3.3 Drip E-mails - Pt.2

Hey there!

In case you don’t know yet, you’ve been thrown into the deep-end of the e-mail marketing world but it looks like you’re doing just fine. That’s pretty wild. Now where were we? Yeah! We just finished up with the base strategy for the Lancify Abroad drip campaign. 

The next step is to decide what actually goes into each of these e-mails. Let's start with the first e-mail type: The welcome e-mail, but if I explain this one more time, you’ll probably switch over to the Netflix tab, so I’m not going to do that. 

Instead, let’s move on to talk about value e-mails. 

This is where the brand gives the user a resource or a tool that adds some kind of value. The goal is to simply to help the user with their needs while making sure they keep coming back to the e-mails and as a result the brand. But before you can build a value e-mail, you need to have actual resources to provide. 

You can either build these resources yourself or even better, outsource this part to someone else. And we can use a similar format to how we strategized the lead magnet. 

Step 1: Think about the content or how you’re adding value. Do you want to help them choose a college, apply for a scholarship, or prepare for the interview?

Step 2: Think about the format. Do you want to do this in the form of an e-book, a video, or a blog?

The good thing is, you don’t need to create a landing page or a form for this. They’re already in your e-mail database. Now, we’ve got 4 value e-mails to create, which means 4 resources. 

For the first resource, let’s pick an obvious topic; Application process. Now think about what you’re going to be covering in this content. Let’s say, the top 10 things to keep in mind while applying to a university. Alright great. Now, what format would be most ideal for this kind of information? A checklist PDF maybe? That’s  your first resource!  

The second resource could be about student loans, since that’s something all students struggle with. It would cover the do’s and don'ts of the loan process and you can compile all this information into an ebook. 

For the third piece of value-add, it could be a good idea to do something about university rankings. Students are always trying to find the best universities for their choice of course and they don’t know where to look. So a “Should you trust University Ranking polls” could be something they’d want to know about. And a video might be the best way to share information that impacts their decision making. 

And for the fourth and final resource, let’s help them out with their entrance test prep. More specifically, this can be given to them as a well designed calendar template on a d google spreadsheet so they can easily put down a study plan. 

And there you have it. 4 resources. Now you can go and get these resources built either yourself or like we said, with someone’s help. 

Here is what your drip strategy looks like now. 

Let’s move into writing your value-add e-mails. 

We’ll use the first resource - “Top 10 things to keep in mind while applying to a university” as an example of how to write a good value nurture e-mail. 

A few things to keep in mind are:

1. The person is not expecting this free resource and they won't even know they are getting something of such high value unless they open the e-mail. That's why having a very catchy subject line is critical here.
2. Also keep in mind the context of the user and the e-mail they just received before this one. It helps to be able to tie this e-mail to the previous one.
3. Make a fuss about your resource. Treat it like the best thing since sliced bread. You really want the user to click and engage with your resource.

Alright. Let’s write this e-mail. 

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Subject: We've got a gift for you!

Kevin, 

We know you've just joined our mailing list and as a welcome gift, we've got something special for you.

We understand that the journey to preparing, testing, applying and then waiting to get into a university can be stressful. It feels like every part of you is tested and you have to truly put yourself out there.

One of the most challenging parts of this process is the applications. You can't afford to get a single detail wrong and expected to write these essays that are meant to truly reflect who you are to the university. So we decided to help out and create a list of things you should keep in mind while applying to universities abroad. We've had a bunch of our successful candidates who are now in their dream universities curate this list so that you know what has worked for them.

So go ahead and click on the link below and it will take you to the checklist.

Button: I want this resource. 

Hope you enjoy this resource. We have a few more coming for you down the road!

Got your back!

Sara, 

Lancify Abroad Student Coordinator

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There you go! See what we did there? We drew the user in with a catchy subject line, acknowledged they were new to the brand so they feel special connected with them using a very real pain point - applying to universities - and then we handed over the resource.

Now that we’ve added all kinds of value, you want them to actually take some action towards the brand. So let’s bring out those action e-mails!

Let's first talk about why we need these. 

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When it comes to drip campaigns, it's easy to build an unhealthy culture with your users where they get in the habit of constantly receiving from the brand but never really taking any action. You could drop ebooks, pdfs, videos, infographics and half your savings on them and the users would keep accepting your gifts but never really take action. But if they are not encouraged to take small action, it would be harder to get them to take the bigger step - to buy from you.

