Step 4. Create and set up follow-ups
In this article, we’ll tell you how to keep up communication with your audience via emails and how to make this process absolutely automatic. And get buyers for free!
Email marketing is a good helper for every dropshipping business owner. Let’s say you’ve got 100 clients. Or run an advertising campaign that leads people to your cool blog, they subscribed – and now you have 77 subscribers. It’s already great that they bought something or subscribed, but that’s not it and not the reason to leave them alone.
This audience is called a warm one – people already know your store, and there’s a high chance that they will buy something or turn into regular customers. So, why to give up on them? Send them an email (or a dozen)!
Sending separate emails is okay, but you really have other important stuff to do. So, let’s create an automated email sequence – let it be the sequence for your clients – that will be sending emails and bring orders without your assistance for weeks, months and even years! You can create such a sequence yourself (all steps are described below) or you can ask us – we’ll be glad to help!
Getting started
Go to your MailChimp account, press ‘Create Campaign’ button.
Click ‘Create an Email’.
If you want to create a single email, use an option of Regular email creation.
If you want to create an automated sequence, choose the ‘Automated’ tab, select a type of automated emails (some of them are not available). We usually choose a ‘Welcome new subscribers’ type – actually, they are all the same.
Enter your campaign name (it’s for internal use, recipients won’t see it), choose the list you want emails to be sent to and click ‘Begin’.
What do we see now? The first email of your email sequence was automatically created. Let’s design it! Click ‘Design Email’.
Name this email (for internal use), fill in the fields – email subject, preview text (the line that goes right after the email subject in the Inbox). You can use emojis – just click on a gray smiley.
From name and From email address are auto-filled using the list defaults. Press Next.
Let’s choose a template – your email layout. It’s time to let your creativity free! You can preview each layout by clicking on the magnifier icon.
We usually use 1 column, 1:2 column, 1:2:1 column and 1:3 column formats because they look good on all devices and email field is limited by some borders – it looks aesthetic. Please also keep in mind that some of the templates are not available in the free plan. Meanwhile, a full-width format is a lil bit harder to design and it kinda occupies the whole display.
Anyway, you’re an email artist now, and it’s up to you what to choose. Click on the desired template and then ‘Next’.
So, it’s the most important part now – creating the email message. The left side reflects the email as it shown to your recipient, the right side contains all the tools, settings and is used for editing.
You can drag the suggested elements (text, image, buttons, etc) from the right side to the left one. It’s like a construction kit – very convenient!
Basic settings
The settings here are pretty easy, and you can adjust everything you want. Go to the ‘Design’ tab and play with colors and fonts for your email but keep in mind that it should be easy and fast to read, and pleasant to look at.
P.S. ‘Mobile Styles’ option lets you define your email’s appearance on mobile devices.
Email body
You can delete any suggested default parts of the email. Just mouse over any block and click on the ‘bin’ icon.
If you want to edit the text in a block, click the ‘pen’ icon (or just click on the block).
In the editing window (on the right) you’ll see the block contents – you can edit them there. Change fonts, their sizes, alignment, and colors. Highlight the most important words with color or a bold font.
To move blocks, click on the icon with dots, hold and drag the block to the desired place.
We included a discount into our email – so why not to show customers examples of what they can buy using this discount. Let’s add products you think your customers would like to buy (if you have any bestsellers – add them).
Click on the block with the image, press ‘Browse’ button. Upload an image.
Add a caption to this product image – it can be either a short product description or just a product name and a price. Then drag another image (or an image card) to the email body to add one more product. Add caption as well.
Even if you don’t see the gray field ‘Drop Content Blocks Here’, there’s still the room for other blocks. When you drag and drop them, email body will highlight where you can place them. Look:
Okay, we added product pics, but how will they lead recipients to your site? You need to attach links to these pics and make them clickable! Select any block, and click the ‘Link’ option. Insert the link. You can make your links with UTM-marks to track whether this email generated any orders or not.
Don’t you think our email body lacks something? Let’s improve it! Your email should always lead to your website – it’s the primary purpose of sending it.
