How to Create a Product Launch Email Drip Series for a Successful Pre Launch

As the focus shifts towards social media and sponsored advertisements, a new question that keeps circling in office kitchens and marketing communities is, “is email marketing dead? Or is it still a deal-winning strategy?”

As the earliest digital communication medium which dates back to the 1970s, many deem it outdated and withered to keep up with modern economy. But truthfully, with a database expanding over 4.5 billion people, email is one of the most persuasive modern-day marketing mediums that converts prospects into paying customers.

From structuring your pre-launch campaign to sustaining the popularity during post-launch, email could be your go-to channel to keep customers in the loop. But unlike the traditional route of pushing out content aimlessly and getting blocked by recipients’ spam inboxes, marketers have progressed to email drip series to maximize impact.

An email drip campaign involves a series of email messages delivered to prospects at specific intervals based on how they interact with your brand. Set smartly, this email drip series guide will help you gather great many leads during pre-launch and assure a promising future ahead.

What is a Drip Email Campaign?

An email drip sequence is a series of pre-written marketing emails sent to a brand’s customers at specific intervals based on user interaction. Drip campaigns consistently deliver valuable information to the right people, in the right manner, at the right time.

It’s an autoresponder cycle which automatically targets existing and potential customers every time they take a specific action over a period of days leading up the launch date.

Unlike other means of advertisement, emails set an exclusive one-on-one contact with potential customers which is more likely to shape their preferences. By consistently “dripping” email messages for some time, you can keep your audience in the loop and invoke excitement for your launch.

The emails are personalized for each person and the intended action:

• Landing page signups
• Registering for early access
• Newsletter subscriptions
• Placing pre-orders before launch
• Abandoned shopping carts

How Does a Product Launch Email Drip Campaign Work?

Consumers’ journey - from learning about a product to actually purchasing it - rarely ever unfolds into a single, straight event. When coming across a new product line with an unfamiliar brand label, customers tend to go back and forth, carry background checks into the brand, research the product, and squander through reviews online before they make a purchase.

With so much indecision along the way, it’s hard to convert every lead into a paying customer - unless you know a way to satisfy their skepticism and keep them hinged. With drip emails, you can fuel interactions with your audience and influence their purchase decision at every chance you get.

Drip email sequences operate on the basis of the “set and forget” principle. You compile a series of emails or drips meant to educate and forge relationships with recipients and schedule them in advance for specific triggers.

Each time a prospect comes aboard your website, signs up, browses through your products, or abandons their cart, the autoresponder will send an email encouraging them to complete the desired action.

The content within those emails can be as complex or simple as you want it to be but ensure it aligns with the prospect’s intended action. A classic email drip campaign would contain at least three welcome and follow-up emails. As long as you establish a positive repertoire with the recipients, your business is afloat.

Product Launch Email Sequence Vs. Drip Series: What’s Different?

A drip series is often correlated with email sequence, and rightly so. Both are automated email marketing techniques that schedule pre-written emails to your audience to educate, engage, and convert them into paying users. There is a fine line when it comes to the differences.

An email sequence outlines a series of pre-written emails sent to prospects at specific intervals during or after a pre-launch campaign. The purpose is to generate awareness about your brand and keep the audience hooked on for the main event.

A drip series, on the other hand, operates on “if and then” prompts. Even though it uses pre-drafted emails and automated conveyor mechanics, the way they are dispatched towards the audience varies.

Every email is triggered by the recipient's action. If they subscribe to a newsletter and make a purchase, then they will receive a specific. Whereas, if they register on your site but don’t complete the purchase or abandon the cart, they’ll receive a different email.

5 Steps to Start an Email Drip Series in a Pre-launch Campaign

The widespread access to technology and robust automation applications, the current economic infrastructure is a lot more conducive to run a drip email campaign. While there are plenty of automation software to help you streamline the campaign, it’s best to identify what works for your brand and audience. Know the ins and outs of the entire procedure before you go live.

When finalizing your drip email series, make sure you think through all of the reasons why a person should follow suit as laid out in your email design. It’s vital to have a proper response planned out for any expected route your recipients might take.

Map Out Your Pre-Launch Campaign

Like any pre-launch marketing campaign, you must pinpoint the objectives you’re aiming for to visualize campaign ideas that best fulfill those goals. Identify the purpose behind your campaign. What are you expecting to achieve with an email drip series? Is it a higher conversion rate and sales? Or are you focusing on expanding your followers’ list?

