What’s a Good Conversion Rate for a Drip Marketing Campaign? 

Drip marketing campaigns are quietly powerful, gently nudging prospects to take the next step on their customer journey.

Delivered at precisely the right moment, drip campaigns not only generate new leads but help to convert existing prospects into sales.

However, taking a set-and-forget approach to drip marketing is unlikely to produce the results you’re hoping for. Instead, campaigns must be regularly reviewed to make data-driven changes that optimize towards the best conversion rate possible. 

But what’s “best” will look different for every company, and it’s essential to identify a benchmark before getting started. 

If you skip this step, you’re likely to find yourself making endless tweaks to your campaigns, with no real way of knowing whether they’re successful.

Why not set yourself up for success from the off? By the time you’ve finished this post, you’ll be able to: 

• Calculate the conversion rate of your drip marketing campaigns 
• Define what constitutes a good conversion rate for your business 
• Implement tried-and-tested techniques to improve conversion rates 

Before we begin, it’s worth reminding ourselves of some drip marketing campaign fundamentals.

What Is a Drip Marketing Campaign?

Drip marketing campaigns consist of automated emails that are scheduled or triggered. 

Rather than sending marketing content at random, drip emails are preplanned and sent intelligently to users at strategic points along their customer journey. 

Picture the following campaign: 

In the first drip email, the brand sends an automated “welcome” message a few hours after a user subscribes. This email may contain links to several resources, including blog posts and a downloadable white paper. 

The second drip email is sent three to five days later—after the subscriber has had enough time to digest the welcome email. This email may contain an invitation to a free webinar. 

The third email may come a week later with a call-to-action for a free trial of the brand’s product. This email is targeted at subscribers who attended the webinar. 

Lastly, the fourth email is sent a week later, containing a discount code since the subscriber’s free trial is about to expire. 

In the example campaign above, the first two emails were scheduled, whereas the third and fourth were triggered. The campaign structure ensures the call-to-action reaches subscribers who have already demonstrated a strong interest in your product. 

Benefits of Drip Marketing

Here are the top three benefits of B2B drip marketing campaigns:  

• Automate the customer journey: Drip marketing campaigns rely on automated emails that require minimal human intervention and supervision. The result? Zero human error and zero missed opportunities! 
   
• Avoid selling too early: Pushing for a sale when the customer barely knows you rarely works. Drip campaigns gradually build your relationship with the prospect to win their trust before selling—increasing your chances of sealing the deal.  
   
• Keep the connection alive: If your contacts go silent for a while, a drip campaign can be configured to automate re-engagement emails to maintain brand awareness and engagement. 

How Is a Drip Marketing Conversion Rate Calculated?

In drip marketing, a conversion rate measures how often email subscribers take meaningful actions. These could include creating an account, downloading an asset, and making a purchase. 

To calculate the conversion rate, divide the total number of conversions by the total amount of recipients. 

For example, if your webinar promotion campaign reached 400 subscribers but only 30 converted into attendees, your campaign conversion rate is: 

30÷400 = 0.075 or 7.5% 

Tracking conversion rates helps you understand and optimize the performance of your marketing strategies over time. 

Suppose the current conversion rate of your B2B drip marketing campaign is 4%. Then, after changing the schedule of your emails, your conversion rate jumps to 6% after a few days. 

This indicates that your new strategy works—assuming you didn’t change any other variables. 

Remember, drip marketing isn’t only about what pulls in the most subscribers or leads. You must put equal emphasis on converting these leads into paying customers. 

What Is a Good Conversion Rate for Drip Marketing?

The ideal conversion rate varies from industry to industry. However, you can use email marketing averages as benchmarks to measure your campaign’s performance. 

This guide from Barilliance shows aggregated email marketing ROI statistics from 2016 to 2021. 

Standard benchmarks to consider when measuring the success of your email marketing campaigns are as follows: 

• Average email open rate (subscribers who opened emails): 44% 
• Average email click-through rate (subscribers who clicked links in emails): 15% 
• Average click-to-open rate (email openers who clicked links in emails): 20% 

Comparing your results to the figures above gives you a general idea of how your drip marketing campaigns stack up against performance averages. 

Another approach to determine what a “good” conversion rate is for you, is to align these metrics with your business goals. 

Let’s say your goal is to generate a total of 500 paid subscribers for your SaaS service. 

If you have a contact list of 3,000 people, you need a conversion rate of at least 16.66% to hit your target (16.66% of 3,000 is 500). 

To help you create a successful drip marketing strategy, here are a handful of other KPIs to look into:  

• Unsubscribe rate: The number of contacts who unsubscribed divided by the number of campaign recipients. Track the unsubscribe rate to identify which drip marketing emails are potentially disastrous to your campaign’s success.  
   
• Response rate: The percentage of subscribers who reply to a campaign email. Monitor response rate to determine which emails are compelling enough to receive a reply. Remember—the sentiment of responses can differ, so ensure you analyze the percentage of positive versus negative responses. 
    
• Bounce rate: Bounce rate measures the percentage of emails that fail to deliver to your audience’s inbox. This can be calculated by dividing the number of undelivered emails by the total number of recipients.  

How to Improve the Conversion Rate of Your Drip Marketing Campaign

If your drip marketing campaign is underperforming, consider trying the following tactics: 

1. Plan competitor displacement campaigns

Competitor displacement is an attempt to “steal” customers from your competitors. This means persuading your competitors’ customers to switch to your company. 

For this to work, you must convince prospects that your solutions are better for their needs. 

Be transparent when comparing your products to your competitors’ offering. Provide prospects with comparison posts, mention your product’s advantages, and show them how easy it is to make the switch. 

These points can be used as leverage in a drip marketing campaign. 

Focus on helping your audience find out more about your brand. Insert CTAs that invite prospects to reach out to you, participate in a discovery call, or perform whatever action aligns best with your marketing goals. 

You can also take advantage of customer technographics to gain a better understanding of their technology stack. 

Further personalize your outreach by analyzing your prospects’ technology installs and highlighting product features that integrate well with their software ecosystem.  

2. Track prospect engagement

Potential buyers who recently engaged with your brand are perfect targets for a drip marketing campaign. First, check the validity of their contact information to avoid wasting resources on unreachable or fraudulent prospects. Use contact validation and engagement tracking to maintain the health and accuracy of your email marketing lists. 

Prioritize prospects who recently responded to your brand—re-engage them before they lose interest and take their business to someone else.  

3. Combine drip marketing with an ABM strategy

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) opposes mass marketing, instead focusing on a group of top-quality prospects. 

It uses personalized marketing strategies and content experiences to build organic relationships—the kind of relationship needed to convince savvy buyers. 

Combine email marketing with your ABM strategy by developing a personalized drip campaign. 

This campaign aims to pre-activate leads and handpick key accounts that require your utmost attention. For example, you can run a drip marketing campaign that tracks conversion events like downloading a report, creating an account, and starting a free trial. 

If a subscriber completes multiple conversions, roll them over to your ABM campaign where they can receive the hyper-personalized experience they deserve. 

Drip emails can also be used to further nurture your relationship with key accounts. 

Although drip marketing emails are meant to be automated, you can still provide a tailored experience through personalization tokens. These are placeholders for the recipient’s first name, role, address, and so on.  

Drip Marketing Campaigns 101:

How do you optimize drip campaigns for lead generation and conversions?

3 ways to boost drip marketing conversions:  

• Use prospect engagement data to segment your lists 
• Spur action and get quick wins with competitor displacement campaigns 
• Launch drip marketing alongside ABM 

What is a drip sequence?

Drip sequence refers to the complete timeline of scheduled emails used in a drip marketing campaign. Customer actions can also trigger sequences and other conditions set via an email marketing automation campaign.  

How long should a drip campaign last?

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to drip marketing campaigns. However, some marketers agree that the best drip email frequency is 4-7 emails sent a few days apart.  

Skip the Number Crunching—Bolster Your Drip Marketing Strategy Now

Turbocharge your drip marketing emails by targeting in-market buyers with DemandScience’s relevant, recent, and accurate B2B data. 

Our tools help you uncover users that have: 

• Been active within 30, 60, or 90 days 
• Shown interest in the solutions you offer 
• A tech stack that makes your business a great fit 

If you’d like to find out more about how DemandScience can help you, get in touch today.