Have you ever imagined having some of your time-consuming marketing duties being managed automatically? Fortunately, you don’t have to imagine anymore, because that’s how a Mailchimp drip campaign works.
Does MailChimp do drip campaigns?
Yes, you can create drip campaigns with Mailchimp and they’re fantastic! Mailchimp offers one of the best drip campaign functionalities among email marketing platforms, (and they’re free by the way).
Let’s take a look at the concept of drip campaigns and how to create them with Mailchimp.
What are Mailchimp drip campaigns?
Mailchimp drip campaigns are a series of automated emails that get sent every time an action is triggered. It’s one of the basic tools if you’re using Mailchimp for CRM.
Instead of creating and sending a single email campaign every time, you can set up personalized emails for specific actions that Mailchimp will send on its own while you can take care of other tasks (or nothing business related, for that matter).
Drip campaigns are great for keeping in touch with your audience constantly whilst driving up revenue at the same time. Create and write an email for a drip campaign, set it up one time and Mailchimp will do the rest.
You can set up drip campaigns for cases like these:
- Sending a welcome email for each new subscriber.
- Wishing happy birthday to each member of your audience.
- Notifying customers when a shopping cart is abandoned.
- Sending a notification, notice or offer to contacts who attended an event.
The automation options with Mailchimp are endless, and you can craft them according to your needs. Just make sure you don’t over communicate too much, as the last thing you want to do is overwhelm your audience.
How to create a Mailchimp drip campaign
Before you start creating a drip campaign, it’s best to take your time and think through all the specific actions that your company may require.
Choosing the motivation and right audience for each campaign, as well as defining a consistent brand identity should be your main priorities.
Thankfully, Mailchimp makes it really easy for us marketers. Head for the Automations icon located on the left sidebar to check all the starting points available.
Types of automation emails
Mailchimp categorizes drip campaign emails in two major categories: date-based automations and user behavior. Let’s take a look at a couple of Mailchimp’s most used automation starting points.
Welcome new contacts
A welcoming email is the best way to introduce your newly found subscriber or customer to your brand.
Click Welcome new contacts to get started. Choose a unique campaign name and the audience you’ll send the welcome email. You’ll be taken to the automated welcome email builder. (As shown below).
Follow the next 4 steps to set up the criteria for your welcome automated email.
- First, choose when you want the email to be sent: immediately, 1 hour or 1 day after a subscriber signs up to your list. You can also trigger the welcome email if you import subscribed contacts.
- Choose the email address and your company name to let them know who’s sending the campaign.
- Type a killer copy subject line and preview text to encourage a higher open rate.
- Edit the email’s design. You can use merge tags to personalize the receiver’s first name, place your logo and use the drag-and-drop content blocks.
Pro tip: Use the preview mode and send a test email to make sure all the information, links and images are working properly. Click the “Start sending” button and voilà! You've created yout first automated email.
Sharing blog posts
Anytime you publish a new blog post, you can deliver it straight to your subscriber’s inbox. To set up the automation, click Share your blog posts, name your campaign and choose the audience you want to work with.
Type the RSS feed URL of your blog and select the frequency you want your new blog posts to be sent. You can choose any day of the week (or all of them) and a specific time.
You can choose to send new blog posts to an entire audience or using tags, segments and groups. It’s recommended to do the latter, as segmented campaigns are proven to improve engagement.
You can also use Mailchimp’s pre-built segments according to engagement, behaviour and demographics. (See examples in the image below).
In the final step, you’ll be able to edit the campaign info and enable tracking so you can monitor how well your content is being received by your audience. You can also enable social media auto-posting to Twitter and Facebook.
The list of automations is pretty large. Now that you’ve seen how to set them up, here’s a few examples of all the drip campaigns you can create with Mailchimp:
- Reaching out on specific dates like birthdays, holidays or an anniversary of a contacts subscription.
- Offering special offers or promotions to your new subscribers.
- Sending a thank you note after a first-time purchase.
- Connect your ecommerce site with Mailchimp and send drip campaigns to recover abandoned carts, send order notification receipts, follow up on purchases, or reach out to subscribers who’ve never bought anything from your store.