Action e-mails break up the habit of constantly receiving from the brand and get the users to take a step towards actually engaging with the brand. Some actions could be to take a poll, participate in a survey, ask a question, share a post on social media, maybe refer a friend, attend a webinar and the list goes on. The goal is to move them from being passive consumers to engaging users. Now back to our very own drip campaign. We've got to create 2 action e-mails.

For action e-mail 1, you could run a poll on the best countries to study in and then promise them the results of the poll in the following e-mails.
For action e-mail 2, you could ask the user to share a particular post on Social Media in exchange for a mock interview test that would normally cost $10. So let's put this into our drip campaign strategy. 

Now let’s go ahead and write this action e-mail 1. 

Subject: The hunt for the most popular study abroad country! 

Raj, 

We are on the hunt to find the most popular study abroad country this year. There are a lot of top contenders with German and France really catching up with Australia and the UK. There are, ofcourse, the evergreen locations like the US and Canada, but you never know! This year might just have a new winner. 

In order for us to find out, we are taking a poll across all our students worldwide. This will give us data not just from one country but from countries around the world. If you want to be part of the action and find out which country might just be the winner this year, click the button below. 

CTA: Take Poll 

We will send you the results for this poll in the next e-mail and even host a webinar to discuss the details of the results. 

Till then! 

Sara, 

Lancify Abroad Student Coordinator 

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Do you see what we’ve done here? We’ve given them an incentive to do the poll and create a sense of exclusivity which always works. 

And now we’re finally at brand recall e-mails, the last type of e-mail in your drip sequence. In a way, these are ‘fill in the blanks’ e-mails. You can't keep rolling out resources or get your users to take a poll every other week. This is to keep the user engaged without having to do much work. You can however still be quite creative with your brand recall e-mails. What you need to remember is that they primarily need to do the job of keeping them engaged. 

They could also be used to inform them about the brand. These e-mails don't necessarily have to be very heavy or meaty but just something they would be interested in. They could even connect to third-party blogs or resources found on the internet as long as it is connected to the brand and is relevant to them. These e-mails can also easily be just plain text e-mails. What really matters is the message you’re trying to convey. 

For our drip campaign, we need 5 brand recall e-mails. 

1. The first brand recall e-mail could be a success story of how Lancify Abroad got a student into their dream university. Something to build real credibility for the brand. 

2. For the second e-mail, let’s do something that makes Lancify Abroad stand out from its competitors. This could be a plain text e-mail talking about its counselling process or its mock exams.

3. We could do one with a series of stats from a third party blog showing how students going abroad have a higher success rate when they go through a consultancy like Lancify Abroad. 

4. Up next, we could do another testimonial from a happy Lancify Abroad customer.

5. And finally, the last one could be an important update that the students need to be informed about. 
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Let’s actually try writing one of these e-mails. Alright, how about the first one -the success story. Here’s how you could go about writing it. 

Subject: Make your dreams come true! 

Hi Kabir,

We hope application season isn’t stressing you out too much. Don’t forget to take breaks to focus on yourself as well. 

I just wanted to share a really cool story of one of Lancify Abroad’s students who just got into Harvard. 

Tamara is a student from New Delhi whose lifelong dream was to join Harvard Business School for their entrepreneurial MBA program. Tamara has always been very strong academically and had top-of-the-line work experience but her financial situation more or less ruled out a school like Harvard with its tuition fees being particularly high. 

When we spoke to Tamara, we introduced her to the special scholarship programs that were launched in the last year and helped her prepare for her scholarship application, prepare for the interview etc. 

Long story short – she got in, and a full-ride, which means she just needed to pay for food and boarding. 

Stories like these are what keep us going. We hope this story inspired you to keep moving forward. 

If you want to know more about our scholarship programmes, just click here and we’ll walk you through it. 

Regards, 

Sara, 

Lancify Abroad Student Coordinator 

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If you look at this e-mail, we really focused on creating a personal connection with this person. Who doesn’t like to hear an emotionally engaging success story? And to top it off, we even found a chance to get them to take an action to learn more about our offerings. 

And with that our drip campaign is now complete. Here is what it looks like! Looks pretty neat, doesn’t it? 

We've gotten through creating a complete lead nurture from scratch and this is how you do it.