email automation tool with your website can send a personalized email at the right time with the right product to nudge them to complete the purchase!  

Re-engagement/Winback 

We all have straddlers on our subscription list who either no longer need our services, forgot to unsubscribe, or disappeared from the face of the Earth. Either way, a re-engagement drip campaign can help you animate those sleepy heads and see what’s going on. Your score as an email sender can also suffer if too many people are disengaged with your emails, so rekindling this relationship with new, targeted emails can be incredibly beneficial.  

Post-Purchase Follow-up 

If the other drip campaigns have done their job, you’re sitting on a list of leads who have already purchased from you. That doesn’t mean that your emails should stop. Post-purchase follow-ups are great for cross- and upselling existing clients or simply for soliciting some much-needed feedback. You can offer another product that goes nicely with what they’ve already bought or ask them to leave a public review. 

Renewal Reminders 

People are busy! Regardless of whether your renewals are automated (well done if they are!) or manual, it’s a good practice to send your clients a reminder that a renewal is upcoming. This will give them a chance to change their subscription, add or remove services, and, most importantly, not panic when the money leaves their bank account.  

Going Beyond the Email Drip Campaign: Multi-Channel Nurture Strategy 

While drip campaigns are a great way to engage your audience and keep an open channel of communication, they should be just one tool in the arsenal of your digital marketers. To build a strong and long-lasting relationship with your leads, you need an always-on, multi-channel strategy powered with rich intent data that can help you carry over that personalization across all interactions your leads have with your brand. Here’s how. 

Social Media Integration 

People spend almost 2.5 hours (143 minutes) on social media every day. That’s a sizable chunk of time that you can use to serve follow-up ads and nurturing content to keep your brand top-of-mind.  

Retargeting Ads 

Retargeting ads can be key to pushing your leads down the funnel. If they’ve already engaged with your website or email, they’ve expressed some kind of interest in what you have to offer. Retargeting ads can help get them more invested and familiar with your brand. 

SMS Drip Campaigns 

Drip campaigns aren’t reserved only for emails. If your leads have shared their phone number, you can send them text messages (make sure you do this occasionally!) with timely updates, exclusive offers, or relevant reminders.  

Chatbots and AI 

Generative AI has turned the world of customer service upside down. Embed an AI-powered chatbot into your website to engage leads directly while they’re browsing and provide them with personalized recommendations.  

Direct Mail Campaigns 

Sending physical letters might be outdated, but they can be leveraged for that added ‘oomph’ to your personalization efforts. Why? They’re unexpected, not as popular, and take effort — all of which can compound into massive kudos for your brand. 

Content Marketing Alignment 

Synchronize your drip campaign with the content you feed your leads on your blog page, videos, and webinars. Adding a tracking pixel to your website can help you track user behavior and adjust the content you serve based on that.  

Webinars and Events 

Live events and webinars are an excellent way to build thought leadership and a community around your brand. They can help deepen engagement and trust and can give you lots to follow up on in your next emails. 

Best Practices for Effective Drip Campaigns 

You may build an email campaign with staggered emails, but that doesn’t guarantee it would be effective. Successful drip campaigns are intentional and data-driven so that you talk to your audience at the right time, in the right way, about the right thing.  

Some things to consider when building your email campaigns: 

• Segment your audience: One of the major differentiators that make drip campaigns so effective is audience segmentation by behavior, purchase history, or demographics. This will help serve up the right content/offer to the right people.  

• Align your campaign with your content strategy: Make sure that each email builds towards your larger strategy and goals. To avoid coming across as too pushy or salesy, use a mix of educational, promotional, and storytelling content to build trust and relationships with your leads.  

• Test and optimize: Fine-tune your campaigns until you find what works. This includes conducting A/B tests for subject lines, email copy, and CTAs to identify which ones work best. 

• Avoid information overload: Nobody likes to be spammed. Just because they’ve given you their email, it doesn’t mean that you need to talk to them on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Christmas. Stay on their good side by sending only occasional and relevant emails. 

Common Mistakes to Avoid 

While any drip campaign would go through a period of fine-tuning, you’d save yourself a lot of headaches if you stay clear of these common campaign-building mistakes: 

• Sending irrelevant or repetitive content: Yes, we said it. There’s such a thing as irrelevant and repetitive content, regardless of how wonderful your product is. Don’t send a long list of features if you don’t tie it back to the benefits it brings to your leads. Likewise, don’t repeat yourself. Always build on what you’ve shared and take your audience on a journey.  

• Lack of clear CTAs: Each email should have a clear call-to-action (CTA) at the end. No CTA (or too many CTAs) can confuse your leads and lead to inaction.  

• Over-personalization that feels intrusive: Personalize to a degree that’s relevant. They don’t need to know that you know their purchase behavior from the past five years.  

• Ignoring data and analytics for refinement: When in doubt, follow the data. Failing to analyze open rates, click-through rates, and conversions means missing opportunities to identify what's working and what isn't. For example, if certain emails in a sequence have low engagement, it might indicate poor subject lines, irrelevant content, or timing issues.  

Tools and Resources for Drip Campaigns 

To build an always-on nurturing campaign, you need a streamlined and tightly integrated tech stack that will allow you to have access to the right data at the right time. Here are some of the tools you’d need to take your drip campaigns to the next level. 

Top Email Marketing Tools 

Email marketing platforms are the foundation of any drip campaign. Here are some of the most popular ones: 

• HubSpot: Offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, advanced segmentation, and detailed analytics, making it ideal for B2B drip campaigns.
  

• Mailchimp: Perfect for smaller businesses, it combines ease of use with robust automation features and pre-designed templates. 
  

• ActiveCampaign: Known for its powerful automation workflows, ActiveCampaign is great for integrating email with other channels like SMS and chat. 
  

• Marketo: A go-to platform for enterprise-level campaigns, Marketo excels in lead scoring and nurturing, especially for complex B2B sales cycles. 
  

• Klaviyo: A favorite for B2C brands, Klaviyo offers personalized product recommendations and deep e-commerce integration with platforms like Shopify. 

CRM Integration and Analytics Tools 

Integrating your CRM with your email marketing platform allows you to track customer interactions, segment audiences, and trigger campaigns based on real-time data. Some of the more popular analytics platforms you may want to consider are HubSpot, Zoho Analytics, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Google Analytics.  

Intent Data Providers 

Intent data can be the secret sauce that makes your nurturing campaign that much more powerful and relevant. Choosing a reliable intent data provider is key for ensuring the data you use is rich, compliant, and accurate.  

A leader in the intent data space, Intentsify aggregates data from multiple sources to pinpoint prospects with high purchase intent. For example, if a company is searching for "CRM solutions for small businesses," you can use that information from Intentsify and send a targeted email sequence addressing their exact pain point. 

Time to Start Drippin’  

Building an effective drip campaign may take some upfront planning, but it’s definitely worth it down the line. Rather than sending ad-hoc, spur-of-the-moment emails only when you have product updates and promotions, use intent data to build a carefully crafted nurturing campaign that whispers the right messages at the right time to your audience.  

Ready to get started? Check out our webinar on how to craft an Always-On Nurturing Campaign that delights your audience and drives results.