What is Drip Marketing?

Drip marketing is considered a specific Email communication strategy that ‘drips’ (sends) a set of pre-written messages to customers / prospects over a period of time.

What is a Drip Marketing Campaign?

An Email Drip Campaign is a series of scheduled marketing Emails based on behavior and or actions. Emails are scheduled to be sent out automatically and become increasingly more of a promotional nature.

Drip Campaigns are Commonly Referred to as:

• Drip Marketing
• Automated Email Campaign
• Automated Marketing
• Marketing Automation
• Life Cycle Emails

Basics of Creating a Drip Marketing Campaign

An effective Drip Campaign is for the reader/subscriber to not realize your message is a pre-written automated Email that’s going out to hundreds of people. Rather your messages should translate as a message written only for them. The more personal you craft your messages, the better chance of positive responses.

Your subscribers need to:

• Receive your Email.
• Open the Email.
• Fully Understand the Content.
• Recognize a Clear Call-to-Action.
• Complete that Action.

Register with an Automated Email Platform such as Constant Contact, Mail Chip, etc

You are probably already using an Email platform, so check to be sure you’re able to analyze reports, create and schedule Emails, and track performance. If not, explore a few platforms and register for one you feel best fits your needs and budget.

Determine User Behavior from Your Subscriber List

Analyze your list and segment according to pattern and behavior.

Behavior can include:

• Frequent visitors to website or Blog.
• New list signups.
• New signups that didn’t take advantage of a free offer.
• Those who signed up but didn’t visit your website.
• Newsletter Un-subscriptions.
• Shopping Cart Abandoned.
• Customers who only buy seasonally.

Your niche will dictate a variety of behavior, so analyzing your list data will uncover a number of patterns and behaviors to base your Drip Campaigns on.

Set Specific Goals

Once you’ve analyzed the list data, decide on specific goals for each segment of behavior.

Typical Goals might be:

• Building Your Brand.
• Retaining Subscribers.
• Cultivating Leads.
• Increasing Revenue.

Create Content for Email Messages

Once you’ve identified your goals, and have your subscribers segmented, write the Email messages for each sequential Email in your campaign.

Depending on the campaign, you may want to create specific Landing pages for your call-to-action.

Measure Campaign Performance

Review results for:

• Open Rates
• Click-throughs
• Action Levels

Analyze items such as how many times the Welcome Emails are opened, if the percentage is low, then go back and tweak your Email content.

If you notice East Coast Emails aren’t being opened as much as West Coast Emails, schedule the Drips by Time Zones to garner the best results.

Basically study your List data, and adjust accordingly.

Email Engagement Rates for Small to Medium Businesses

In April, 2018 SmartInsights.com, (https://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/statistics-sources-for-email-marketing/#q1) updated their Email Marketing statistics By Industry for small to medium sized businesses. Results are from GetResponse, Constant Contact and MailChimp.

You may find the by-industry chart interesting, just locate your specialty to learn what the average Email open and click-through rates are for your industry.

 

You may want to take advantage of the Constant Contact free trial (no credit card required):
http://www.constantcontact.com/signup.jsp

Top 10 Features of Constant Contact:
https://community.constantcontact.com/t5/Conversations/The-Top-10-Features-of-Constant-Contact/td-p/227348

   Return