Lead nurturing should be a critical component of your marketing strategy. Unfortunately, many businesses have been slow to understand the power of this tactic.
According to Hubspot, all industry research shows that nurturing your leads, keeping them engaged with your content on an ongoing basis, and gradually introducing them to more advanced stages of the sales cycle can only benefit your bottom line.
Lead nurturing works. Why? It’s personalized, speaks to each lead’s point in the sales cycle and it keeps you top of mind while they decide on making a purchase.
Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts.
[Statistic courtesy of SilverPop/DemandGen Report]
What is a Drip Campaign Anyway?
What’s the difference between eblasts and email drip campaigns? Think about it—while eblasts serve their purpose to share general information to everyone, an email drip campaign is vital to moving prospects through the sales funnel in a very personalized way.
Drip campaigns, (aka drip marketing, automated email campaigns, lifecycle emails, and autoresponders) are the process of email responses “dripping” to sales leads over a period of time. This can either be based on the user’s actions or can be triggered. For example, when a person has signed up for a newsletter or has made a purchase, an email would be sent. Emails may also be sent through selected time intervals.
Why you need a Drip Campaign:
- Convert. Hook your website visitors to transform them into leads.
- Nurture. Once you’ve converted your website visitors, you need to nurture your leads. This nurtures the early stages of the lead until they’re sales ready. It will supply your team with leads, help your marketing team make closes and maximize sales effectiveness.
- Manage. Once you set up your automated drip campaign, the rest of the process becomes effortless. Allow your drip campaigns to do the work for you by educating and nurturing leads for your team.
Setting Up Your Drip Campaign:
Ask yourself these questions to plan your email messaging:
- Did you put enough CTA’s [calls to action] in your emails?
- Do the emails cohesively flow with each other?
- Are they relevant?
Once you’ve answered these questions, follow these five easy steps to strategically create your drip campaign.
- Identify your target audience. What are you trying to accomplish? Is it engagement, promotion of sales? Who’s your target market? You’ll be writing directly to them.
- Craft your messaging. Make sure you’re writing readable copy filled with action verbs and attractive words. You want to maintain your brand’s voice while still being relatable.
- Plan out your campaign. This step is important—it’s the logistics of your campaign. You’ll be determining what the workflow will be and what the action triggers are. You’re making sure to set these up accordingly to reach your goals. We suggest you plan on sending out 3-5 emails per drip campaign, depending on your goals.
- Start your campaign. Once you have determined your messaging campaign its time to implement it through an email software system. We use the amazing Campaign Monitor.
- Evaluate and adjust. Now it’s time to review your results. Too many people think once they’ve done it, they can leave it alone to run on its own. But that is wrong. You have to constantly monitor and tweak to maximize effectiveness. Review your email analytics and look for bounce rates and click through rates on your calls to actions. While we love Hubspot for comprehensive inbound marketing management, if you use a standalone email service we highly recommend Campaign Monitor. It has excellent reporting capabilities and shows “hot spots” on what the user is clicking on which makes it easier for you to measure your results and make any changes needed.
Remember, too many automated emails can overdo it and can annoy your customers. Be mindful of this when planning your strategy. Here’s an example of a strong email drip campaign:
