A Guide to Drip Marketing

Sometimes the right marketing campaign isn’t a big, splashy blast broadcasting your brand, but something smaller, personalized, and more targeted. That’s when drip marketing campaigns come in. 

This type of marketing centers around a sequence of emails timed to reach your customer at a precise moment, with messaging guiding them to take an action, whether you’re onboarding new members, encouraging potential customers to sign up or checkout, or re-engaging past clients. Drip campaigns can help you showcase your products and services, reinforce your brand’s value, and help site visitors get to the next step in the process, like signing up for a demo, upgrading a plan, completing a purchase, or another action.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to create a drip campaign, including common frameworks, effective strategies, and ways to set up email automations.

What is drip marketing?

Drip marketing is an automated marketing strategy that’s timed and tailored to reach past, present, and future customers based on their actions, status, or stage in their user journey. You might also hear this type of marketing referred to as automated marketing, lifecycle emails, and lead nurturing. 

A drip email marketing campaign unfurls over time. Instead of a blast-style campaign with a flood of brand information, drip marketing involves doling out a steady trickle of messages with the aim of leading the recipient along a path, like buying a full membership after a free trial or getting connected to a community after signing up. 

To launch this type of email marketing campaign, you’ll map out the user flow and write the messages in advance. Each message should be tailored to your business’ sales cycle or user journey, based on triggers you’ve selected. Think about key moments like when users subscribe to your newsletter, download gated content, or get a renewal reminder. Setting up an automated system means your target audience will seamlessly receive the messages at the right time.

Why should you use a drip campaign?

With drip campaigns, you have the opportunity to nurture and cultivate connections with people who’ve signaled interest—such as registering for a free webinar—in a more personal, relevant, and targeted way. For example, you can get new customers and subscribers up to speed on your offerings or educate them on the specifics of your products.

This consistent cadence and repeated exposure helps customers keep your brand top of mind. Each message doubles as a reminder of the ways your business can solve their problems or add value to their lives. 

Drip marketing campaigns can help to:

• Boost conversion rates

• Increase sales and repeat purchases

• Encourage engagement

• Reduce unsubscribe rates 

• Increase open and click-through rates

• Win back inactive users

Most people have now come to anticipate a personalized brand experience, too. According to McKinsey’s research, 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, and research suggests that 65% of customers see targeted offers as a top reason to make a purchase. 

For sellers, sending automated emails to specific segments can really pay off: Triggered emails for abandoned carts have been shown to generate nearly $7 in revenue per message.

Effective types of drip marketing campaigns

From welcome messaging and onboarding flows to reminders and re-engagement sequences, drip marketing campaigns can take many forms, all nudging customers toward their next step. Here are several common categories of drip campaigns, along with examples of how to put them into practice. 

Welcome emails

Send a warm welcome email to people who subscribe to your mailing list, make their first purchase from your shop, or sign up for your services. This is a solid way to make a good first impression on newcomers, reinforce connection, and help people get familiar with your products and services. Your welcome email series could start with an initial message to confirm that they’re on the list plus a call to action (CTA) guiding them to an intro blog post or video. Follow-up messages could include a guide to handy features, an invitation to sign up for a consultation, or a coupon code for their next purchase.

Onboarding emails

Similar to welcome emails, onboarding drip emails are an important part of establishing a good customer experience and building trust. This sequence can help newcomers get oriented and up to speed on all that your business offers. This includes welcoming new clients, setting expectations, collecting additional info you’ll need before their class or appointment, and helping them feel informed, prepared, and cared for. 

Post-purchase emails

After a customer buys a product or a service, you can show your appreciation, drum up excitement, communicate next steps, and encourage repeat purchases with a series of automated messages. A post-purchase drip could include emails thanking the customer for their order, shipping and tracking info, a message celebrating the delivery’s arrival, a request for a review or testimonial, reminders about refills or renewals, and add-on product recommendations. 

Abandoned cart emails

When shoppers leave an item in their cart without checking out, you can remind them and guide them back to your online shop. An abandoned cart drip campaign could include a friendly reminder about their cart and the item (“Did you see something you liked?”), a nudge to drum up urgency (“Only three left!”), a testimonial or review to serve as social proof, FAQ and product highlights to answer lingering questions, and an offer, like a coupon code or free shipping.

Re-engagement emails

If you have former clients or inactive customers, consider setting up a series of emails designed to win them back. When re-engaging past clients, look for signals that they might still be interested, like whether they’ve continued to open your emails. Or, if they’ve previously purchased items related to a milestone, such as a wedding, they might be interested in a related product category, like items for honeymoon travel. Reactivation emails are a way to showcase your brand’s value and recent improvements, and invite customers to come back. An incentive, like a discount, can sweeten the deal.

