3.2 Drip E-mails Pt. 1

Alright, let’s continue talking about how to actually build each of these levels. Up next, we have Drip e-mails! In the previous chapters, we’ve talked about how people coming to your website are different; some may be ready to buy from the brand but some may not. Almost everyone needs some kind of convincing and convincing a user towards the brand is what you’d call ‘nurture’. 

To nurture is to build credibility, trust and relationship with the person till they are ready to make a purchase. Smart brands usually tend to prioritise this over sales when a user first comes to the brand because they almost always assume that the person will need to be nurtured at least a bit before they swipe that card. 

And that is the core purpose of all drip e-mails.

So how do you as an e-mail marketer set up a drip campaign that will nurture users?

Most drip e-mail campaigns start with what is called a Lead Magnet. This is anything a brand can give to a person in exchange for their e-mail address. These are basically things that can add value to the person but doesn’t cost them anything. Remember the example from Ramit Sethi - the I will teach you how to be rich guy -  and the free quiz he would ask people to take? That’s a lead magnet. 

So! You wanna build your own drip campaign? We are going to walk you through exactly how to do that. And back to our favourite business - Lancify Abroad!

Now here is how we’ll go about it - We will first strategise the lead magnet we need to build in order to get users coming to the Lancify Abroad website to convert and then we will build a drip e-mail campaign to nurture them. Got it? Let's go.

In order to build an effective lead magnet, there are 2 aspects that are important - content and format. The content is basically - what is the value you’re offering to this person. Is it free advice, a checklist, a free trial, or even free consulting hours, How are you changing their life? And then you have the format. How are you delivering this value? Is it an e-book, a video series, or maybe a live Zoom call with you. 

The format is important because different people like viewing content differently. A 19 year old probably doesn't want to read a 30-page research paper. Right? So here’s a list of lead magnets. We’ll keep them on the screen so you can take a screenshot, pause the video or just take notes. 

E-books
Checklists
Worksheets
Workbooks
Audio CDs
Video courses
Mini courses
Cheat Sheets
Webinar replays
Planners
Calendars
Action plans
Toolkits
Starter Kits
Industry Reports
Product Samples
Free Trials

Now, back to the lead magnet for Lancify Abroad. 

Step 1: Decide on the content. 

In Lancify Abroad's case, let's think about what students really want. Some topics that would definitely interest students are top university lists, application process, student loans, entrance test preps and the list goes on. And let’s say we’re going with student loans as our lead magnet. 

Loan applications are a pain in the neck and we want to help students through the process. 

Step 2: Deciding the format for this lead magnet. Y

You could walk them through this via video, a call with an expert or an ebook. Which is a good example, let’s go with an ebook. So we’re putting out a lead magnet ebook and let’s call it

“The definitive guide to getting a student loan”

Step 3: Time to set up. Here’s what you’re going to need:

1. Build the actual ebook. You could hire someone to do this or do it yourself 
2. Build a landing page where you can talk about the e-book, its benefits and get them to fill a form to get access to it. 
3. This form is connected to your e-mail tool so every time they fill the form, it sends your welcome e-mail with the e-book 

And just like that they have now entered your drip sequence. 

Now that we’re done with a quick crash course on lead magnets, we can now get into setting up your drip e-mail sequence. 

Step 1: Decide frequency and volume

This  involves deciding how often you want to send a drip e-mail and then how many e-mails to send.

When it comes to frequency, there really is no hard and fast rule. Some brands may choose to send 3 e-mails a week while others may choose to send 1 e-mail every 2 weeks. It’s important to find the balance between not spamming their inbox and maintaining brand recall. With the audience being students in the case of Lancify Abroad, let’s go with one email a week. 

And now we have to decide the volume. 

While a lot of brands choose to keep sending their lists e-mails till the end of time, best practices suggest that your drip e-mail series has to end at some point. Remember, the goal of a drip e-mail campaign is actually to get them to buy. If within a specific amount of time or within getting a certain amount of e-mails, the user does not take any effort to engage or buy from the brand, odds are they’re never going to do it.

Which is why, it's good to have a limit to the drip series. For Lancify abroad, let's keep that limit at 12 weeks or 3 months. If the student does not take any action with the brand in 3 months, odds are they won't take any action at all, not through e-mail at least.

Step 2: Building the drip e-mail skeleton

Now this step is to plan out the whole e-mail sequence. And to do this we’ll use this format. It's a simple table with the e-mail number, the type e-mail and a brief description of the content.

The first thing you want to do is decide on which type of e-mail goes where. While the first e-mail is always going to be the welcome e-mail, there are 3 other kinds of e-mails to choose from:

1. Value add - Like we talked about this in the last chapter, the purpose of value add e-mails are to, well, keep adding value to the person. To tackle their pain points, enrich their lives and help them move forward. 
2. Action based e-mails - These e-mails get the user to take some kind of action like taking a poll, filling out a survey or even joining a webinar. The goal here is to not just create a culture where the user constantly receives but also where they take action.
3. Brand recall e-mails - These e-mails are meant to keep the brand alive in the users mind but in a more subtle way and also build some credibility along the way. 

In deciding on which types of e-mail to put where in the drip series, you first start by putting in your value add e-mails. Value add e-mails build the backbone of any drip e-mails but they often take more time to produce cause you need to probably produce more content like ebooks, videos, infographics etc so you want to space these out. 

We've put down 4 value e-mails which means, we will have to provide or produce 4 resources or tips or whatever that will go into these e-mails.

The next step is to put in action based e-mails. This has to be done strategically because e-mail users typically don't want to be asked to take action too many times. Let's add 2 action e-mails to this series.

Now your drip e-mail campaign is taking shape. Now all you have to do is add brand recall e-mails in all the empty slots.

And now you have your base strategy for your drip campaign ready! 

We know this is a lot to process in one go, so we will break this topic up into 2 episodes. In the next episode, we will talk about actually planning out the e-mail content for this drip sequence.