Drip Campaign for B2B Marketing

Drip campaign is a technique of slowly and steadily sending across messages to prospects over a certain period of time. This is done slowly to ensure that the prospect has enough time to read the message and understand why the product or offering would be suitable to his/her problem or need.

In drip campaigns it is important to understand the goal of each and individual email that is sent out. Email messages should be customized to suit the purpose of the drip campaign - whether it is for educating prospects or selling. The message must come across clear and concise and the recipients must have an idea what is to come in future emails.

The first step in drip campaigns is to establish trust. For this, every email message must have the option to unsubscribe. This is an effective way to filter out inactive or uninterested prospects as well.

Drip campaign emails must be devoid of promotional content. This will only annoy subscribers into opting out or hitting the spam button. Drip campaign is a great way to build relationships. So, email messages must be created in such a way that it creates and builds bond between the prospect and the company.

Be wary of the number of drip messages sent. Although some campaigns do require emails to be sent frequently, pace them well so that prospects have enough time for retrospection.

For effective lead management, post drip campaigns create a follow up campaign. This campaign should be nurturing in nature, till the prospect becomes sales-ready. This is highly critical since it takes care of those prospects that need to take time for making a purchase decision, especially since in B2B a purchase decision is a collective one.

Ensure that your drip campaign effectively tackles the challenges of your marketing endeavours by following these 6 essential tips for great email drip campaigns.

Don’ts of Drip Campaign
Below is a list of 10 things to avoid for every excited marketer embarking on a new drip marketing journey on a newly acquired marketing automation platform.

·         Don’t keep dripping the prospects who are sales ready
·         Don’t overlap the lists for different drip marketing tracks
·         Don’t over-drip a prospect to annoy him/her- don’t give a chance to hit unsubscribe
·         Don’t make the drip marketing template ‘sales-y’ in content
·         Don’t drip a contact who is not even remotely interested- don’t give a chance to hit spam
·         Don’t repeat messages/themes in drip campaigns
·         Don’t repeat HTML rich emails
·         Don’t make it impersonal- as drip campaign is a series of emails, it is easy to get lost
·         Don’t make a list too long – segment your list and have multiple drip marketing tracks
·         Don’t just send a ‘Thank You’ email in drip campaign- attach interesting content to engage further

Using marketing automation software for drip campaigns can be highly beneficial because it helps to easily tailor campaigns based on the purpose of the campaign. By making the lead generation activity of “bulk emailing” simpler and user-friendly, marketing automation software can be considered an ideal tool for drip campaign and lead generation.

 

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