Behavior-based emails

Automated email marketing series are often designed to get kicked off, or “triggered,” by a particular user action or behavior. It could also be an action that’s not taken. For instance, not signing up for a plan after the trial period ends could trigger a drip underscoring the benefits of joining. Unsubscribing could trigger a sad-to-see-you-go reengagement drip. Setting up a registry could trigger a sequence with relevant product suggestions. Signing up for an online class could trigger a weekly email that lasts the duration of the class, with supporting blog posts, videos, and info on follow-up classes.

Event-based or date-based emails

Key dates and milestones in the customer’s journey can inform your drip marketing campaign, too. By setting up marketing automations based on day of the week or month, holidays, seasons, or other occasions, you can connect with site visitors at moments that matter to them. This could mean setting up a treat-yourself drip near the customer’s birthday, with self-care suggestions. Or, if you’re offering a retreat, a drip campaign could include a save the date message, customer testimonials and photos from past retreats, a preview of the scheduled activities, and a countdown to the early-bird sign-up deadline.

How to create a drip campaign

Well-considered timing, persuasive and on-brand messaging, and a clear goal are key components of a successful drip marketing campaign. Here’s how to start building your own. 

1. Pick a trigger 

Consider the types of email marketing drip campaigns listed above: welcome emails; onboarding flows; post-purchase emails; abandoned cart campaigns; re-engagement emails; and campaigns based on customer behavior, events, and dates. Decide which user action or milestone will trigger your automated drip campaign.

2. Map out the timing and flow

With drip marketing campaigns, timing is everything. Make sure the right people get the right information at the right time. To figure out the ideal timing for your emails, consider relevant holidays and seasonal changes, key milestones in your customers’ journey and your sales cycle, and moments when people will benefit the most from your messages. Making a flowchart can also help you visualize the sequencing. 

3. Craft your message

Tailor the messaging to your brand’s tone, voice, and narrative, showcase your offerings, and guide the recipient toward the next step or action with persuasive writing. Weave a clear, specific CTA into every message. The recipient should understand exactly why they’re receiving the message and, ideally, feel compelled to act.

4. Customize an email template

Pick an email template design that will mesh with the message and purpose of the drip. Customize your email to match your brand colors, add your logo, and upload visuals from your asset library. Include a discount or bestselling product to drive shop visits and sales. Format the message and consider personalizing it with your customer’s name.

5. Set up your marketing automation

Email automation tools help you work smarter, not harder, to grow your business. Automate your message to send based on your customers’ actions (like subscribing, completing a form, or making a purchase from your store) or stats (like last order date, total amount spent, or order count).

How to build drip marking automations with Squarespace

Create your own custom drip marketing automations with Squarespace’s visual builder, or start with a premade template. Here’s how:

1. Choose a template. Take your pick from Squarespace’s collection of professionally designed email marketing templates.

2. Make it your own. To customize your selected template, add in your logo and brand colors. It just takes a tap.

3. Select visuals. To craft just the right look of your automated marketing email, bring in photos, videos, GIFs, and graphics from your asset library.

4. Spotlight a product. Add in a product, service, or deal in your email to encourage shop visits and, in turn, sales.

5. Finetune your message. Write and edit your email copy. If you need help, Squarespace AI can help. Add the copy to your email.

6. Automate it. Set up your drip campaign to send based on customer actions or milestones, such as how many purchases they’ve made or a specific date, like an anniversary or birthday.

Drip campaign best practices

Timing, pacing, and messaging are the essential ingredients of an effective email drip campaign. To develop a drip campaign strategy that works, follow these best practices.

1. Establish a clear goal

When you clearly define your desired outcome, you can focus all your design and messaging decisions to support it. 

Consider these guiding questions:

• What do you want this email series to achieve? 

• Is it about engagement, conversion, education, building trust and loyalty, reactivation, or something else? 

• Who are you targeting with this campaign? (This could be top buyers, potential customers, warm leads, or lapsed clients, for example.) 

• What actions do you want to inspire the email recipients to take? 

• How will you define, track, and measure success? 

2. Identify and bucket your audiences

Crafting an effective drip marketing campaign is all about delivering the right message to a receptive audience that’s primed to hear it. Segment your audience based on your selected criteria, such as triggers, moments, and desired actions for the best reception.

3. Test and collect feedback

After setting up your email drip campaign, be sure to carve out time to regularly assess how it’s performing. Review email marketing analytics (such as open rate, click-through rate, average order value, and unsubscribe or opt-out rates), and look for patterns and signals that it’s working or needs refining. Adjust your campaign based on your observations.