Ask any influencer marketing professional what the most important element of an influencer-brand collaboration is and authenticity will be in the top three. Users are smart and savvy. They want social proof before they put their trust in a new product. Additionally, audiences have become fragmented using multiple online and offline channels to discover brands. So mass media commercials, such as TV and newspaper ads, reach fewer and fewer people. However, with the appearance of influencers, businesses found a solution to reach their potential customers scattered across multiple channels.
In the old days, big companies teamed up with public figures on Instagram to promote their products, even if the celebrity didn't match their values. But influencer marketing has evolved in recent years, as have the best practices in the industry. This brings us back to authenticity. A good partnership starts by identifying the right creators who are authorities in your industry or already know your brand. As a next step, brands must nurture these influencer relationships to maintain credibility and trustworthiness. This is where email drip campaigns come in handy. They are the easiest way to connect with influencers, introduce your brand to them, and keep your services in their minds.
What Is an Email Drip Campaign?
Essentially, email drip campaigns are a series of pre-written and automated emails activated by a particular action, sent at specific time intervals. An email drip campaign aims to send recipients targeted messages based on their interests and behaviors, providing them value, building relationships, and finally mobilizing them to take action. By strategically and steadily delivering emails, brands remain top-of-mind to users even when they’re not actively engaged with the brand.
A typical drip campaign can be a welcome series, where a business welcomes new subscribers and introduces itself and its products and services in a string of emails. Another campaign motivates people who abandon their shopping carts to complete their purchases. Through these messages, businesses can highlight the benefits of the product or offer discounts to urge customers to finish the purchase.
Why and When Should You Use Email Drip Campaigns in Influencer Marketing
Many companies are aware of email drip campaigns and some include them in their marketing strategy to segment their audiences based on their shopping preferences or to improve customer retention. It’s a powerful means to cultivate relationships and engage users even before they become buyers without being intrusive or pushy. In a similar way, brands can use email sequences to acquaint creators with their products or services. This will build mutual trust, which paves the path to a successful campaign.
Moreover, drip campaigns take a lot of workload off your marketing team’s shoulders. You can create diverse series of messages, including introductory email strings dedicated to newly recruited influencers, or develop influencer engagement campaigns providing creators with industry news, how-to guides, and information on product updates. Furthermore, you can automate your emails based on the recipient's actions. As an added bonus you can still personalize your messages.
What Content to Include in Email Drip Campaigns for Influencer Marketing
If you want to activate influencers for your gifting campaign, for instance, email series can significantly contribute to influencer relationship management. Here is one way to nurture influencer partnerships using drip campaigns.
Introducing your business
This is the initial phase of your influencer engagement campaign where you want the creator to get familiar with your brand.
Initial outreach email: This is the first message of the sequence. Here you can introduce your business and yourself and describe your values and mission. You may shortly explain to the creator how you found them and why you’re approaching them.
Follow-up email: If an influencer doesn’t respond to your initial email, follow them up with a second email. You can reaffirm your first pitch by reiterating why you’d like to collaborate with them. You may also offer them value that piques their curiosity.
Building and nurturing influencer relationships
Your influencer relationship will move to the next level when the creator expresses interest in working with you. At this stage, you will start your negotiation process. The campaign's goal and type will determine how many points you need to cover in your email strings.
Specify campaign details and negotiate terms
Proposal: Once the creator shows interest in cooperation, you can send them a detailed email describing the campaign’s message, length and scope, and some information about the deliverables.
Legal terms: You must discuss legal issues like disclosure, premature termination, content usage rights, and the possibility of extending the contract in several emails.
Compensation: In gifting or product seeding campaigns businesses usually pay creators with freebies for their promotion. However, you may incentivize influencers with additional perks, like commissions after each purchase or a one-time fee. The decision as to whether a fixed fee is paid fully or in installments is up to you and the influencer.
Send creators a brief and contract
This can be another step in your relationship management or a substep of your negotiation sequence. Make sure you send influencers an elaborate influencer brief summarizing the campaign dates, timelines, and the number and type of deliverables. You can reaffirm your campaign message, and legal and payment terms in the brief. Even better if you draft a written agreement in which you outline the responsibilities and conditions of the partnership. Once the contract is signed by both parties you can move to the next phase.
Mail product samples or grant access to services
As part of your arrangement, you have to send demo products to influencers on time and communicate the shipping date, tracking data, etc. The sooner you mail creators the items or give access to services, the earlier they can start working on the content.
Begin content creation and finalize the campaign
You can actively involve influencers in the content creation process by considering their opinions and feedback. This sequence should include the procedure of reviewing and approving content before they are published.
Notify influencers when they are paid
The arrival date of other payments, such as a one-time fee or commission remuneration, should be notified to creators and confirmed by them upon receipt.
Show your gratitude
After the campaign ends, thank the creators for their hard work and dedication. If the campaign was successful, you may also suggest a future partnership. If they are up to it, you can involve them in additional email series.
Post-campaign relationship management
Influencer nurturing doesn’t stop at the campaign’s end. By engaging highly devoted creators with industry sneak peeks, tutorials, and event invitations your business will stay in their thoughts and maintain excitement surrounding your brand. At the same time, you'll make them feel like they belong to your brand's inner circle and provide them with content they can share.
In general, email drip campaigns, as a part of email marketing strategy, enable brands to build rapport with creators with tailored and automated email strings laying the foundations for a mutually beneficial collaboration.
The Best Tools for Creating and Managing Influencer Marketing Drip Campaigns
To create and manage email drip campaigns, you’ll need tools. Before making your decision, evaluate the functionalities and ease of use of the available solutions and take into account your needs and your budget.
Email marketing platforms: One of the most common tools for building and handling email marketing campaigns. Most of these platforms offer email design templates, analytics and reporting, and subscription management features. The most popular email marketing platforms are Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Campaign Monitor.
CRM software: Customer Relationship Management solutions enable companies to monitor and manage interactions with their customers and analyze customer behaviors and patterns to improve customer experience. Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and Pipedrive are among the most favored CRM systems.
Marketing automation tools: These softwares help businesses automate repetitive marketing tasks and offer lead management, analytics, and reporting features to increase productivity. Top marketing automation tools are Marketo, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot.
Influencer marketing platforms: Most suites provide solutions for several influencer marketing tasks from creator search and analysis to outreach and campaign management. Comprehensive platforms, like HypeAuditor, offer a tool for influencer relationship management. HypeAuditor's My Network helps users in organizing their influencers and allows them to coordinate and track communications across the platform. Other platforms with influencer relationship management functionalities are Grin, CreatorIQ, and Upfluence.
Email sequence tools: Email sequence builders, like Drip, AWeber, and ConverKit are used to automate and schedule email series, thus building relationships with subscribers, nurturing leads, and driving conversions.
Businesses can automate monotonous tasks, and customize and schedule their messages to optimize their email drip campaign workflows. Consequently, they can cultivate relationships with influencers for mutual benefit using one or a combination of these tools.
Conclusion and Recapping
Email drip campaigns can elevate your influencer relationship management and help you lay the basis for a successful collaboration. Strong connections with influencers will secure your brand’s authenticity and reliability and you will gain authority in your field. Additionally, automated and personalized emails save your team significant time and reduce their workload.
Key takeaways:
Be sure to communicate regularly and clearly at every phase of your campaign.
Offer value for influencers. You may motivate them with extra perks, like discounts or exclusive merch.
Keep creators posted about innovations related to your products and industry.
Provide access to unique events, webinars, or tutorials.
