How to Use a Mailchimp Drip Campaign

A drip marketing campaign is a series of automated, pre-written emails that customers receive at significant moments during the sales cycle. For example, you begin a drip marketing campaign with customers after they sign up for your newsletter or online course, abandon a shopping cart on your site, or need a reminder of their subscription renewal. Drip campaigns are also designed to suggest products, promote free downloads, and nurture leads.

A Mailchimp drip campaign is an Automated Customer Journey designed to save time through automation and deliver personalized messages to customers. These messages can provide useful information tailored to their specific stage in the sales journey.

By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to create an automated drip marketing campaign in Mailchimp.

How to use a Mailchimp drip campaign

You can implement a drip campaign on Mailchimp using the Automated Customer Journey tool, so your first step will be to sign up for one of Mailchimp's paid subscription plans if you don't already have one. To complete a Mailchimp drip campaign, you will then:

1. Design your campaign.

2. Write your drip marketing materials.

3. Put your marketing materials into Mailchimp.

4. Measure performance and maintain your emails with fresh copy. 

Let’s take a closer look at each step of the process:

1. Design your Mailchimp drip campaign.

The first step is to design your Mailchimp drip campaign. Consider what event or stage of the sales funnel will trigger the campaign. The central message of a drip campaign depends on how you want to interact with your audience and their pain points. Your message to a new customer who just made their first purchase will differ from a message you send to a potential customer who abandoned items in their cart.

You will also need to plan the materials, including the number of automated emails in the series, the intervals at which they’re sent, and whether you’ll need a landing page to direct customers.

2. Create drip marketing materials.

The next step is to create the emails, landing pages, and other marketing materials you will need for your Mailchimp drip campaign. In this stage, you’ll focus on keeping a message consistent with your brand and including a call to action (CTA). This should spark your customers' interest and entice them to engage with you again. For example, it could be an invitation to sign up for your newsletter or links to additional resources they might be interested in.

3. Put marketing materials into Mailchimp.

After carefully crafting your marketing message, you can add those marketing materials to Mailchimp. To create your first customer journey map, click the Automations icon, then Overview. Next, click the Create Journey button. You’ll be asked to enter a name and an intended audience for your journey. Then, click Start Building.

After creating your customer journey, you will have the ability to define what event will trigger the start of the automation, each piece of the automation, and rules and actions that may trigger different events. Once you finish setting all the pieces of your drip campaign in place, you’ll be ready to activate your journey. Click the Continue button once your customer journey map is ready, and then choose your marketing objective. Click Turn On to activate your drip campaign.

4. Measure performance and keep things fresh.

Once you’ve launched your Mailchimp drip marketing campaign, you can watch analytics to measure performance and see how your campaign is performing. You can make adjustments to improve performance once you see how your audience reacts to your campaign. You will also need to update your content periodically, especially if you offer new products or incentives.

When you visit the home page for your Customer Journey, you will be able to see three main areas of analysis: how many people have started the Journey, how many people are in the middle of a journey, and how many people have completed that journey. Looking at each of your journeys, you can click the Report icon for more information or you can click the three vertical dots followed by View Contact Queue.

Mailchimp subscription levels for Automated Customer Journeys

Automated Customer Journeys are available at each paid membership level. If you have a free subscription level, you will not be able to access this feature. At the higher membership levels, you’ll have access to enhanced automated tools.

Learn more about digital marketing

If you’re ready to take the next step and learn more about digital marketing, consider earning your Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Professional Certificate on Coursera. This beginner-level, seven-course series will help you learn skills in email marketing, display advertising, E-commerce, search engine optimization, and more.