![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.drift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/2003-Drift-Email-Launch.jpg\")
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Creating a frictionless customer experience<\/a> \u2013 from brand awareness to upsell and renewal \u2013 is no longer a nice-to-have. It\u2019s a critical component of differentiated marketing.<\/p>\n So if you work in demand generation like me, that means you\u2019re likely spending a lot of time designing a great website experience, nurturing experience, sales experience, and more. You’re also probably spending countless hours designing, writing and sending beautiful marketing emails \u2013 because email is a critical touchpoint in the buyer journey.<\/p>\n But are you ignoring the customer experience for your email campaigns?<\/strong><\/p>\n For example, what happens when someone receives your email and wants to take action on it? If clicking the CTA leads them to landing pages and forms, then I\u2019ve got bad news for you. You\u2019ve lost the opportunity to engage with someone when they\u2019re actually<\/em> thinking about your company.<\/p>\n And if they respond to the email, does their response go to a no-reply or unmonitored inbox black hole? Or does it go to an overwhelmed marketing ops or demand generation marketer who has to spend hours picking out human replies? Does it get to the business development team for follow-up \u2013 and do they actually follow up?<\/p>\n Painful, right? There\u2019s a better way.<\/p>\n Now, more than ever, marketers are tapping into the power of email to reach their goals. Keep reading for ways to Drift Email can help you get there.<\/p>\n Customers today care less about glossy marketing emails and more about engaging with companies in a real, authentic way \u2013 when and where they want to, on their own terms. The companies that understand and design for that need are the ones who will win.<\/p>\n So if your ultimate goal is to drive opportunities for your sales team, the best way to do that is by making your emails the start of a conversation. <\/strong><\/p>\n Instead of the anonymous and friction-filled CTA link, send emails where the CTA is a response, just like to a friend. We\u2019re willing to bet you\u2019ll see higher engagement \u2013 and ultimately, higher conversion rates \u2013 because it feels natural and authentic, helping you establish a real relationship with prospective customers.<\/p>\n But how do you stay on top of all those replies? Let\u2019s walk through how Drift Email can help.<\/p>\n Drift Email sorts through all the responses in your marketing inbox automatically, picking out human replies from automated ones and routing those actual replies to the right place. That means your business development team only receives real responses from people interested in learning more \u2013 ensuring those high-intent leads get a quick follow up, and delivering a great customer experience. (And your marketing team doesn\u2019t lose hours manually sorting through emails and forwarding them to sales).<\/p>\n Plus, with Drift Email, you clean and enrich your email database automatically with every send. Our machine learning algorithm sorts through unsubscribe requests and automated replies, mining and processing out-of-office replies, job changes, phone numbers, and more. Then it updates your email database directly in your marketing automation platform, without you lifting a finger.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a game-changer for demand gen marketers like me. You get the best of all worlds \u2013 more pipeline, better email performance, a great customer experience, and a self-cleaning email database. But don\u2019t just take it from me. Keep reading to learn more about the evolution of Drift Email and the growth it\u2019s helped our customers unlock.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve made it this far into the post, you might be thinking: Drift Email, I thought that was already a thing? What about Drift | Siftrock?<\/p>\n Drift Email is the latest evolution of the Siftrock platform.<\/p>\n When Drift acquired Siftrock back in 2018, we saw a unique opportunity to bring conversational marketing<\/a> to email. After all, the customer experience doesn\u2019t begin and end on your website. Every touchpoint, from brand awareness to closing the deal, is an opportunity to create real relationships with prospective customers, and to delight them with a customer-centric experience. That experience usually makes the difference between a buyer continuing to engage with your company and simply moving on to a competitor.<\/p>\n Two years later, Siftrock has become an integral part of Drift\u2019s conversational marketing platform, helping hundreds of companies send smarter emails and drive more pipeline from email marketing.<\/p>\n For example, since implementing Drift Email, Nichole Marsano, Director of Demand Generation at PayScale<\/a>, has seen:<\/p>\n Nichole is just getting started.<\/p>\n And so are we. We\u2019re hard at work building the next generation of conversational email.<\/p>\n Creating a frictionless customer experience \u2013 from brand awareness to upsell and renewal \u2013 is no longer a nice-to-have. It\u2019s a critical component of differentiated marketing. So if you work in demand generation like me, that means you\u2019re likely spending a lot of time designing a great website experience, nurturing experience, sales experience, and more. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187,"featured_media":59183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[79,42],"tags":[245,78,99,129],"acf":{"evergreen_content":false,"hero_image":false,"inject_into_header":"","related_posts":[{"ID":56582,"post_author":"125","post_date":"2020-02-10 08:00:20","post_date_gmt":"2020-02-10 13:00:20","post_content":"That\u2019s where Drift Email<\/a> comes into play. Formerly known as Drift | Siftrock, Drift Email gives you the same great email management experience you love, just with a new name. Drift Email helps you drive more pipeline from your email campaigns, improves email conversion rates and manages your email database for you.<\/h3>\n
Email can help you start a conversation with your buyers<\/h2>\n
Let Drift Email handle your replies<\/h2>\n
A tool that grows with your business<\/h2>\n
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Want to learn more? Let\u2019s have a conversation<\/a> about how much more pipeline you could be driving with Drift Email.<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.drift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/2003-Email-blog-cta.jpg\")
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\r\n\r\nImagine you\u2019re inviting your friend to a party.\r\n\r\nYou call them up, tell them all the cool stuff (foam machine and glowsticks? Karaoke? Award-winning chef on the grill?) but immediately hang up before telling them when it is and how to get there.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s fine \u2013 things happen. So your friend calls you back to get the details but they hear this operator message:\r\n\r\n\u201cWe're sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again.\u201d<\/em>\r\n\r\nUm, what?\r\n\r\nLook, I know it sounds <\/em>a little ridiculous, and that\u2019s because it is. But it\u2019s not far off from the way people approach marketing emails today. We create these big fancy campaigns with over-the-top details that take a ton of time and effort. But we don\u2019t create any openings for the conversation to continue \u2013 no-reply email addresses, a black hole generic inbox, or a bounceback are all our subscribers get.\r\n\r\nWe were right there with you before we acquired Siftrock (now called Drift Email) in 2018.\r\n\r\nI sat down with Sean Lane, the host of Drift\u2019s Operations podcast<\/a>, to talk through exactly how we use it to help us cut through the noise, drive more meaningful conversations with our customers, and the one tactic we use to level up every single email send.\r\nSo. Many. Emails.<\/h2>\r\nI work in marketing ops, and I used to spend at least 18% of my time sifting through alllllll the emails that would land in our generic inbox to figure out what was junk and what needed a response yesterday. Was this someone we sent one too many emails to and wanted to unsubscribe? Was it someone who loved us and wanted to schedule a demo? Was it an out of office message? I would spend hours poring over this inbox and only a few emails were actually delivering any value to the company \u2013 or investing in my own growth and development as an operations manager.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s exactly the problem Drift Email<\/a> solves.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nI get it. It\u2019s not sexy. But what if I told you I was able to:\r\n
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How We Use Drift Email To Cut Through The Noise<\/h2>\r\nWhen I started at Drift in November 2018, I had to learn and implement Drift Email from scratch \u2013 the good news is it\u2019s pretty easy. All you have to do is connect your sub-domain and set up a few workflows to process different types of emails. Things like out of office, automatic replies, unsubscribes, or an actual human reply.\r\n\r\nThen instead of going through one big generic inbox, you can log into Drift Email which has a machine-learning algorithm that reads and processes the different categories for you. All you have to do is look through the actual replies and respond.\r\n\r\nI can get things done SO much more quickly.\r\n\r\nFor example, if I get an automatic bounceback from an email that someone has left the company, I can set up a workflow in Drift Email that essentially says, \"Hey, if we get a \u2018left the company\u2019 email, add that person to this list and mark the contact record as invalid.