E-mail marketing is still an extremely effective business-to-business marketing tool. Nevertheless regular email campaigns can be time consuming and expensive.
Each campaign requires uploading your new subscribers, creating content, creating an email template, testing, sending and following up.
Luckily the age of these “static” campaigns seems to be ending with the arrival of drip e-mail marketing.
What is drip e-mail marketing?
Drip e-mail marketing is a form of marketing automation. Drip marketing campaigns are composed of multiple pre-written emails sent out at specific times and dates based on the behavior of the recipient.
Example: a company is interested in software and has requested a free trial version. With a drip e-mail campaign you send the following mails automatically over a given time span.
- Thank you/welcome email
- Mail with links to different options for small, medium and large enterprises
- Mail with specific examples of how the software helps other companies
- Mail to invite for a demo
- Mail that persuades the reciepient to buy
- Mail to the non-opens (so to those who might have missed the persuasion email)
You didn’t close the deal based on these 6 drip emails? Build a new drip campaign! For example you could ask after six months if they have bought the software they needed. And ask them their opinion about this software. And maybe you can offer them a demo as well?
Advantages of drip e-mail marketing
- Automation saves time
Drip e-mail campaigns are fully automated. The e-mails are scheduled and sent based on the behavior of the recipient. The only thing you have to do is set up your campaigns once. Afterwards your emails are being sent on a ongoing basis.
- Lead scoring
Lead scoring means you rank and classify your leads for the most appropriate strategy to follow up. If someone responds to a certain drip email you can immediately assign the right score to follow up. For example: if someone is responding to your demo invitation. You know that the lead is deciding soon. And you should assign the lead to your sales team for a follow op.
- More efficiency in follow up
Regular email campaigns are always being sent on fixed day and time. Most leads come in the the same day of the broadcast. So it can be hard to follow up all those leads within 24 hours. While drip marketing campaigns are being sent on a ongoing basis. This means that leads will flow in more gradually. Which results you will have more time to follow up leads properly.
Take this into consideration
- Do not overdo it
Do not send too much e-mails in a short period of time. Only e-mail when it is relevant and you really have something to say or offer.
- Assign someone to clean your lists
Is someone responding to a drip mail? Take them out of the drip campaign and assign the appropriate way your sales team should follow up. If you forget to clean your list, someone might have ordered your product. But meanwhile emails might still be dripping in your customers inbox to persuade them to buy your product. This is not very hospitable. Assign a dedicated person to unsubscribe and clean your drip marketing lists.
- Optimise the workflow
It is of importance to monitor which e-mails do well and which do not. Optimise your drip campaign based on these insights. For example: are you sending discount campaigns, but no one is interested? Move this drip e-mail to a later moment in your funnel. Probably your customer needs some more time or other content before they are ready to order.
- Optimise the timing
Some products take more time to sell. Are you selling enterprise software? Changes are likely that decision making can take months or even years. In this case you should schedule your drip campaigns over a longer period of time. Whereas e-commerce drip campaign should often be planned within days.
Daan Wolff is a data expert at BoldData.
This article was originally published as a BoldData blog post. Click here to read the original piece
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