Drip Marketing

Many people are using a sequential delivery of messages to support interest in their companies, products and services, where delivery of each message is executed based on when a subscriber opts-in to the list. That opted-in last month may have received messages 1-8, whereas someone that opts-in today gets message 1 and will receive the rest of the sequence as time goes by. This approach represents a more tactical implementation to email marketing and allows you to match specific interests with applicable services and products. You can also isolate specific interests in a feature, application or benefit of a product or service in order to create a flow of useful information that targets a specific desired action.

Take a look at the following graphic, which shows how each message is sent based on when a subscriber opts-in.

This approach requires extensive planning to come up with a series of messages that will promote the conversion or action you are requesting. You may promote some different product or service with each message and use the format and language to reinforce the brand. When you run out of products or services, you can then go into detail about each feature, application or benefit of each product or service separately. This should give you an endless supply of fodder to create as many messages as you need to create the conversion you seek.

In terms of best practices, we have found that the announcement approach described earlier works best. Short messages provide an easy to read message with useful information and a link to more details.

One of the considerations for the planning process is to determine how many points of contact (messages) will be needed to make a sale and when the sequence will stop. As an example, you may decide to create 12 messages to point out the benefits of your service and link the messages to an article on your website that goes into depth about the benefit.

Another consideration is what happens when someone purchases the product. Does the subscriber stop getting the messages or should a different set of messages (drip marketing campaign) promoting another product be initiated? Also, if this is the first product or the customer has purchased other products, you may want to create a separate drip marketing strategy for each of these circumstances.

Creating one drip marketing campaign requires planning. You need a set of short announcements like a tip of the day, and a call to action. Generally, I provide a link to an article or product page, provide a short description of the article and ask the reader to click on the link to get more information. Each drip or message should have a different focus and provide useful information. The challenge is to create a series of these announcements that will be delivered in sequence, keeping your information in front of your prospects.

Although you may never convert every prospect into a customer, drip marketing can get you closer to that goal than a simple newsletter because you can target your customers with much more accuracy. You can create separate entry points on multiple content pages or micro sites and funnel them all into a single drip marketing campaign. This allows you to track which entry points are converting visitors to prospects by measuring visitor sessions versus opt-ins. The other key statistic is opt-in’s versus people that actually buy (customers). You can also create several similar drip-marketing campaigns to test the customer conversion process per announcement. Increasing the conversion ratios is the key to measuring the success of your sales funnel.

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