- Establish follow-ups with unsubscribed contacts and ask for feedback on why they opted-out of your list. This can be an opportunity to offer an incentive to persuade them to come back to your audience.
- Create interactions with your audience based on their interests. Everytime new contacts subscribe through a landing page or signup form and they tag themselves when opting-in, you can programme specific automations of products or services that might interest them.
Advantages of using drip campaigns
It’s a fact that drip campaigns can help you drive sales and increase engagement, whilst saving you plenty of time consuming duties. It’s also proven that they are key in turning inactive or uninterested subscribers into fans of your brand.
The beauty of this tool is that it gives you the freedom to experiment on what works best for your business.
It also allows you to engage further with your audience by personalizing the communication between them and your brand. A more targeted, customized experience can turn an indifferent customer into a buying customer.
In addition, one of the other great advantages is the free use of single email drip campaigns in the Mailchimp free plan, at 0 cost.
Tips to creating successful drip campaigns
Finding the right formula for successful drip campaigns can be tricky. Here are some tips to help you achieve that:
- Testing and analyzing results is the only way to know what works best for your business.
- Stay on top of the results of your first drip campaigns. With automation reports, (which are similar to your regular campaign reports), you can learn from the data and see what’s working and what’s not.
- You can track key features like audience growth, click and open rate and revenue for example.
- If you feel something is off, pause your drip campaign (you change the campaign status from the main dashboard) and try editing whatever you feel might not be working.
- Keep a close eye to see if there are significant changes in those key features.
The ultimate goal is to learn to identify what resonates best with your audience. You can always get more feedback from your subscribers using Mailchimp surveys and polls.
About Mailchimp Customer Journeys
Besides the preset starting points, Mailchimp also offers the Customer Journey feature that allows to build customized automations to create stronger and more accurate personalized experiences with your audience, based on your marketing goals.
In other words, you can set up a “journey” or a set of instructions for every contact that signs up for your audience, that can be quite different for each one, depending on how they interact with your business.
This feature has a more complex structure than single drip campaigns, meaning a step further to personalize your relationship with your audience. Keep in mind that Mailchimp Customer Journeys is not available on the free plan.
Learn more about Mailchimp Customer Journeys.
Take your drip campaigns to the next level
Let us help you take your drip campaigns and marketing actions to the next level. We're Duckduckchimp, a Mailchimp Agency and Pro Partners, experts in email marketing. We want to hear from you!
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Illustrations by: Freepik Storyset
Published by admin
FAQs
How do I create an automated campaign in Mailchimp? ›
- On your account dashboard, click the Automations icon.
- Click Classic Automations.
- Find and choose the automation you want to use. Can't find what you need? ...
- Choose Single email or Email series.
- Enter a campaign name, and click the drop-down menu to choose an audience.
- Click Begin.
Yes, Mailchimp offers marketing automation, which allows you to personalize customer journeys, send trigger-based emails, and more. You can also send automated messages to customers that are uniquely tailored to their interactions with your business.
How do I set up drip email? ›- Identify your audience and triggers. The first and most important step of a drip campaign is to identify the target customers who should receive the emails. ...
- Determine your goal. ...
- Write your email. ...
- Plan your campaign. ...
- Launch your campaign. ...
- Analyze the campaign.
The ideal drip campaign will consist of between four and 10 emails spaced between four and 14 days apart. The goal is to keep recipients interested without bombarding them with information. After a few days, they'll be ready to see fresh content from a recognizable name.
What is the difference between email campaign and drip campaign? ›The primary difference between email automation and email drip campaigns is that email drip campaigns are static campaigns that are pre-determined, while automated emails are dynamic and different for each recipient.
Which of the following apps can be used to create an email drip campaign? ›Best email drip software for advanced drip automations. ActiveCampaign is a powerful tool. The range of triggers, conditions, and actions it offers on the automation builder is unmatched by any of the other apps on this list.
