Your Go-to-market success may hinge on your “drip” and no we’re not talking about “Swag”

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Now that we’re done with the introductions! Let’s get into today’s topic: Drip Campaigns

Maybe Lil Baby and Gunna were onto something when they said, “Drip too hard don’t stand too close”.

“Drip” is just another word for “cool”, or “fashionable”.

Who thinks of their startup as being “cool” or “fashionable”? I guess that depends on who you ask but seriously, Drip Campaigns should be viewed as a “cool” way to connect and engage with customers.

Why is it called a “Drip Campaign”?

Email marketing is an essential tool for testing and validating your theories, including assumptions about your products, the market and target customers. Drip campaigns assists with sending messages at the right time over a specific period of time. Usually over a 6–8-week period, drip campaigns are sent to customers to gain insights, drive customers through the buyer’s journey, test products and solutions.

The benefit of Drip Campaigns

Potential Leads: Leads are prospects that have yet to purchase your products but have engaged with your brand in some capacity. Perhaps the lead came across your Instagram ad or a post on LinkedIn. The “trick” with leads; you have to nurture them during the initial contact, otherwise you lose the potential to convert them as customers. The object with leads is to move them through the customer journey and convert them to buyers.

Connect and engage: If your product offers a free service, or if customers have purchased a product from you, Drip Campaigns assist with staying connected and engaged throughout the entire process. You can reach customers at various points within the buyer’s journey to better understand customer behavior, including purchase decisions.

Onboarding: Onboarding customers is important however retention is such a huge part of the process for growing a startup. While drip campaigns keep customers engaged, the process can assist with making recommendations, testing features and rolling out new products.

Introducing the brand: Drip campaigns are a great way to introduce your startup. From offering one-on-one demos, tutorials, FAQs and other educational tools.

The goal with drip campaigns is to give people the right information at the right time through automated messages. A marketing plan should be included in your go-to-market planning. By incorporating a drip campaign into your marketing strategy, you can determine when to send newsletters, educational tools, sale offers, and other services.

 A simple step-by-step guide for creating a drip campaign

Organization is key to launching new products and services. When you have a lot of tasks on your to-do lists, having processes in place to help streamline activities makes it easier to prioritize and track your progress.

Step 1. Outline your goals

The most effective way to create a drip campaign is to understand what you’re trying to accomplish. Do you want a certain number of users? Is the goal to secure a partnership? Do you have a sales goal? Revenue goal? Set realistic goals and targets.

Step 2. Define your metrics

Determine the metric that best suits your goals. There will be moments where the click open rate will reflect the interests of customers based on the content or offering. What information do you think would be helpful based on the open rate, click-through rate and conversions? By defining the metrics, you want to achieve you can measure the results of your content, goals, insights and data.

Step 3. Track your progress

Tracking your progress is essential to understanding your metrics; however, you also want to test if the software you’ve chosen to use is also gathering the right insights. You may want to test if the emails are going to spam and why? Check for undelivered emails to keep your email list updated. How well are your campaigns performing overall? Don’t forget to review your campaigns regularly. You may want to schedule time to review your numbers and analyze the data.

Step 5. Choose an email automation service

Marketing automation assists with streamlining marketing and sales; however, choosing the right software is essential to make your efforts easier. Some best practices for choosing the right email service is one that is easy to use, this includes set up, how to read and analyze data.

Step 6. Developing content

The goal of the drip campaign is to move customers through the buyer’s journey. Your drip campaign should focus on prompting actions that assist with helping potential leads to make certain decisions. An action could be to sign up for your newsletter. The next action is to read the actual email. The next step could be to watch a tutorial or an FAQ.

Step 7. Customer Segmentation

Use subscriber data for email segmentation to review and analyze your subscriber data. You may want to review the number of subscriber’s email addresses collected, unsubscribed, and the content used to deliver targeted campaigns. Something to consider when reviewing the data is how it may help you better understand the user experience across the customer journey. Segmentation can assist with delivering the right offer/product and price which eventually leads to customer success.

Step 8. Setting Triggers

A tip that may help you understand how to set triggers within your drip campaign is referring back to the customer journey. These trigger points can help you determine which actions the customer will take at various touchpoints. An example, when the customer signs up for your mailing list. Another, when the customer abandons the cart. Triggers in drip campaigns work when the customer takes action. You want to include a prompt that encourages the customer to take action.

Step 9. Determine Frequency

There are no rules to frequency, or when you should send emails. You can send emails every 48 hours, 3 days, weekly, etc. Consider the audience, the buyer’s journey, and how relevant the information is, and when they need that information.

Step 10. Set up the email sequence

Create the email sequence, however, keep in mind where the customer is in the buyer’s journey, what information is needed at each touchpoint, and what action you want the customer to make.

Step 11. Create a “catchy” subject line

The subject line captures the attention of email subscribers. A good subject line will encourage readers to open your emails or once again, take action. Constant Contact has some good info on writing catchy subject lines.

Step 12. Track and measure success

Obviously, success will differ based on the goal of the campaign however define what success looks like. Develop a process for tracking and measuring key metrics. What content pieces are people interested in? Did you meet your subscriber sign up goal? How many leads were you able to convert?

Your go-to-market strategy assists with marketing your products and reaching the right target audience. With Drip Campaigns you can better streamline your efforts, stay organized, and track your progress. Please like and share the article. Also, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter!