Drip Marketing 101

Do business the human way!

One of the critical thing that many SaaS companies fail to understand is that they are selling to humans. Be it a B2B or B2C platform, the decision maker is a live functioning human being. And, not all humans think alike.

Agreed?

If your answer is no, I would love to hear your theory. But, if you like me agree to the fact that each individual has a different taste depending on their demographics, language, requirement etc — cheers! We have hit the same page.

When each person’s thought process is different, how do you think a single email will convince them and help increase your conversion? Some potentials buy impulsively, some on requirement basis, while some need to be retargeted over and over.

This brings us to the topic of our discussion — Drip Marketing.

Drip Marketing is breaking down communication into bits and sending them to potentials or customers over a specific time period instead of selling the product to them impulsively. This convinces the potential that the product will be a great fit for their business and helps customers understand that the company is ready to help them at any point in time.

Drip Marketing in 2 steps:

• Understand the general pattern of the customers or define a flow for your product.
• Send automated messages (drips) via email/social media.

What is important here is that you must identify the behavior pattern of your prospects and customers. Some users might immediately subscribe to your product while some might need a lot of persuading. Your drip cycle must target both these segments. This might seem daunting when you have to set it up initially. It might probably take you a month or two to analyze the patterns and set up contextual drips. But, once you do and the emails follow the life cycle, things become all the more easy for you.

Types of Drip Campaigns:

Lead Generation

The world is running behind leads. Drip campaigns can get these leads for you and help in engagement.

• Get customer’s email or contact details in return for a useful piece of information.
• Send interesting materials over time.
• Based on the open rate or response rate, expose your product to them, one feature at a time.

Source

Customer Onboarding

This is a great way to engage your customers during their trial period. Make sure that your drip campaign does not take away their entire trial period. Give them 2–4 days to resonate and play around the product. For instance, if your trial period is 14 days, you can plan a drip campaign spanning for 10–12 days.

• Design a workflow that highlights the superstar features of your product.
• Send emails to customers and bring them into the flow by asking them to try the features one after the other.

Customer Retention

This is a great way to extend the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Target customers when they are nearing the life expectancy of your product and ask them if they need any assistance. Identify the features that would require at that point in time and build them well in advance (This will help you in retaining a lot of customers with similar use cases). Then, introduce them to those features. Touch base with them from time to time.

Most marketers use this campaign to contact users who have not engaged with the product in the last 2–3 months.

• Create a proper email content to touch base with your customers (with/without feature information)
• Send it to customers based on your CLV.

Promotion

This is a great way to target customers who are using a free plan or leads that have turned cold. Create a campaign with coupons, discounts, etc and target customers/potentials. Make sure that the drips are spaced out, because, offering discounts frequently might take a hit on your brand credibility.

Abandoned Carts

Send drip campaigns to inform customers who have added items to their cart but have not completed their purchase.

Quick tips to design a killer drip campaign:

• Write them in a single session. That’s when you will be able to remember the flow, what went in the previous mailer, and what should go out next.
• Provide operable, high-quality information.
• Have a personal touch.
• Use short lines and short emails.
• Have a clear CTA.
• Use “P.S” (postscript) in emails. Post Scripts are afterthoughts, and your audience will tend to remember it for a long time.

Every business is different and so is every goal. But a drip campaign, without a second thought, will take you closer to your goal.

Drip, grip, and strategize!

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