9 Email Drip Campaign Best Practices for 2024

"If it wasn’t obvious before, it is now: content that engages your audience also helps open their wallets.", says Rand Fishkin, co-founder & CEO of SparkToro.

The question is – how can you boost engagement with boring ol' emails? An effective drip campaign is how. True, this doesn't sound particularly groundbreaking, but let us elaborate. It's all about nailing the timing and type of message, which is why personalized drip campaigns can be more persuasive than bulk emails.

Ready? Let's dive into the email drip campaign best practices that will help you increase engagement and conversion rates with irresistible, always-relevant content.

9 email drip campaign best practices to follow

Segment your audience

The first step to successful drip email marketing is understanding your audience – not just as a whole but as specific groups, each with unique problems and views.

Here's an efficient method to try out – add your audience segments as labels in your UTM tagging. This way, you can organize your email campaign reports by each group and understand what works best for everyone based on success measures.

Better yet, if your ESP lets you export metadata. You'll make email marketing reports faster without creating multiple email copies for each segment. What a time saver!

SEINō, our tool for tracking all your critical email marketing KPIs, has a segmentation functionality that automates this. We use an engagement model to track and analyze your subscribers' behavior. You get specific insights like:

• Days since the last click
• Click frequency
• Days in the database
• Days between clicks

We tag them accordingly, e.g., "Promising", "Champions", "Hibernating" or "At risk". The goal is to help you target each group with the right type and frequency of messaging based on their behavior.

Proactively monitor your campaigns with Alerts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFS-I0l37Ow&ab_channel=SEIN%C5%8D%7CEmailAnalytics

The SEINō Alerts functionality checks whether your email campaigns are running smoothly. This feature helps you save money by helping you avoid situations where something goes sideways without you knowing.

You can create these alerts yourself and adjust them to your needs. We ensure you get notified immediately when, for example, the daily open rate drops below 20%, bounce rates suddenly increase or your emails generate revenue below your weekly average. That's right, we keep an eye on your transactional emails and metrics, too.

Here's a short demo illustrating exactly how the alerting feature works.

Interested in learning more? Check out this guide on how to measure email marketing success.

Create engaging subject lines for your drip campaigns

If you're not writing engaging subject lines, you're dooming your drip campaign emails to fail and never get opened. Here are some email drip campaign examples of what an attention-grabbing subject line can look like:

• "Don't wear last year's styles" (Guess) – This works by speaking directly to human vanity
• "Deals That Make Us Proud (Unlike Our Nephew, Steve)" (Groupon) – Humor is a great way to spark interest and sympathy at the same time
• "Feed your guests without breaking the bank" (Pizza Hut) – This line hits right in the buyer persona's pain point
• "Dave, earn double points today only" (American Express) – We've all felt FOMO; now use it to your advantage
• "Bring these home..." (Etsy) – Nothing like a cliffhanger to spark suspense and curiosity about what follows
• "Psst... your friends are cooking up a storm" (HelloFresh) – People can't resist following others (more on social proof later)
• "Where do all these toys go?" (Ikea) – Humans tend to naturally look for answers to questions which, in this case, spurs those click-through rates

Here are a few best practices for grabbing the reader's attention from Bas Wouters CMCT:

• Throw in an emoji that corresponds with your message and makes you stand out in the long list of emails in an inbox
• Add motion – both visually and in writing, e.g., engaging CTAs, verbs and avoiding passive voice
• Include contrasting shapes and colors
• Don't be afraid of bizarre messages – remember about inciting curiosity?
• Include people and animals
• Show and evoke strong emotions that people can relate to

Remember to analyze your subject lines to see what messaging type resonates with your readers. You can easily track their open rates with SEINō.

Bonus tip: Create a CSV file with your subject lines and stats. Prompt ChatGPT to sort the subjects into categories like Humor, Urgency, Curiosity etc. Analyze which categories work best for your target audience and identify which ones you haven’t used enough.

Make use of social proof

We've briefly touched on the point that people tend to be swayed by others' opinions and experiences, particularly when buying. Just think how often you've decided to go to a different restaurant because of bad reviews.

Here are three powerful email drip campaign best practices for leveraging reviews and social proof to make the most out of your marketing efforts:

1. Highlight your bestsellers: Showcase the products your existing customers love – there's a good reason they're popular
2. Address objections: Use testimonials from satisfied customers to directly confront potential doubts
3. Include before and after photos: This doesn't apply to every business, but if it fits your niche, use it – it's tangible proof of the value and effectiveness you provide

Source: HubSpot

Verify email addresses

You'll find tons of email marketing gurus telling you to remove inactive subscribers because they cost you money and drive no ROI. Let us prove them wrong.

Our benchmark data shows that people are returning to engage with your drip emails, even after more than six months without you lifting a finger. If you focus on a long-term re-engagement email strategy instead of meticulously clearing your lists, you could see as much as +50% in re-engaged revenue.

As it turns out, Google deletes inactive accounts anyway, so you don't need to waste your time on it. Instead, implement email verification in submission forms with a double opt-in or our other email list management best practices.

Those methods help to:

• Keep fraud accounts off your list
• Avoid duplicate signups and addresses with typos
• Clean your list of disposable emails
• Protect your sender reputation
• Improve email deliverability
• Save money by avoiding invalid emails and having only real prospective customers sign up

Optimize your email drip campaign frequency

Our customer studies show that you may be underutilizing at least 15% of your active subscriber base – meaning your email frequency might be too low.

