These simple email campaigns pack a serious punch without much work.
In this article, I’ll be covering three “plug and play” email campaigns that deliver excellent bottom-line results.
(RELATED: Following Email Marketing Best Practices)
The fact is that the effectiveness of a campaign isn’t always dependent on it’s length or pushiness.
Though it’s often true that marketers fall short of creating enough messages to truly extract value from a major funnel (as I’ve written about previously), some campaigns work much better when they are short and concise.
The campaigns we’ll address here can be as short as one email (or as many as six emails), and can be automated by most email marketing softwares (Infusionsoft, Ontraport, Hubspot, etc…).
The idea is that you do the copywriting work once, and these mini-campaigns help boost the ROI of your email marketing for years to come.
Sound good? Let’s dive in.
Campaign 1: The “Pull-Back” Campaign
The “pull-back” campaign is usually a 1 to 3 email sequence that drives a customer or prospect back to a conversion point that they almost completed.
The best examples here are for…
- Event or webinar registration
- Direct links to order forms or sales pages.
Sometimes a customer’s curiosity is piqued, or the call-to-action within the email is strong enough to generate a click, but an objection is left unanswered, or sufficient benefits weren’t provided on the conversion page.
In this case, pull-back emails can act to combat objections and provide additional emotional or logical incentive to take the desired action.
Examples:
If you have a link in your email that looks like this…
Register for this weekend’s webinar here.
Or this…
Click here to grab the course for $30 OFF ==>
…then any reader who clicks these links without actually registering for the webinar or buying the product is a candidate for a short “pull-back” campaign.
Often, the first email in the pull-back campaign will be just 1-2 hours after clicking the email link – so long as they don’t take the desired action afterwards (webinar registration, purchase action).
Often this first email can take the tone of concern, asking a reader if there was something wrong with the sales page or order form, and linking them back to the desired conversion, coming from a place of helpfulness.
A second and third email might be the next day, or as long as a few weeks out. These subject lines might read something like:
- “Here’s the webinar you missed last week,”
- “Your _____ course is still waiting here for you, [FIRSTNAME]”
This “Pull Back” mini-campaign will get more clicks to the point of desired conversion.
Here’s an example “pull back campaign” email… 
Campaign 2: The “Fallen” Customer Campaign
How many great customers “go dark” after an initially profitable period, never to spend with you again?
The thought is dreadful.
Though we can’t hope to keep every customer happy or active, we can do a better job of relating to them and making sure we keep them satisfied and tempted to return to purchase again.
For a software or subscription-based business, “fallen” customers are easy to identify. However, for a business like a consulting firm, a restaurant, or an eCommerce business, the “fallen” threshold is pretty grey.
Ultimately, it will be a calibration that’s unique to each individual business. Sometimes the “Fallen Customer” email campiaign will take the tone of “we miss you,” sometimes they’ll take the form of an opportune special, coupon, or sale.
Either way, the objective is to get former customers back in the saddle for another purchase, if they’re ready and willing.
Here are a few examples…
An eCommerce business selling wine glasses might have an average date of “re-purchase” of about 3-4 months after a first purchase.
In this case, we might create a re-activation campaign around month 4 after a previous purchase to present a special past-customer discount on our newest foreign shipment.
A content marketing agency might have an average “stick rate” of 9 months, at which point most customers cease a retained arrangement. Though the company could work on lengthening the extent of their initial engagements, they can also pick up on trends on when customers often need them back, and why.
Lets say that after 6 months of leaving the agency, 20% to 25% of customers make an inquiry about “tune-up” services to polish up their content marketing and SEO efforts. In this case, the agency could anticipate these needs (and their own value to the customer) by simply sending out a call-to-action in an email for a special discount on a 2-month “tune-up” service, possibly followed by a SEO white-paper or webinar that advertises (subtly) this add-on level of service.
Here’s an example “Fallen Customer” campaign email…
Campaign 3: The “Congratulatory” Campaign
Another short and simple email campaign is the “Congratulatory” email campaign. Common triggers for congratulatory campaigns are…
- a customer’s first purchase
- a renewed membership
- a benchmark or retention in a membership program or software service
…or anything else that you believe is worth encouraging in a buyer’s behavior.
Often a congratulatory campaign will address a reader’s progress or action directly, while at the same time giving them an additional reward or reminder of an important (and recently attained) benefit.
Here are a few examples…
An eCommerce company might use a congratulatory campaign to provide all first time buyers with a special store coupon, good for a few weeks after receipt.
Alternatively, the company might reward customers of a certain purchase volume with a special discount program only “top customers” have access to.
A service company (such as a carpet cleaning company), might use a campaign of this sort to reward customer loyalty. As either a surprise or an advertised bonus, customers that remain in a “seasonal care” program might receive an extra thank-you message and a voucher good for a free upholstery cleaning in any room in the house, 100% free.
Not only do the customers feel special and pampered, but they’re also exposed to a new and useful service that might turn itself into a convenience up-sell if they’re delighted by their gift.
This strategy is even more powerful if you segment the email campaigns per product, as segmentation has a powerful influence on lifting open and click-though rates when done right.
Here’s an example “Congratulatory” email…
Ultimately, determining which plug-and-play campaigns will be best for your company will be combination of your priorities, your main revenue drivers, and testing.
It would be foolhardy to state that every business could (or should) use all of the above mini-campaigns, but my hope is that this article has prompted some useful thoughts for you for some one-and-done campaign ideas that can yield you more revenue for a simple set of short messages, and a little automation magic.
The question to ask yourself is this: “Is there a certain point in my buyer’s journey where a specific message or set of messages would ALWAYS help drive revenue?”
Let those ideas (and your vigilant testing) guide you in making a more profitable, calibrated series of marketing funnels.
If you use any of the campaigns listed here, be sure to drop me a line and let me know what worked best.