\" That kicks off the next steps in our marketing automation platform (MAP) so they\u2019re not hanging out in our email flow for six months or a year killing our deliverability metrics.\r\n\r\nThe same goes for unsubscribes. We have a MAP workflow where Drift Email automatically checks their email opt-out and pushes that information to our MAP, which then updates their profile. That way we can keep our database squeaky clean<\/a> and improve our email deliverability metrics.\r\n\r\nI\u2019m not the only one who deals with an avalanche of out-of-office replies when I send an email. The sales reps attached to those campaigns do, too. When we turned on Drift Email, we started routing email replies to sales reps directly so they can easily follow-up to the actual person who is interested in booking a demo.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s much simpler that way.\r\n
How We Use Drift Email To Start More Conversations<\/h2>\r\nHere\u2019s an email we\u2019ll send through our MAP that\u2019s personalized to come from a specific sales rep ?\r\n\r\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.drift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/dont-cry-because-its-over-email.png\")
\r\n\r\nThe goal of the email is to book a demo.\r\n\r\nBut you\u2019ll see there\u2019s no link in the email \u2013 just a question at the end. It feels like I\u2019m emailing you as a person, even though we\u2019re sending this to our list. When we get responses, Drift Email flags it as a human reply we need to respond to and then seamlessly maps the reply content and subject line in our MAP so I can update the workflow and sync it with Salesforce.\r\n\r\nThis works entirely behind-the-scenes for me so I can save time sifting through all the auto-replies in that inbox and <\/em>ensure questions from prospects and customers get answered.\r\nHow We Level Up Every Email Send<\/h2>\r\nWhen I approach an email campaign, I\u2019m looking for efficiencies. How can I automate as much as possible so that we can focus on the actual conversations?\r\n\r\nWe use the Email Bot<\/a> for every single email we send.\r\n\r\nYes, every single one.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s changed everything. Instead of asking our subscribers to click a link and then go to another page where they fill out a form or click on another button, we ask them to start a conversation.\r\n\r\nThey reply to the email, and then we can identify whether it\u2019s a positive or negative response, organize the leads, and make sure the right person responds to them in a timely manner.\r\n\r\nThat right person may be a bot.\r\n\r\nIn the example above, I\u2019ve got an Email Bot setup to interpret every human reply to that email and immediately respond with the right sales rep cc\u2019d and a link to schedule a meeting directly on their calendar.\r\n\r\nEmail Bots can automatically reply to book a meeting, provide the content you offer, register someone for a webinar, or re-engage leads that have gone cold. They can do this immediately or delay the response by five or 15 minutes depending on how we configure the workflow. We want to make sure they\u2019re still thinking about Drift when they get a reply.\r\n\r\nEverything is in one channel and one platform.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s just one step for our customers. (And one step for me, too.)\r\n
There\u2019s No Task Too Small<\/h2>\r\nSo, how do I know that using Drift Email helped free up 18% of my time? Well, like any self-respecting ops pro, I made a spreadsheet ?\r\n\r\nI started out by making an assumption from my past experience (before using Drift Email) and figured that for every ONE email being cleaned up\/processed\/updated manually, it took about 15 seconds to complete that individual task.\r\n\r\nThen I analyzed the data I had in front of me after<\/em> automating our email process at Drift. I looked at how many replies, opt-outs, OOO replies with net new contacts, and no longer with the company auto-replies I received.\r\n\r\nIt was a lot. But since I had automated the process, I wasn\u2019t spending hours each week manually updating our database. To find out just how many hours I was saving each week, I multiplied the number of updates Drift Email automatically made for me by the time it would have taken me<\/em> to do them myself (15 seconds). And that\u2019s how I realized I was getting back 18% of my time ?\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\nI\u2019ll leave you with my biggest piece of advice for my fellow marketing ops folks \u2013 there\u2019s no task too small. Even when it seems like everyone wants everything now <\/em>and there\u2019s a lot of grunt work, just know that every little detail adds up to the big picture strategy.\r\n
Ready to schedule a conversation with a member of our team? We think that\u2019s amazing. Click here<\/a> to let us know when you\u2019re free.<\/h3>\r\nAnd if you\u2019re not quite ready to chat with us, that\u2019s okay too!\r\n
