Develop An Effective Drip Campaign

Let’s talk drip campaigns. If you don’t know what a drip campaign is, you can find the definition below.

Drip campaigns are a logical sequence of automated emails sent at pre-set intervals based on specific actions triggered by a potential lead.

Key points to take away:

They are automated. As in you don’t actually press the send button. You must have a CRM that is capable of creating workflows. You can then create the workflows to send when someone hits a trigger.

They are triggered by specific actions. The lead either filled out a form, downloaded a document, visited a web page or abandoned a shopping cart. They did something to trigger the email, not you.

So why use a drip campaign?

Most people aren’t ready to buy from you at their first point of contact. Your product or service could be the best thing since sliced bread, but people are still going to wait to buy.

Hey, even if you offer something free not everyone will take it. Before you argue that people love free, have you ever been to the mall, and someone offered you a sample of soap or lotion from a kiosk? Did you take it? Didn’t think so.

So we covered who, what, when, where and why. Now before the how, ask yourself a few questions:

1. How often do you want to deploy?

2. When does it end? How many emails and workflows will you have? If a prospect doesn’t buy from you in one month, in three months or in a year are you still going to email them?

Helpful Hint: Look at their engagement, does the lead still click links, and open your emails? Keep the emails going. Have they not opened an email in a long time? Think about sending them an opt-out email.

3. What is your end-all goal? Booking a meeting? Making a Sale?

Now that you answered those questions it is time to pull out a piece of paper and start mapping it out. You can use a computer, but pen and paper are much simpler. Start with the trigger.

A person downloading a document will have a different path than a person who abandoned a shopping cart. If you have multiple triggers within your website that’s great, but start with one. Map it all out and then do the next.

You can click here to see a mapped out drip campaign. Make sure to include which message they will receive and how much time will pass between messages

The messaging should include valuable content that they would find relevant and interesting. Do you have more information about them than just their email address? Look at their demographics, geography and history with your company.

If you only have the email address, look at what they downloaded. Do you have similar resources that pairs well? Can you send a special offer to abandoned shopping carts with recommendations for add-ons?

Now that you have it all mapped out, put it into action. You won’t know if it works or not without putting it in place. Tinker and play with it as you see prospects going through. Are you losing a lot of interaction on the third email? Maybe it’s too quick after the second or the content is not quite right.

Look at your results, and pivot if necessary (it will be). Test a few different variables and see what happens.

Creating content, setting up workflows and testing is a lot of man-hours. Losing out on multiple interested prospects, however, is affecting your bottom line.

Make the effort, or lose the prospect.