Can you cold email with Mailchimp? ›Can You Send Cold Emails with Mailchimp? In a nutshell, no. You can't use Mailchimp to send out cold emails. It's not a platform made for outbound sales.
What is the difference between Mailchimp automation and campaign? ›A regular email campaign sends to your contacts at the time you choose. With classic automations, emails are sent automatically to specific contacts as they meet your trigger and sending criteria.
Can you automate with Mailchimp for free? ›Mailchimp has an easy way to get your welcome email fired up! They now offer their Single-Step Automation features (including welcome emails) for every pricing plan (including their free plan!). You can learn more about their different pricing plans here.
Can you automate emails with free Mailchimp? ›It's also good to know which Mailchimp plan you have. The Free plan only allows you to set up a single email automation, so you can enable welcome emails for new users or send a birthday email on a customer's special day.
How do I create an auto generated email? ›
- Click on the gear icon, then select “Settings”.
- Select “Advanced” and then “Enable” next to the Canned Responses option.
- Now, compose a new email, then click on the three dots menu.
- Select “Canned responses” and then “New canned response.”
- Best Overall: Mailchimp.
- Best for Automation: ActiveCampaign.
- Easiest to Use: MailerLite.
- Best All-in-One Marketing Suite: Hubspot.
- Best Affordable Option: Moosend.
- Best for E-commerce: Drip.
- On your computer, go to Gmail .
- At the top left, click Compose.
- Create your email.
- At the bottom left next to "Send," click the Down arrow .
- Click Schedule send.
The unique thing about drip campaigns is that they aim to anticipate and follow the user's actions through automated workflows. For example, if someone just subscribed to your newsletter, you could have a sequence send a welcome email and after 2 or 3 days deliver the most popular content on your blog.
What is a drip sequence email? ›Also known as a drip sequence, a drip email campaign is an automated email marketing strategy designed to deliver several emails to a subscriber over a specific period. The emails are triggered by an event or action performed by the customer and are set to go out at predetermined intervals.
Should I auto enroll in drip? ›But bottom line, reinvesting dividends through a broker or by signing up for DRIP plans directly through the dividend-paying companies, is a surprisingly powerful tool to passively improve your investment returns. So yes, DRIP plans are worth it, as long as they fit with your investing goals.
How long should a drip campaign run for? ›Your drip campaign can last from four to eleven emails that are sent four, seven, or fourteen days apart. Decide how many touches you need to effectively nurture your audience and prime them for your offer.
What is one best practice when it comes to drip campaigns? ›A drip campaign can have between four and eleven emails sent at least a few days apart. The best number depends on the type of the campaign, though. For example, a lead nurturing campaign can include multiple weekly emails while a welcome campaign can have a longer delay between the first and the second message.
How successful are drip campaigns? ›Drip campaigns can generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads through steady communication with customers. Companies that excel at drip campaigns generate 80 percent more sales at 33 percent lower costs. Companies have seen a 20 percent increase in sales after using drip campaigns to nurture leads.
How much does an email drip campaign cost? ›Pricing: Drip starts at $19/month. There's a 14-day free trial with a sending limit of 20,000 emails.
When would a company consider using a drip email campaign? ›
Drip marketing should be thought of as a way to save time and resources at the expense of not being able to create highly personalized emails for your users. Drip campaigns are concerned with guiding customers down the sales funnel towards conversion, but don't tend to the buyer's journey.
What makes a good drip campaign? ›What makes a good drip campaign? The mark of a good drip email campaign is the prospect not even realizing that it's a pre-written, automated email. It should delight your recipients and make them think that it was written only for them.
Can you automate cold emails? ›SalesHandy is a sales automation and email marketing tool that enables you to send cold emails and engage with leads.
What is an automated email funnel? ›Your email funnel is a strategically designed series of email campaigns that nurtures leads and existing customers toward conversions. By tailoring your email messaging to each stage of the customer journey, you can meet your customers where they are, making your emails more likely to resonate.
What are the disadvantages of Mailchimp? ›It forces them to use third-party tools or basic text editors to create an email template, which is time-consuming and frustrating. Also, their templates are not very appealing, and options are pretty limited. Moreover, it's not easy to find free email templates that you can use for all of your emails in Mailchimp.