Don't worry; we have four simple steps for improving this aspect of your email marketing strategy, too:

1. Calculate the average monthly email frequency for your group of active subscribers. Focus on those who were on your list for at least two months. Pay the closest attention to the engaged, e.g., clicked on an email within the last 60 days.
2. Establish the average monthly frequency for each active user. Identify those who are slightly below the average.
3. Consider why this segment's frequency is lower than average. If there's a legitimate reason, omit them from the list.
4. The last step is to optimize your sending frequency for the rest of your subscribers by running experiments. Find that sweet spot and lower the number of emails when you get an alarming number of unsubscribes or spam complaints – remember to set alerts for those using our instructions from above.

Provide value at each stage of the customer journey

Did you know that adding valuable information in content makes your customers over 130% more likely to buy from you?

Source: Conductor

Not only that – when given a choice between four companies to buy from, over 80% of consumers chose the brand that gave them educational value beforehand. This positive impact lasts over time, shining a trustworthy light on you.

Here are some ideas to include in email campaigns to create relevant and interesting content:

• Benefits of your product or service (including social proof, company values or history, founder introduction etc.)
• Product demonstrations and how-to's
• Case studies
• Educational content (you can include links to your blog, podcast or YouTube channel)
• Practical transactional emails, e.g., order confirmation details
• A discount code (bonus points if it's for a personalized product recommendation or after cart abandonment)
• Targeted, relevant messages only
• Skimmable and easy-to-digest text where readers can immediately find what they need
• Clear and concise wording

Read our transactional email best practices to explore how to add value even to these short email formats.

Pro tip: Use copywriting master Michael Masterson's four U's technique to produce powerful content. Keep it useful, urgent, unique and ultra-specific.

Optimize for mobile

In 2023, over one-third of emails were opened on an Apple iPhone. Moreover, mobile devices generated almost 60% of global website traffic. Yet, almost one in five email campaigns wasn't optimized for mobile. I bet you can imagine the results of the inconvenience – deletes and unsubscribes.

Here's how to ensure your email drip campaigns are mobile-friendly:

• Use a scalable, fluid or responsive email design
• Keep subject lines and headings within the character limit of one line on mobile
• Opt for a single-column layout
• Use larger fonts (approx. 20 px for copy and 22+ px for headers) and buttons (roughly 46 px squared)
• Left-align your copy
• Remove navigation bars
• While multimedia is great, leave some white space for a less intimidating feel
• Optimize the load time
• Include alt text
• Make buttons distinguishable
• Ensure images are vertical or proportionally smaller for mobile
• Implement continuous testing

Here's an example of a well-optimized email for mobile (with a horizontal image!).

Make it easy to unsubscribe and manage preferences

2024 Google guidelines require that everyone who sends over 5,000 emails daily must avoid sending unwanted emails and provide an easy option to unsubscribe and manage preferences. This is necessary if you don't want Google to block your messages or mark them as spam.

However, it's more than a rule if you ask us. It's just good manners. Respect your subscribers, their time and patience. There's no point keeping them on your list against their will.

Stick to these email marketing best practices in your "Unsubscribe" section:

• Make the unsubscription option easy to find
• Use understandable wording
• Don't overcomplicate or require signing in to manage preferences
• Give choices about what type of messaging your customers can choose to receive
• Avoid whiny, rude, needy or guilt-evoking language
• Link to other places where customers can find you (e.g., social media, app or landing page) – email may not be their preferred way of communicating

Here's a great example from Airbnb, where they implement all those best practices.

Keep in mind that a high unsubscribe rate isn't good either. If you see a spike in this metric, you should review our email drip campaign best practices list again.

Conclusion

Hopefully, the number of things to consider in your email campaign management practices isn't too overwhelming. Go over our tips in your own time and adjust your marketing efforts one aspect at a time. Brainstorm ideas about adding more value to your content without losing your selling point – and have fun with it!

The bottom line is that a successful email drip marketing campaign is based on solid data, not guesswork. SEINō is here to help you with that. We'll help you develop your bold ideas and show you what works best with segmentation, A/B testing, data filtering, visual dashboards, targets and automated alerts.

Sign up to schedule a free demo and see how you can optimize your emails.

Email drip campaign best practices: FAQ

What is the drip email campaign format? Drip email marketing campaigns are triggered by events and sent automatically. You schedule them in advance so readers aren’t overwhelmed with too much information at once. This form of messaging is a series of emails sent over a few weeks. They should be accurately planned to reach audience segments at just the right time.

What is one best practice for creating an email drip campaign? If we had to pick just one key tip for improving your drip email campaigns, it would be to use facts and data to understand your audience thoroughly. This is the best way to ensure your automated emails are relevant and effective.

How long should an email drip campaign last? It depends on the type of your drip campaign and audience. A good rule of thumb is between eight to 16 weeks, with intervals of about 1-4 emails every two weeks. Start from there and adjust to your subscribers' behavior. Remember – it's better you send too few messages than come off as spammy.

What makes a drip campaign successful? Many factors go into creating a good drip campaign strategy. The main ones are:
– Tailor your email drip marketing campaigns precisely to particular steps in the customer journey (e.g., different welcome emails for new subscribers and re-engagement emails for those who've been inactive recently)
– Space out your emails to create a smooth experience that gets your point across
– Follow the best practices for writing emails (e.g., deliver value, use simple language, include a call to action button)
– Connect your email marketing campaigns to other brand channels
– Use an email analytics tool like SEINō to make sure your next email drip campaign gets you even better results than the last