Whatever your business, drip email may be in your marketing arsenal.  It’s one of the main reasons, perhaps the main reason, that so many email systems are getting more sensitive and marking more emails as spam.

Get into the shoes of the recipients of your deluge of emails.  You’ve either bought or written your own long list of emails that are set up to go out on a schedule, and they start when you get a new prospect.

A prospect visits your website or sends you an email, and suddenly they find an unsolicited email in their inbox.  Then after a few days or less, there’s another one.  Then there’s another… and so it goes.  Many, if not most of them, are of no interest to the recipient, and they soon tire of the task of deleting them.  So, they send you that dreaded unsubscribe. Hopefully, they don’t also tell their service that you’re spamming.

Admit it, you would do the same, and you probably have many times. So, is there a better way to use drip email?  You bet there is. First, come to the realization that you don’t have to send an endless stream of nonsense or uninteresting emails.  Three to five is all you need.

NO, you say, as your typical sale doesn’t happen that fast, and you want to keep contacting them to wear them down.  Instead, you’re just wearing them out.

Step 1: What type of information related to your business would your prospects find of value on a regular basis over time?  It’s usually some type of statistical or news reporting.  Real estate agents send market reports.  Restaurants could send menu changes.  Cleaning services could send environmental reports about cleaning materials.

The point is that there is likely to be some type of information that changes over time and will be of interest to your prospects.  Figure out what it is and plan to send those type of reports out in the future on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Step 2: Go to every email you’ve sent and every part of your website and business. Choose three to five really great email topics, information types, reports or popular pages on your website.  Those will become the topics of your drip email series.

Step 3:  In the very first drip email, tell them how many you’re about to send them. Now, instead of clients getting one or two and wondering if you are going to bother them forever, they get your assurance that you’re only going to send say four emails over a specific period of time.  That’s comforting.

Step 4: Send your series and in the last one tell them it is the last, but you’re placing them on a special monthly or quarterly market report, or whatever you’ve decided list, and they’ll get those in the future. What you’ve done is told them what is going to happen, did as you promised, and you have moved them to a special list for future important reports or notices.

You will see a dramatic decrease in unsubscribes, and you should boost your conversions.