The Importance of Drip Campaigns to Your Branding Strategy

If you think that a drip marketing campaign is just another word for lead nurturing, you haven’t exactly hit the nail on the head. Drip marketing is a more general term given to a brand marketing strategy designed to reach out to prospects through various channels other than email. Beyond email, a drip marketing campaign can include social media, direct mail and telesales. While nurturing prospects throughout the sales cycle is a common way to use drip campaigns, many businesses use it as part of brand strategy that’s designed to reach out to prospects to announce such things as free trials, upcoming events, renewal programs and any other activities required for education and engagement with customers.

Drip marketing is essentially that process that continuously aims to keep you top-of-mind with consumers so that when they have a need for a solution in your industry, they think of you first.

Here are 3 drip campaign best practices that you should be applying to your own marketing brand strategy.

Segmentation
Drip marketing campaigns often work as a sequence of emails to a list of contacts segmented into groups according to their behaviors, interests, preferences and needs. These campaigns usually include triggers that change the course of engagement based on the way your prospects respond to your message.
By keeping tabs on how prospects behave online, you can ensure that your messages are personalized. You might have targeted messages for sales-ready buyers, but what about customers in the early stages of the sales cycle? These two segments have very different needs and should be separated into separate paths in your drip marketing campaign. Sending targeted messages to the right prospects ensures more click-throughs and higher conversion rates.
The importance of good content
Quality content is just as important in drip campaigns as your email messages. The idea is to keep communications simple and engaging. A good tip to get started is to survey your website content and blogs or speak with your sales team to take a closer look at their communication materials. Then you can cut messages into pieces so that your audience can consume them quickly and easily.
Your goal should be to map content to where you prospects are in the buying cycle. Keeping your content educational, engaging and targeted will keep you prospects from unsubscribing.
Think beyond Email
As you approach your drip campaign strategy, think outside your email marketing channel. For example, political campaigns often use automated voice messaging to remind people to get out and vote. You can also set up an alert for your sales reps to get on a call after a touchpoint with a prospect has been made. Even direct mail delivery can be automated as part of an overall multi-channel drip marketing campaign.

Drip campaigns work as part of holistic brand strategy development. They are designed to communicate through a sequence of messages with your prospects. How effectively are you at communicating with your audiences? Are you nurturing them through various channels and keeping them engaged throughout their buying cycle?