In the meantime, we recommend checking out this guide<\/a> that\u2019s packed with 12 personalized and engaging conversational email templates. Use these templates to build a modern email marketing strategy \u2013 one that prioritizes conversations over clicks ?<\/h3>\r\n
![\"Free](\"https:\/\/www.drift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/1910-EmailTemplates-unfurl.jpg\")
<\/a>","post_title":"How Drift\u2019s Marketing Ops Team Got 18% Of Its Time Back","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"get-time-back-for-marketing-ops","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-04-30 13:35:41","post_modified_gmt":"2021-04-30 17:35:41","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.drift.com\/?p=56582","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":45254,"post_author":"187","post_date":"2019-10-28 08:00:30","post_date_gmt":"2019-10-28 12:00:30","post_content":"![\"conversational-email-templates\"](\"https:\/\/www.drift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/1910-EmailTemplates-blog-1.jpg\")
\r\n\r\nFor years, marketers have been using email as a bullhorn. They\u2019ve been blasting out impersonal ads and promotions to anyone who will listen and cluttering up inboxes in the process.\r\n\r\nBut here\u2019s the thing about email\u2026\r\n\r\nYou checked yours this morning, right? And we\u2019re guessing you\u2019re probably going to check it again later today. Meanwhile, businesses are sending 280 billion emails<\/a> per day, and that\u2019s expected to grow to 333 billion by 2022. With so much continued investment in email, it\u2019s clear that marketers still see the potential.\r\n\r\nThe underlying issue here isn\u2019t that email as a channel is broken, the issue is that we\u2019ve been doing email marketing all wrong.\r\n\r\nJust think about why you send email in the first place. The underlying goal of email marketing isn\u2019t to drive clicks, it\u2019s to grow relationships. And in order to grow those relationships, you need to have actual, one-on-one conversations.\r\n\r\n\u261d\ufe0fThat\u2019s conversational marketing<\/a> in a nutshell. By applying a conversational approach to email marketing, you\u2019ll be able to unlock the channel\u2019s hidden potential and send emails that people actually want to open.\r\n\r\nIn the book The Boron Letters<\/em>, Gary C. Halbert explains that people divide their mail into two piles: an A pile and a B pile. The B pile consists of shiny, colorful fliers and ads and anything that looks like it comes from a brand. The A pile, meanwhile, consists of personalized letters \u2013\u00a0which usually come in white envelopes, with handwritten names and addresses on the front. And while Halbert was writing about actual mail, you can apply the same principle to email.\r\n\r\nAs marketers, when we send highly designed HTML emails with impersonal, one-size-fits-all messages, we\u2019re creating emails that are destined for people\u2019s digital B pile. In order to get in the A pile, we need to start sending emails that look and feel like they\u2019re coming from a trusted friend or family member \u2013 not some faceless brand or corporation. That means stripping away all the fancy design elements and sending plain text email<\/a>. And more importantly, it means writing compelling, personalized copy that engages leads and customers and keeps the conversation going.\r\n\r\nBy focusing on getting leads and customers not just to click, but to reply to your emails, you\u2019re getting back to the channel\u2019s roots. After all, email wasn\u2019t built to be a one-way marketing broadcast tool, it was built for two-way conversation. By encouraging your email recipients to reply, you\u2019re letting them know that there are actual humans (like you!) working behind the scenes and available to help\u2026 even if the email they\u2019re receiving is automated.\r\n\r\nWhile email as a marketing channel isn\u2019t dead<\/a>, there\u2019s no denying that the way we do email marketing needs to evolve. In today\u2019s real-time, on-demand world, the old-school, \u201cspray and pray\u201d approach to email marketing no longer lives up to buyer expectations.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s why we created this pack of conversational email templates for you.\r\n\r\nInside, we\u2019ve compiled 12 personalized and engaging conversational email templates. Use these templates to build a modern email marketing strategy \u2013\u00a0one that prioritizes conversations over clicks.\r\nSo what are you waiting for? Get the templates here<\/a>.<\/h3>\r\n
Here\u2019s a sneak peek of what you\u2019ll get\u2026.<\/h2>\r\nNine proven best practices, including:<\/strong>\r\n
![\"template-example\"](\"https:\/\/www.drift.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/dont-cry-conversational-email.jpg\")
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