Drag the ‘Button’ element from the right side to the email body and drop it.
Adjust the look of the button: edit text, change the style in the ‘Style’ tab, add the link to your website and make it a good-looking one.
All in all, you can anything to your email body – gifs, images, buttons, etc – and rearrange all the parts.
Header
What do we send our emails for? Yes, to offer customers our products, to inform them of sales and new arrivals.. But there’s something more – to let our clients get used to your shop and to promote your brand. Just so you know, people buy stuff more readily from those stores they know about and which name they seen several times. So, let’s add your dropshipping store’s logo!
In the template we’ve chosen there’s a special place for it – just click on ‘Logo’ area, choose ‘Replace’ and upload your own logo (if there’s no special place for logo, just add an image block to your email header and upload there a PNG-format logo of your store).
So, we’ve added our logo but – oh no! – it’s too big! See this yellow warning? Then it’s time to take a look at Mailchimp integrated Photo Editor. Select ‘Let’s fix it’ option (or ‘Edit’ option).
Voila! Our email looks excellent! Don’t forget to add the link to your shop to the logo (follow the steps you made when adding a link to an image). According to the heat maps of our emails, people often click on the logo to visit the site.
Footer
If you have any social media accounts – go to the footer part (the bottom of the email). Click on the block with social media icons and add links to your accounts. You can remove any icons by clicking little ‘minus’ buttons.
Or add any other services…
If you don’t like how the icons look, click on the ‘Settings’ tab. You can change ‘Display’, ‘Align’, ‘Width’ settings…
…and adjust icons layout and style.
You may change footer info as well but remember that, according to Mailchimp policies, your footer should contain your (your company’s) physical address, ‘unsubscribe’ option and a small Mailchimp rewards badge.
Tests & triggers
To see the email with your receiver’s eyes, choose ‘Preview and Test’ option.
Click ‘Enter preview mode’ to see how the email will look for the recipient. You may be shown a mobile version of your email as well.
You are allowed to send test emails – send the email to yourself by clicking ‘Send a test email’ and enter your own email address. Then go to your inbox and see the fruits of your labor (the email will drop into your inbox right away or in a couple of minutes).
Check that all images are accurately shown and buttons work correctly.
If your email is ready, save it as a template to use it in the future and save your time. Select ‘Save as Template’ option. Then click “Save and Continue” in the bottom right corner.
It’s time to edit the trigger and set the moment when your email will be sent. Click ‘Edit trigger’.
Adjust the trigger according to your needs.
If it’s the first email in the sequence, we usually put a tick in the ‘Trigger when subscribers are imported’ box. It means that even if your automated email sequence already started sending emails to the list, it will start sending emails to new subscribers you’ve just added to this list as well. Don’t forget to press ‘Update Trigger’.
Congratulations! Now you know how to design emails!
Create the sequence
Create your second email in this sequence by clicking ‘Add Email’. It can be, for instance, a letter informing customers about your bestsellers.
Repeat the same steps of email creation and don’t forget about triggers.
Create as many emails as you need (or as you can). Then press ‘Confirm’ and ‘Start Workflow’ to make the email sequence start sending emails to email addresses from your list (but before that – make sure all the emails you’ve designed are decent, look good and work well!).
Add the recipients of follow-ups sequence – click the down arrow on ‘Edit Workflow Settings’ button and press ‘Add Subscribers to Workflow’.
After your follow-ups started to be sent, you can always add new emails to the workflow. Just go to the ‘Campaigns’ tab, choose the needed follow up sequence and select ‘Add Email’ as usual.
However, if you have a free plan, creating a sequence will look differently. Your email letters are separate emails. So you should set triggers on each of them using the values like this:
1st letter – immediately, 2nd letter – 1 day trigger, 3rd letter – 4 day trigger, 4th letter – 9 day trigger, 5th letter – 14 day trigger, etc.
We are proud of you – now you can promote your dropshipping store with email marketing yourself!
If you have more questions about MailChimp’s functions and settings, use MailChimp’s Help Center: https://mailchimp.com/help/.