How many emails a day can I send with Mailchimp for free? ›The Free plan includes up to 500 contacts and 2,500 sends per month, with a daily send limit of 500. Note: Accounts on a Free plan that were created before August 29, 2022 include up to 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends per month, with a daily send limit of 2,000.
Does Mailchimp send email to non subscribers? ›Use non-subscribed contacts
Send postcards to non-subscribed contacts if you have their mailing address. Non-subscribed contacts can receive transactional emails, which are one-time emails usually related to their account activity.
Mailchimp classic automations send automated emails when triggered by a subscriber's activity, or a certain date like a birthday. You can use a preset automation that's tailored to your goals, or get creative with custom triggers.
What are the advantages to automated email campaigns? ›Email automation helps you find your audience and engage your customers. Unlike manual campaigns, automations run in the background while you tend to other valuable tasks. With automation, you can send personalized emails for each individual, from new visitors to repeat buyers.
What is the difference between automation and autoresponder? ›An Auto Responder is a set of automated emails triggered by a specific event, such as a customer subscribing to a newsletter. On the other hand, automation is a broader term that refers to any automated task, such as sending out weekly emails to customers or updating a customer's account information.
What is the difference between classic automation and customer journey in Mailchimp? ›
Classic automation: automated emails that are targeted to send when a specific action is triggered. Customer Journey: does the same thing a classic automation does but with more options by building an automated marketing path. These can include multiple starting points and branches.
What is the difference between free and paid Mailchimp? ›MailChimp offers the Free plan for up to 500 contacts and 2,500 emails per month (with ads). The Essentials plan starts at $11/month for 500 contacts and 500k emails. The Standard plan adds advanced automations, starting at $17/month, and Premium gives you all-areas access from $299/month.
Does Mailchimp have a scheduler? ›To schedule a regular email campaign, follow these steps. After you're done with your campaign's design and settings and it's ready to go, click Schedule. In the Schedule Your Campaign pop-up modal, use the date picker to set the delivery date. Click the Delivery time drop-down menus to choose a time of day.
Can you add a countdown timer to Mailchimp email? ›Add your timer into the MailChimp email template
Select that block and drag it onto your template. After dropping the Code block on the screen a new area called 'Code' will open up on the right. Paste your timer embed code into the code area like this.
Can You Send Cold Emails with Mailchimp? In a nutshell, no. You can't use Mailchimp to send out cold emails. It's not a platform made for outbound sales.
Can I embed a countdown timer in an email? ›One of the easiest way to add countdown timers to an email is to use looped GIF animations. All you need to do is to find such GIF in a stock image library and insert it into an email's 'Image' block. Email clients don't cut GIF countdown timers out from emails because they don't see them as something suspicious.
Can you do automation on free Mailchimp? ›Marketing automations allow you to reach the people in your audience with the right message at the right moment, based on what you know about them and the way they interact with your business (or don't). With Mailchimp, many powerful marketing automations are a part of our Free plan.
How do I add a countdown to my active campaign email? ›Add a countdown timer using the email designer.
Select HTML Block, click Options tab. Paste your timer embed code into the text section at the desired place of your HTML block. Click the Save Changes button.
The Free plan includes up to 500 contacts and 2,500 sends per month, with a daily send limit of 500. Note: Accounts on a Free plan that were created before August 29, 2022 include up to 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends per month, with a daily send limit of 2,000.
How do you create an automated email sequence? ›- Determine the sequence's purpose. ...
- Identify the enrollment criteria (or trigger) for the sequence. ...
- Determine the duration of the sequence and the number of emails required. ...
- Write the emails for the sequence. ...
- Build the emails using email software. ...
- Set up the automation. ...
- Test the sequence.
Is email drip effective? ›
Email drip campaigns are an effective way of building relationships with your customers, increasing their engagement and reducing churn. We're huge fans of a well-executed drip marketing campaign because they truly have the power of producing excellent business results.