Creating a Drip Campaign that Will Get Results

A Drip Campaign is an effective marketing tactic during which a prospect is contacted repeatedly about products and/or services in an attempt to increase brand awareness, demonstrate authority, nurture leads, and drive referrals. A good drip campaign can be automated and sent out in bulk, as long as the messaging makes sense to the all of the recipients.

The following are steps that will help you kick off a successful drip campaign.

Step 1: Determine the Purpose - As with all marketing initiatives, you must begin by choosing a purpose for your campaign. You should decide which products, services, and/or solutions are going to be the focus of the campaign. From there, it’s easy to establish goals, determine key metrics, and select who will be your campaign’s target audience.

ex. The purpose of this campaign will be to cross-sell current clients who do not have our backup and disaster recovery service. We would like to onboard at least 10% of our targets and will use the cross selling percentage to measure the success.

Step 2: Evaluate your Target Audience - One you have determined who you’re going to be marketing to, it’s time to take a deep dive with a detailed evaluation of your targeted audience. Consider their role in the company and the current status of your relationship with the target's company. This will help you make sure that the tone of your messages will be appropriate and effective. Sometimes you may want to create a few variations of your message, to better fit specific subsets of your list.

ex. The majority of the contacts we’ve chosen to receive our drip campaign emails are the CEO and/or Owner of a small business that is familiar with our company and currently subscribes to one or more of our services. The drips should be written to reflect this relationship status, with a focus on why our BDR solution, combined with previous knowledge of their business is the ideal situation for purchasing a service that is necessary for all businesses.

Step 3: Determine Drip Campaign Type and Schedule - When it comes to drip campaigns there are a lot of strategies and approaches to the timing and formatting of the letters. Which strategy works best will vary depending on the outcome you’re looking for. Are you looking to nurture leads over a long period of time? Or are you trying to get a referral each quarter? A webinar invitation will be time sensitive, where as a mailing highlighting a service’s features would not need to be on a rigorous schedule.

ex. We’re going to use a series of 4 emails spread out over the 2 month period before the start of the Atlantic Hurricane Season.

Step 4: Map it Out - Planning ahead is important. You’ll want to make sure that the days you select for your mailings are not on a weekend or holiday. It’s also important to make sure that you’re not sending too many marketing emails over a short period of time, and a calendar will help you get a grasp on how it will play out in real time.

ex. They will launch in the following sequence:

• Email 1 - Day 1
• Email 2 - Day 8
• Email 3 - Day 20
• Email 4 - Day 48

Step 5: Write It Up - You’ll want to write your messages. Regardless of the campaign’s topic, they should progress from a general topic with a casual call to action to a specific feature with a deliberate call-to-action. There should be no more than three short paragraphs.

ex. This is an example of how your drip campaigns email may progress over time.

Email 1

• Paragraph 1 - Introduce Service or Solution with a 2-3 sentence overview.
• Paragraph 2 - Why Your Services are a Potential Fit for their Business
• Paragraph 3 - General Yes or No Call to Action

Email 2

• Paragraph 1 - Refine Message by Highlighting a Specific Feature of Service.
• Paragraph 2 - Remind them why you should be their choice.
• Paragraph 3 - Push them with a more specific call to action.

Email 3

• Paragraph 1 - Remind them again what benefits you offer them.
• Paragraph 2 - Let them know that you aren’t looking to waste their time.
• Paragraph 3 - Ask if they’re the proper contact for this.

Email 4

• Paragraph 1 - Shortest Email featuring the strongest appeal.
• Paragraph 2 - Express that they are running out of time.
• Paragraph 3 - Go Big and request a meeting time for sometime in the next week.

Step 6: Follow Up - Once your drip campaign has run its course, you should follow up with a phone call. When the drip campaign is applied to a contact, create an activity to place a follow up call after the last of your drip emails. As many salesmen can attest, sometimes, persistence is the key to sales success!

As you are looking to use drip marketing campaigns, the key is to determine the best strategy to reach your target audience, have a vetted list of contacts to send to, and know that you will have to continue to refine and improve the strategy over time. Don’t have the time? You can leave the campaign planning to our team of marketing experts.