What are some common mistakes to avoid when setting up email drip campaigns?

[Elizabeth_K]

We’re often asked how to set up a successful “drip campaign.” (Drip campaigns use automation to share email or SMS content over a period of time after your contacts trigger them.) Our favorite piece of advice is to keep your content “evergreen,” meaning, don’t put dates or date-sensitive information in your content so that you don’t have to constantly make edits to keep it relevant.  If you’ve been using our Automation Path Builder, what “whoops” moments have you run into where you really needed to change your content, or needed to alter the way your path is structured?

(And also, if you need to change the content in your automation path, you can always edit the email and SMS content. Anyone who hasn’t yet reached that step will see the new changes and never know you had to correct it!)

If you haven’t used the Automation Path Builder yet, you might find this post informative:  Automating and Working With the Seasons with Mark Chinsky

[Chris-S]

One common mistake in email marketing is a lack of personalization. When you fail to personalize your emails, recipients are less likely to engage with them. To improve engagement rates, it's important to tailor your messages based on the preferences, behavior, and demographics of your recipients. By doing so, you can create a more targeted and relevant experience for your audience.

Another issue to be mindful of is overwhelming frequency. Bombarding subscribers with too many emails too frequently can lead to high unsubscribe rates and decreased engagement. It's important to find the right balance by segmenting your audience and sending relevant content at appropriate intervals. This approach can help maintain engagement and keep subscribers interested in your emails.

[Elizabeth_K]

Great tips, @Chris-S!  It's a total change of mindset when you approach content that way. I think at first glance it can seem daunting to sit down and create multiple paths for different audiences, but when you tailor the content to a specific audience and cut out the non-essentials, the content is SO much easier to create.

[ACTIVATE]

@Elizabeth_K awesome tips you just broke down right there! The biggest "whoops" I've seen is continuing to keep customers in a sales-focused series after they have converted. Example: Someone is in your welcome series and it's a blend of great content and great offers. Once they buy, the following marketing not only doesn't match their situation, it's worse: it feels tone-deaf and like you don't care that they became a buyer!

An easy fix is to use the segments for e-commerce transactions to trigger a move of that list member out of that series and into a new series that fits the tone, messaging, and gratitude you have for them spending their money with you. From there you can massage this into a new upsell series where you are both grateful but also setting the table for their next purchase, upgrade, or follow up!

[Elizabeth_K]

Great point, @ACTIVATE!  One thing I love about the automation path is the conditional split - it lets you specify what happens when a contact takes action or doesn't take action so it's easier to change the messaging! It's so flexible that you can either build a complicated path that takes care of every scenario or simply add a contact to a list or add a tag to them once they make a purchase and set up a new path that triggers when the tag or list is added.