Drip campaigns, the direct marketing strategy that involves sending promotional pieces, such as emails, to your prospective leads over a period of time, have become a creative and successful way of building rapport and relationships. Many entrepreneurs, business owners, and even celebrities use drip campaigns to educate prospective leads about upcoming events, about products, and many other eventful happenings within the companies. While drip campaigns can involve sales emails and product promotions, the overall goal of drip campaigns is often much different. The idea isn’t to drive sales as much as it is to simply be in front of your audience at all time. Think about it: if you have a great dentist and someone asked you to recommend someone, you’d probably think of your own. If you are happy with your dog groomer, you’d probably recommend them as well. If you had visited four different cafes in the past year and you hadn’t heard from them again, would you remember the names, locations, and contact details? That’s where drip campaigns come in. If one café had asked you to sign up for an email list after your visit, or had a giveaway for free coffee for a year, chances are that you would have received at least one email from them throughout the year. That one or two emails could have been the deciding factor of whether the café would have been the place you would have recommended to a friend. Being “front of mind” is a great thing for business owners. Being the place that people remember is awesome. It’s a compliment, of course. But it’s also great marketing and thus, great for business. And while storefront signs are great for passerby customers, it’s not great for customers who have to go out of their way for coffee. But drip campaigns can be a game-changer. But how do you know whether those drip campaigns are effective and working in your favor? Overall, drip campaigns should do several things for you:
- The content you send out to your email list – prospective leads and/or existing customers – is meant to build trust. Email lists and drip campaigns are essentially sales funnels. The idea is that while they are getting emails with valuable information or educational content, the idea is to pitch a product or service in the end that can be measured in earnings. But the primary goal is to build relationships and trust, so don’t measure your return on sales alone. One of the ways you can tell if your campaign is successful is whether people are staying on your email list or opting out after a few emails. If you see a growing trend of people opting out around email number 3, something could be triggering them to leave.
- The conversion rate from email subscriber to paying customer is another thing to measure to see if your drip campaign is effective. At some point during the drip campaign, you may promote a product or a service to your email list. Realistically, the leads and customers on your list know it’s coming, as they know you are running a business. But the way the promotion comes across could trigger sales or unsubscribes. You may also just see subscribers who choose to do nothing. While it is unrealistic to expect all subscribers to buy from the first promotional email, there should be a conversion happening.
- Leads or existing customers may offer unsolicited feedback at times on your drip campaigns. This feedback could include questions, answers, opinions, thoughts, or constructive criticism. All of these should be used to measure the overall effectiveness of your drip campaigns. If your subscribers are pleased and satisfied, you are doing something right. If not, listen to their concerns and reshape your campaigns as needed.
