Drip marketing is a play on words off “drip irrigation,” the practice of giving plants a small steady amount of water over a long period. Just like drip irrigation, drip marketing is an attempt to cultivate a sale over a long period of time.
Drip marketing works by contacting a potential customer at set intervals, following specific patterns based on the customer’s actions and interests. Each communication to a customer should be new and add value, leading a customer closer to making a purchase.
Should I use drip marketing?
Drip marketing works better for companies with very long sales cycles, like real estate agencies, surgeons, car dealerships, hot tub showrooms, home renovation companies, etc. Even if a customer takes a year to make up his/her mind, drip marketing will keep you on his/her mind.
The greater your profit per customer, the better drip marketing will work for you. This is because drip marketing works best if it is highly customized to different customers. The higher your profit margin per customer, the more time you can afford to customize your drip campaigns.
How do I run a drip marketing campaign?
Though the earliest drip marketing campaigns were conducted through the mail, it is now much easier to conduct them through email. Email is a cheap and fast way to send pre-written messages to a potential customer.
However, the downside of email is that everyone’s email accounts are being choked by spam. You have to work to prevent your company’s emails from being caught in the spam filter. In particular:
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Give them reasons to trust you. Do not make your sales pitch right in the subject line of your email. Make your sales pitch using text instead and images. Or drive them to a landing page with a call to action.
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Provide real content. Your emails should add value, instead of rehashing things a potential customer already knows. Each email should ideally be something a customer might look up on his/her own on the internet.
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Personalize content. Even automated emails should be signed by your sales representatives. This works even better if they are automatically sent out by your sales representatives’ email accounts.
Different Campaigns, Branching Campaigns
You should develop different marketing campaigns for different demographics of potential customers. Younger customers are different from older customers, and returning customers are different than first-time customers. Plan at least three different automated campaigns that send emails based on given customer information.
If you want to get increasingly complex, you can set up a way for these campaigns to branch out. Determine ways for your campaigns to change in response to potential customer’s actions. If a potential customer asks for more information or clicks on a link, your automated system should be able to respond to that and change the campaign accordingly.
Wow. It could really help on realtors like me? I don’t know what Drip Marketing is. I’m a bit confused on Give them reasons to trust you… Can you please elaborate more?