If you’ve got a fantastic product to sell or even just an important message to share, email can help you get it to the people who need to see it. But no matter how great that product or message may be, it will take at least a few interactions before you are able to get your target audience to bite. While convincing them that now is the time to do business may seem like a grueling undertaking, it becomes much easier when using drip campaigns to accomplish your goals.
Harnessing the power of autoresponders, drip campaigns allow you to roll out an automated series of messages based on the rules you define. For the most part, these rules consist of the timed intervals and triggers that determine when your messages will be sent. With everything set up, your emails will continually “drip” into the subscriber’s inbox, which in turn gives you the ability to keep your audience up to date with seasonal offers and sales, newly added features and services, upcoming products, timely company news and much more.
Following are some tips that will help you successfully execute a drip email marketing strategy right from new subscriptions:
Envision a Goal
Although a drip campaign can run like clockwork once you get everything set up, executing such a strategy with success takes careful planning. So what is your objective? Is it educating your readers about a new product or service? Driving attendance for your next event? Establishing yourself as an expert? Whatever it may be, you should know what your goal is before moving forward as this is the first step in seeing it achieved.
Keep It Interesting
A drip campaign sounds good, but how are you going to keep your audience engaged throughout its cycle? The answer to this question depends on your objectives. For instance, if you are aiming to boost attendance for an event, a series of messages highlighting the success of last year’s event, outlining the benefits of the next one and even offering incentives to attend could be appropriate. The more depth your campaign has, the more important it is to focus on keeping readers in tune in order to keep them from tuning out.
Focus on Building Relationships
No matter what your drip campaign is designed to accomplish, building relationships should be a key part of the overall plan. If your campaign is tied to seasonal promotions, sending along a personalized greeting card might be effective for building those relationships. Even when your goal is to sell, subtle approaches like this can go a long way in keeping your products or brand on the subscriber’s mind without overwhelming them in the process.
Despite the automated aspect, in comparison to conventional email campaigns, drip campaigns can be a bit more time consuming in terms of the planning, coordination and execution. With the right approach, though, I think you will find that the time and effort you put into making your program a success is more than worth it.
