An autoresponder is the product and a drip campaign is one way to use the product to send emails automatically at separate times or days.

In this blog I will talk about the top features of using an autoresponder and drip campaigns so let’s crack on.

  What’s The Difference Between Autoresponders And Drip Marketing

The difference between an autoresponder is more to do with the amount of autoresponders on the market.

Whereas if you’re doing drip marketing.

You could have a flow that mimics a process e.g.

Someone subscribes. Instantly send an email to welcome them.

The next day email out a tip.

The next day again email another tip.

The next day again email another tip.

And then the next day for those on your email list who have read the last 3 emails.

Send out an invite to your sales video.

I would call this process a drip campaign.

There are many autoresponder providers from A-Weber, Activecampaign, drip, MailChimp, Sendingblue, Convertkit etc.

Then there are other advanced services you pay more money for which are more like a business CRM solution.

This is where you have to be careful as picking an autoresponder that does not have all the features you require could leave you learning then using the product only to realise…

You can’t complete your email marketing tasks effectively.

This is where you have to look at what you’re trying to achieve in your marketing. Then go after an autoresponder to fit your needs.

We’ll talk more in on how to work out what your needs are before you pick an autoresponder and run drip campaigns.

  Campaigns Vs. Automation – Drip Knowledge Base

A campaign is the process you want your system to carry out.

The automation is done once you have your campaign planned out. 

So let’s carry on and look at three different campaign ideas.

1. Campaign idea – Dealing with new subscribers to your website. You set up an email form on one of your landing pages.

   You drive adverts or social traffic to that landing page with your email form.

   When someone enters their email address into the sign up page, the autoresponder adds the new email address to your autoresponder.

   Then your autoresounder sends the person an email asking them to click the link to confirm they requested you’re free download.

   Over the next 3 days you will email out one tip a day and on the fourth day you will email out an email asking the person to visit your sales video by clicking the link to learn more.

1. Campaign idea – Each month you send out a 3 or 4 day email with one tip a day.

   On the 4th or 5th day, you send out an invitation to learn more with a link or button to visit your sales video.

   The best time to send this style of email campaign is on, or just after payday to the people on your list as this has a better chance of getting a sale from your sales video.

1. Campaign idea – Put your autoresponder tracking code onto every web page on your website.

   When you send out an email tip once a day for 3 or 4 days. You set up a rule to notify you once one of your list members click on the link in the email to visit the blog that ties in with that days email.

   This gives you a nearly real-time notification that the person has read your email and they have also jumped onto your webpage blog to read more information.

   If you’ve collected their phone number, you can call them and say “hey how’s things going” and offer your help.

   You will get the response “Wow, great timing I’m on your website right now” which starts a conversation with a better mood than a cold call.

Now you have your campaign flow created. Time to set up each flow in your autoresponder which may be different depending on the autoresponder service you chose.

  Do Drip Campaigns Really Work?

Drip campaigns work well providing they are set up correctly.

Drip campaign work best when you setup tracking.

The reason for tracking is not all emails are equal and you want to use tracking to see what emails get the high interest and emails that don’t.

Please note… An average drip campaign needs to has one email a week minimally, else you lose interest. 

There is another factor many marketers forget about.

This factor is called “the interest factor” and the way you keep someone’s interest with your email Marketing is to tell a story.

A story is not make-believe. A story is where you talk about a client success or something you came across during your struggles and what’s working well for you.

Your story must also be true.

When you set up this process correctly, you draw in people’s attention and interests.

Here’s some great book on Amazon if you want to learn more:- 
Storytelling Marketing Branding

What people don’t tell you when email Marketing is.

You need to find your writing style and it’s by tracking emails that you send where you see the emails get more interest than others.

It’s this observation and stats that over time will tell you what’s working best for your audience which becomes your writing style.

Once you find your writing style your emails work effectively.

If you already have a great writing style. Fantastic, if not check out these books on the Amazon:

storytelling marketing Branding

As you need to get your writing style working well! To get a high response rate.

That being said, you can still get interest right away just not as much as when you get your writing style perfected.

Learning to write stories with email Marketing is a journey.

Do not let this journey put you off.

If you have not been doing email Marketing successfully, reading the following books from Amazon will help.

I linked to the books above so you see an instant improvement.

The idea here is once you have five or six weeks worth of emails you look at the stats.

The emails that do poorly, you swap out after a hundred visits with poor action and emails that do well; You keep.

By doing this over the month, your email automation will improve dramatically along with turning cold leads into warm leads and then onto sales.

  Broadcast Emails vs Autoresponder – When and Which to Use

When to use a broadcast email versus an autoresponder automated email.

What you do with the autoresponder is…

Set up weekly emails and if you find a particular email, is not doing well!

Write another email and broadcast it out to see if it performs better and swap out with the autoresponder sequence if its better.

Another use of a broadcast email is…

To send out tips weekly by email and use a broadcast email to send out your offer.

Example, if you’ve been sending out a tip each week and you know your list readers get paid at the end of the month.

You could send out an offer at the first of the month using a broadcast email.

Another use of a broadcast email could be.

Early bird notification of an event which has it’s own mini-series of emails.

For the users on your list who click the link in the early bird notification email to visit the event details.

An automated trigger can switch them off your weekly emails and over to the Early bird series of emails, then switch them back to weekly after the event. 

  Email Marketing “Autoresponder Campaigns” Explained

A campaign is the content and the autoresponder is the application which processes your campaign content.

When you want to send out autoresponder campaigns, you have to be thinking what kind of information would you want to send out.

Would it be a sub niche of your list? Where you can track the readers who opened the email and tag them to that email interest.

You could have a strategy to send out emails with some information that link back to a blog and on your site and have the email autoresponder tracking code on each blog page.

So, when you email to your list reader who’s met the above tag criteria. The traking code adds a tag to your email readers email address.

Then you can use a trigger which emails you when a blog tag is added to a list members email address.

This also lets you write future emails that are super focused based on the blog tag now attached to your email readers entry.

Once you group your list by tag, by interest, you can have multiple autoresponders sending to different tag groups improving your chances of getting a sale.

  What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is your marketing flow.

You’ve got to be thinking of your whole marketing process and the process could be:-

• You get a lead from paid advertising.
• Will it be a Facebook campaign a paid YouTube advert a magazine television radio advert, etc.
• Then from your paid media you drive traffic back to a landing page on your website.
• That landing page offers a gift in the form of a downloadable PDF or a discount item or a physical product for free.
• In order for the visitor to get the free product they have to enter either an email address by name phone number business address or a combination of all.
• Then you lead score how many actions that your email reader has taken e.g. 10 points for each action. 
  
  Actions can be from reading an email then clicking the link on that email to visit a blog (10 points). 
  
  At the bottom of each blog, have a call to action to a follow on blog. 
  
  This is so your email reader checks out more than one blog where each blog visited can be worth 10 points.
• Once the email reader visits enough blogs.
  
  Behind the scene, your autoresponder is counting the scores and when the points hit a value you set e.g. 
  
  I use 50 points e.g. (1 email and 4 blogs) you can set up a notification to give a personal call or email them a sales video.

So, it’s about taking your manual process and automating as much as you can with your autoresponder.

I call this “your automated marketing funnel”.

  Auto responder campaigns

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog on autoresponders and drip marketing.

If you would like to learn more check out my website by signing up to my email list below and getting the free eBook:

Have a great day you rock.