How Email Drip Campaigns and Marketing Automation Works

Drip campaigns are known by many different names, including drip marketing, automated email campaigns, or marketing automation to name a few. Whatever you choose to call them, the premise is exactly the same; they are a set of marketing emails that are delivered on a schedule. The schedule can be fixed to a calendar, or based on the recipient's action for example signing up for your newsletter, or making a purchase. These types of emails are sometimes referred to as behavioral emails.

Setting up a drip campaign can seem challenging. Let's look at what drip marketing is, when it's effective and how you can use drip campaigns to engage with prospects.

What is a Drip Campaign?

As mentioned above, drip campaigns are automated sets of email that are delivered based on a schedule or an action. They allow you to stay connected with your prospects based on milestone events, like subscribing to your blog. Each email is pre-written and can be personalized with your contacts name, company info and more.

Successful drip marketing is about delivering the appropriate information at the right time. For example, if a new user subscribes to your blog, a welcome email can be sent. A few days later, you can send another email providing highlights of most-read content. Another example, if a subscriber has been hanging around your “premium upgrade” page but hasn't yet pulled the trigger, a drip campaign can send a targeted email outlining five benefits of purchasing the plan.The beauty is that all of this happens automatically based on criteria you define.

Do drip campaigns work? The short answer is yes! Relevant, targeted emails produce 18X more revenue that globally broadcast ones. Not surprising since drip emails increase click rates by 119% over non-personalized email.

These are big numbers when you consider that content can be reused and automated. You can develop specific drip campaigns based on your needs, for example, rewarding users or educating people who seek out specific information on your website. With drip emails, you can segment your list by demographics, purchase history, and which emails users have opened in the past. This will increase conversions and result in fewer dropped subscriptions.

Lead Nurturing Using A Drip Campaign

The goal of drip marketing is to keep users engaged with your brand. Let's take a look at how delivering automated, targeted content can deliver relevant information to your readers and convert them into customers.

Today, consumer behavior has changed. Most visitors to your site are in the research stage of the process and not yet ready to buy. They need to be nurtured and lead through the buying process to the sale.

Drip campaigns are the perfect strategy for nurturing and educating these leads as they move toward their buying decision. Using automation and personalization, you can use welcoming, education engagement, discount, and other drip emails to nurture leads. Using a drip campaign allows you to keep these customers engaged by providing relevant information, and keeps your company and brand top-of-mind when they're ready to pull the trigger, turning prospects into paying customers.

What You Need To Know About Lead Nurturing

Once you understand how nurturing can grow your business, you can begin to increase the number of contacts who purchase from you. Lead nurturing can drive revenue by converting unqualified leads who are not yet ready to purchase into sales opportunities. It allows you to accelerate the buying process by providing leads with the information they need to reach a buying decision. When you treat the process as a marathon, rather than a sprint, the payoff will be building sales relationships that last.

Here are some statistics:

• According to Marketing Sherpa, businesses that nurture leads experience a 45% increase in lead generation ROI than businesses that do not.

• Foster Research found that businesses that nurture properly can generate 50% more sales-ready leads for 33% less cost.

• Companies that use lead nurturing get up to 10X more responses compared to blanket email blasts according to a SilverPop/DemandGen report.

When you look at the numbers, it's pretty clear that lead nurturing using drip marketing is a valid tool for effectively generating demand for your product or service. What's more impressive is that the entire process can be automated.

Persistence is the Key!

Many companies that fail at drip marketing give up too quickly. The key is to understand where your prospect is in their buying process and react accordingly. Gathering as much information as possible on your prospect can help you to better target and fine-tune future efforts.

Continuously engaging with prospects can increase the visibility of your brand, keeping it top-of-mind with prospective customers and building brand loyalty. Using lead nurturing software to create drip campaigns is an effective way to automate the delivery of relevant content on a regular basis until they are ready to buy.

Lead Nurturing Done Right!

Nurturing is all about building trust and credibility. While it can take some time to develop an effective approach, once it's in place you'll see impressive results. Here are a few tips to making drip marketing work for you.

• Segment Your Market – Drip marketing allows you to segment your customers based on location, gender, age, occupation, interests, purchasing habits and more. This means you can deliver precisely the right content to a receptive audience, keeping your business top-of-mind when they are ready to purchase.

• Use Progressive Profiling – Your customers can provide you with plenty of clues as to their needs based on what content they engage with. They can provide valuable data when they opt-in to your mailing list, and at other points of engagement. Progressive profiling takes this a step further and asks for additional information (or actions) that you can then use to further tailor your conversation to meet their specific needs.

• Developing A Relationship – Personalizing content with the customers name and sending informal friendly email can be a great way to gain their attention. This will help you build the relationships that lead to sales. Just remember always be consistent, clear and focused with any communication.

Final Thoughts...

If you haven't yet experienced the benefits of lead nurturing, it's time! Study after study has shown that nurturing customers who are not yet ready to buy can be turned to your advantage. The key is targeting your information to meet specific needs, personalizing your outreach, and being persistent. While many companies give up on the process too soon, companies that take a long-term approach to nurturing can often see a great ROI. Lead nurturing using drip marketing techniques is a simple, yet incredibly effective way to communicate with your customers, build relationships and guide them through the buying cycle.

About Michael Conway

I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.