What is a drip marketing campaign?

​There are numerous trendy marketing buzzwords floating around these days including inbound marketing, programmatic marketing, and referral marketing. However, one buzzword that doesn’t get as much attention is drip marketing. It’s often used in conjunction with other marketing methods and I find it to be very useful and effective. Drip marketing is sending, or “dripping,” a series of pre-written set of messages to a target audience. The messages can be delivered by email, direct mailing, or social media. Most drip campaigns are delivered using email which can be handled with an automated process or manually. Usually the message sent will change based on the actions of the recipient.

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The flow of a standard drip “email” campaign will look like this; an email is sent out to a targeted group promoting the first part of an educational blog posted on your website. If the customer opens the email then a second email is sent out a short time later promoting a second part to the blog post but if it was not opened within a set time then a reminder email is sent about the first blog article. This usually generates additional open rates since a recipient may have missed or forgotten about the first email.

During the second phase, if a customer opened part one and part two of the blog email then a follow up email is sent to see if they would like to discuss further. At this point, perhaps a phone call is in order. If they didn’t open the second part of the blog email then an email message is sent with a link to a video promoting a product or service mentioned in the blog. If a customer opened the reminder email then the second part of the blog should be sent at that time. If not, stop all activities. The idea isn’t to harass a customer but provide valuable information.

During the third phase, if a customer opened the video email then you should ask them if they would like to be contacted. If they opened the second blog post then again ask if they would like to further the discussion. The idea is to nurture the lead to build awareness and gain interest in your products/services. 

It can be a bit confusing how to structure the drip campaign so I created this layout as visual cheat sheet.

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