Drip Marketing: What It Is and How to Apply It

Have you ever heard of the term drip marketing? When it comes to nurturing a relationship with customers and straightening their bond with your brand to increase sales, you will find multiple marketing approaches and strategies. Drip marketing is one of them.

However, it's important to understand this technique's benefits, how it is used, and when to apply it successfully. Marketing is evolving constantly, and keeping up with trends and different strategies is essential to guarantee the best results, drip marketing can help you with that.

What Is Drip Marketing?#

Drip marketing is a strategy where marketing content, usually emails, is sent periodically to the advertising campaign's target audience. For example, a clothing company will launch its next collection, and send weekly emails to their customers revealing details about the new products and reminding the release date to instigate their curiosity and remain relevant.

Sms, WhatsApp messages, and other social media platforms that enable direct communication with customers are also used for this type of campaign. You can create diversified content, and use not only written text but images, videos, and audio too.

It's important to create a cohesive narrative that connects all the messages, which should be aligned to reach the project's goal. Email marketing and social media automation tools are great allies in drip marketing. This is because you can create all the messages, and schedule them, and they will be sent automatically.

Why Use Drip Marketing Campaigns#

Drip marketing aims to build a relationship with the audience, encourage them to interact with the brand, educate them about products or services, and provide relatable content. This way, they will remain interested in the brand, increasing the chances of becoming loyal customers and following the calls to action (CTAs).

You can use drip marketing campaigns to communicate your brand's values and show them how your company's service or products can solve their demands. Another important reason to make this type of campaign is to avoid falling into oblivion.

When someone buys from your company, you need to find ways to maintain their interest in your brand, a well-built drip campaign can captivate them. On the other hand, if you have just released your business, you need to catch people's attention and a drip campaign can be an opportunity to present your company and attract new customers.

When Drip Marketing Campaigns Are Used#

Welcoming#

The purpose of a welcoming drip campaign is to engage with leads you have recently conquered. For example, your company made a successful campaign by offering a free ebook, and now you have thousands of new email subscribers. How are you going to maintain their interest in your brand?

That's where drip marketing enters. You can tailor a series of emails with personalized content to guide them through the customer's journey and keep them away from the unsubscribe button.

Lead Nurturing#

Once you have welcomed new leads, who already got to know your brand's values, products, and services, it's time to deepen this relationship. That's what lead nurturing is about, and with a drip campaign, you can do exactly that.

You can provide content based on customer behavior, for example, sending links to useful articles, and updating them about the latest news on your brand, such as events, product releases, reward programs for loyal customers, and so on.

Confirmations#

You can also use drip campaigns for confirmation purposes. For example, sending an email right after a purchase is made, then following one updating the delivery status, and a post-sale message asking for customer feedback.

Drip campaigns are also great for confirming hotel reservations and events. In the first case, you can send emails with the accommodation details, tourist attractions, and useful services, for example. In the case of an event such as a music festival, a drip email campaign is a great asset to instruct about the logistics and also show the benefits people will have access to.

Courses#

Another common use for drip marketing campaigns is to promote courses or interact with current students. You can prepare exclusive content to instigate the students' curiosity about what they will learn, and show the reason why they should participate.

How to Create Drip Marketing Campaigns#

1. Define a Goal#

The first step to creating a drip marketing campaign is to determine what you want to accomplish with it. For example, attract more leads, convert leads into customers, or retain customers.

Once you know your goal, this will serve as the guide to designing the whole campaign, including defining who your target audience is, the type of content, CTAs, and the frequency and message channels.

2. Identify and Get to Know Your Target Audience#

Who do you want to reach with your drip campaign? That's the next question to be answered. As mentioned above, who your target audience is depends on your main goal. After identifying who you are going to address, you need to know them.

Do market research, analyze your base of customers, and try to understand your target audience behavior. This will enable you to create content that speaks to their pain points and connects them with your brand. Without comprehending your target audience, it's almost impossible to convince them to engage with you.

3. Choose Your Triggers#

The trigger is the action a person takes that determines they should receive a message from your drip campaign. For example, when someone leaves an abandoned cart on your e-commerce can be the trigger to send them a message with encouragement to finish the purchase.

You need to choose what action will trigger the messages, and which content will be sent in each case. You can use action-based triggers like newsletter subscriptions, trial downloads, and click on a promotional link. Another possibility is demographic-based triggers such as age, marital status, and geographic location.

4. Develop the Content#

After creating a complete plan for the drip campaign, you need to design the campaign's visual identity and create the content. Remember that the messages must be organized into a sequence that constructs a narrative toward the final goal. There has to be a connection between them to involve the reader "drip by drip".

5. Schedule the Messages#

Establish when each message must be sent to automate them. For example, you can send one email per week or every fifteen days. The frequency of the messages depends on the type of campaign and your goal. However, avoid sending too many messages in a short period. This can be very annoying and damage your relationship with your customers.

6. Define the Key Performance Indicators#

Once you create the drip marketing campaign, it's also important to define how you are going to measure its success. Therefore, you should designate the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will evaluate, including open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate.

7. Evaluate Performance#

After you launch the campaign, keep track of the results and measure the KPIs you have defined. With email marketing tools, you will find analytics features that provide complete reports to help you make data-driven decisions and make changes when necessary.

Live Chat Can Be Part of Drip Marketing#

Using live chat software, like JivoChat, can play a strategic role in drip marketing campaigns. The live chat allows your agents to interact directly with your target audience and conquer more leads.

This can be the trigger to send the sequence of messages and nurture your relationship with them. Drip marketing is strongly connected with omnichannel communication where different strategies are aligned to provide the best user experience and build a coherent brand identity that straightens your business.