As a marketer, your efforts will heavily rely on the objectives you’ve set for yourself. But for email marketing to fully contribute to your product launch, timing plays a defining role. Building hype for an upcoming launch isn’t a single-day event, rather it needs time to mature and turn into a viral phenomenon.

Draft a visual chart outlining your objectives, the strategy you’re employing, number of emails you need to produce, and the assorting actions that will trigger those emails. The pre-launch map will set a unified agenda for the entire launch team to focus on and avoid inefficiency and misunderstandings along the way.

Identify and Segment Your Target Audience

“The more, the merrier,” the general perception around pre-launch campaigns is somewhat flawed, especially when it comes to drip emails. Whether you aim to collect early feedback, cross-sell, boost referrals, or some media attention, you cannot enlist every prospect in your drip series.

Strategize and shortlist an audience pool that has been most engaged with your brand, participated in polls, registered for early access, and spread word about you in their circles. Enticing the lot onto your side early in your campaign can level up your chances of success.

If your target audience is broad, consider assembling them in segments based on their interaction with your brand. Newcomers can be labeled with a different tag than existing customers and referrers. It’s an effective way to identify who in your audience has completed a particular task or performed a trigger action.

Be Clear with Your Messaging

For any business, content is king. The information you disclose in your initial emails with customers lay the foundation and influence their future interactions with your brand. If you are promoting your upcoming product, craft teaser emails that put it in a better light and subsequently different from what your competitors offer.

While emphasizing the credibility of your product, don’t overwhelm the recipient with too much information. If you want people to read your emails and follow lead, infuse content that’s short, crips, and to the point.

Regardless of the content you share, many will still not read their emails word-by-word. Portray the contents of your messaging in attractive fonts, bold subject lines, and compelling imagery that makes it more scannable to the ordinary eye.

Create an Email Drip your Audience Can’t Resist

Drip emails work via reinforced impulses. A simple Thank You or Welcome email won’t suffice, you must consistently remind your prospects about the benefits subscribing to your newsletter, buying your product, or using your services throughout their journey.

Write a compelling pitch around how your upcoming innovation will address their problems to convert them leads into paying customers. While there are many product release email templates tFollow up with an appropriate sequence offer based on their response to your email.

When compiling a proper drip series, you need to assess what type of content your prospects are willing to see and the manner that will leave the most impact. Here are three great product launch email examples relative to specific actions:

• If they subscribe to your newsletter, send emails listing helpful resources regarding your product.
• If they register on your pre-launch landing page, regularly share updates and latest developments about your product to keep them in the loop.
• If they interact with a quote, focus on sending emails that outline special discounts and promos to seize the purchase.
• If they place a pre-order, you can share emails listing tutorials and walkthrough videos that will help them utilize it more effectively.

Split and Retarget Recipients Using Triggers

Either due to busy schedules or divided attention, recipients don’t always abide by the action you propose in the email. But before you factor it as a lost lead, split your email response in two or more flows for people who take different actions. It’s a way to retarget users who may opt for a different or unconventional response.

For instance, in case your welcome email is left unopened, you can use triggers to create a split series of two email responses - another welcome email to non-openers and a different one to openers. Or you can trigger a different follow-up email for users who opened the email but didn’t follow the link or placed a pre-order.

Repurpose another trigger response for recipients who did click the link. The best part! You can set triggers days in advance instead of waiting for any activity to take place. Make sure not to bombard the recipient's inbox with too many response emails but rather space them out within at least a week or ten days' interval.

Closing Note

Once you have determined your target audience, outlined your campaign goals, written email copy, and set up a trigger response drip series, your pre-launch email marketing campaign is ready for launch. Leveraged right, a drip campaign can subtly guide your target audience into doing something that goes along with your business objective.

If your email campaign isn’t translating into excessive hype or higher sales, it’s likely that you’re rolling out emails with no proper game plan or an email automation software. Remember, timing and automation is key to a perfect product launch camapign, and Prefinery.com is your best shot at achieving that.

FAQs

How many emails should be in an email drip campaign?

The number of emails in an email drip campaign can vary, but common sequences range from 3 to 10 emails, depending on the campaign's goals and the complexity of the message you want to convey.

How does an email drip series help a pre-launch campaign?

An email drip series can help a pre-launch campaign by building anticipation and engagement. It allows you to provide information, teasers, and exclusive content to potential customers, nurturing their interest and creating excitement before the official launch.