7 Powerful Email Drip Campaign Examples To Inspire You

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

There’s an old saying that reminds us “slow and steady wins the race.” Maybe the best example of this idea in action takes the form of a tried-but-true technique that has been around since the dawn of digital marketing itself, the drip campaign.

As the name suggests, a drip campaign is a direct email marketing method used primarily to acquire new customers. Instead of entering into a relationship with your proverbial guns blazing, you instead send your targeted collateral to prospects repeatedly and over long periods of time. This slow but steady “drip” of relevant, quality information (hence the name) helps to nurture your prospects from one end of the marketing funnel to the other, thus “warming them up” and making it more likely for them to become a paying customer once the campaign reaches its logical conclusion.

Related Links

• CTA Psychology: Why We Click Calls-To-Action
• How Can Instagram Inspire Website Design?
• How To Market Your Business Online Anywhere, Anytime
• How To Run A Successful Lead Generation Campaign
• How To Effectively Use Email As A Marketing Technique

But you don’t have to take our word for it – here are seven examples of powerful drip campaigns that weren’t just effective, but should also be a source of inspiration.

1. Kapost And The Art Of Standing Out

Our first example shows how to create drip campaigns that work and it comes from Kapost, a technology company offering a “comprehensive content marketing platform” to businesses in a wide range of different industries. Instead of sending out ten emails and asking for the same thing in essentially ten different ways, Kaposi’s drip campaign took a different approach.

Kapost used each email to adequately cover a different pain point for a target persona, thus offering emails that could both stand alone and work in a group when everything was said and done. The email marketing campaign featured multiple separate, valuable, and legitimately helpful messages – all geared towards both providing value and moving a lead farther down the sales funnel as well, building trust and authority along the way.

Here’s A Great Example From Tory Moore, A sales Development Rep At Kapost:

2. InsightSquared’s Drip Campaign Targeted Cold Leads

Another example comes by way of InsightSquared, which is a leading provider of revenue intelligence software. What really made their marketing efforts unique is that they were working from an email list that may have been massive, but it also almost exclusively featured cold leads.

The goal of the campaign was simple: get someone back into the buying cycle. They did this by sending a first message asking if a lead was free for lunch, following up with a second email to anyone who did not reply, and ending with a third message for people who still didn’t reply offering to reschedule in the future.

Here’s What Their Campaign Looked Like:

Off of these efforts, the InsightSquared team was able to book nine separate meetings – all through personalization, perseverance and a little bit of luck.

3. Klaviyo Used Drip Campaigns To Grow Their Organization

Klaviyo’s drip campaign is worth paying attention to because it acknowledges the fact that if you’re not nurturing your free users, you’re missing out on a potentially huge opportunity.

As soon as users signed up for a free Klaviyo account, they were sent an email thanking them for their efforts and asking if there was anything else the team could do to help. Messages were sent again at five, three, and five-day intervals – all of which engaged prospects who were already enthusiastic and helped them immediately make the most out of the free account they’d already signed up for.

4. Yesware Used Drip Emails To Generate Referrals

The team at Yesware also had a unique approach to their drip campaign – they wanted to take existing satisfied customers and do whatever they could to build an engaged and loyal online community. To do this, they started a drip campaign that began 45 days post-close – at that point, a message was sent asking them to confirm that their expectations were being met and that everything was going smoothly.

Then, 15 days later, once the survey results were all in, another email reached out to those who responded. “Since you said you were satisfied with your account, do you know any other companies who might benefit from our services?” was the crux of the message.

The responses were overwhelming and Yesware was able to generate a number of new leads through that action alone.

Here’s how the campaign looked:

5. Trello And The Power Of Persuasion

Along the same lines, we have Trello, who started a drip-email campaign appropriately titled “Twelve Days of Trello” over the Christmas holiday season. The idea behind each of the dozen messages was simple. Each message not only tied in thematically with the holidays, (“unwrap gifts under the tree with inspiration from our community!”) but it also tied back into the company’s services as well.

Users found this helpful and relevant, both of which were able to help the team maximize their sales and generate more interest in their product all through the new year.

6. Becca Cartice, And Why It Pays To Just Be Helpful

Becca Cartice’s drip campaign is one that video content creators, in particular, are going to want to pay close attention to.

Becca’s website was holding a series of video-based instructional seminars, all of which would be available via how-to videos at a later date. Each time a new video in the sequence was launched, a drip campaign was started. The first message reminded people to sign up for the workshop, the second acknowledged that it was still possible to view that content in an on-demand fashion and the third simply offered support for users to help them keep up with their goals.

If you’re using a video-on-demand and live streaming platform, like YouTube or Facebook to host videos of your own, this is one template you’ll definitely want to follow. Not only do the initial messages raise awareness, but the entire effort simply reinforces that you’re there to help – which keeps people motivated towards their goals, and ultimately pulls them right back into your arms.

This Is The First Email In The Drip Campaign That Becca Cartice Set Up For Her Subscribers:

Notice how personalized and relatable the copy is. Why is this tone so important, you ask?

Because most people receive anywhere from 10 to 50 emails per day. It’s essential to your drip campaign that your emails are personalized. This way you have a chance to stand out of the crowd and connect with your audience.

7. Zombies Run Takes Engagement To A New Level

Last but not least we have Zombies Run, an app that aims to “gamify” your daily running routine. Zombies run’s drip campaign not only took the opportunity to welcome new people into the community but also took things one step further (no pun intended).

Check Out This Awesome Drip Campaign By Zombies Run:

Each subsequent message was personalized and targeted at specific milestones a person had achieved. This, in turn, played into an emotional trigger – the user accomplished something and they were being congratulated for it. Even though each message was an email, they also contained text that looked like it was handwritten on a crumpled piece of paper – thus taking something that could appear “cold and digital” and making it “warm and inviting” in an instant.

The end result was clear: people were motivated by their progress, which in turn motivated them to keep using and engaging with the app. The users win, Zombies Run wins – it really is the perfect drip campaign model for you to follow.

Wrapping this up…

Whether you’re trying to grow your online community, build your email list, make new connections, or even launch your own OTT video platform, it’s easy to see that the email drip campaign is a strategy that you should absolutely be making use of. Not only is it a great way to just raise awareness and continually remind people about the value that you provide, but it’s also a perfect opportunity to slowly grow enthusiasm until it builds to the point where neither you nor your customers are able to ignore it.

These 7 email drip campaigns use best practices to craft engaging emails that capture audiences’ attention and provide value to their email subscribers.

You don’t need to copy the exact format or style that these examples use. In fact, you shouldn’t; you should use these examples as a starting point to creating your own drip campaign that fits well with your brand and resonates with your target audience.

Guest Author Bio: Amir Shahzeidi – Amir is the digital marketing manager at Uscreen, a video monetization platform that allows creators to monetize their content. He’s also a composer and pianist who’s rarely loved by his neighbors because all he ever plays is atonal music. But cats love him so it’s fine!