What is a Drip Campaign?

Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns are automated marketing processes that send information to contacts over a period of time. The messaging can come via automated emails, social media posts, phone calls, or regular mail. These drip marketing campaigns can focus on one type of delivery or a mixture of several targeted messaging.

Drip campaigns allow companies to stay top of mind with customers and prospects. It’s a consistent form of staying engaged with your customers and ongoing focused marketing to your prospects. Even if they are not ready to buy now, with continued communication, they will remember you when they are ready to buy.

Consistent Messaging over Time

Conveying your message to others in a succession of events is a very effective way to market. This technique is a communication strategy to nurture leads over time. Marketers try to feed their potential customers with consistent messages but trying not to overdo it.

It ensures your prospects don’t frequently get too much information from one company. The result could lead to them avoiding the company and its messages altogether. This entire process is the definition of Drip Marketing.

Email Drip Campaigns

Email drip marketing is a series of personalized email messages that follow pre-determined steps and timing. These messages depend on specific behavior and/or the marketing stage of the recipient. This automated process is considered an email drip campaign.

Email drip campaigns are “lead nurturing” and “marketing automation.” You are able to target both existing customers and new prospects. Using a series of emails keep people aware of your products and services.

The key is to provide your email nurturing in a timely manner. Too many emails in a short period can be seen as “spam,” which often results in the client to ‘opt-out’ of all future messages from you and your company.

Email Drip Campaign Examples:

• Trade Show Follow-up – After attending a conference or event, everyone returns with a stack of business cards and/or a spreadsheet of contacts that came by your booth. You need a way to import these email lists into your CRM application. Your campaign goal will be to immediately follow up and stay in communication until they are ready to purchase from you.

• • Logical steps to your “Trade Show Follow-up Email Drip Campaign”: 
    1. Import all your lead data into your CRM system. Most CRM systems have an easy way to pull this information into your database (import). While categorizing all their details (i.e., which event, products, or services are interesting).
    2. Create a personalized “it was nice meeting you” engagement email template that thanks them for visiting your booth while including product information and link(s) to your website.
    3. Analyze their open and click-through rates (opened, clicked links, or didn’t open). Decide to send another email or schedule a task for someone to call the contact.
    4. You can add more steps related to their product interest until your goals are accomplished.

• Website Visit Follow-up – If someone visits your website and fills out a form, your first reaction should be to call them immediately. The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times (read more stats here). Since calling them immediately is impossible, you can put them in a campaign. It immediately sends an email followed by a series of more follow-up emails. 
  • Drip Email Marketing steps when someone completes a form on your website:
    1. Send a “Thank You” personalized email with links to products or services that interest them 
    2. Two days later, send an email with blog posts pertaining to those products or services 
       1. Five days later, send an email with a web link to a landing page with related products
       2. Eight days later, send an email with a web link to a case study or a call to action