What is drip marketing?

Drip marketing is a method of reaching the appropriate target group in an automated way. This is something for which marketing automation will be perfect. How to do it?

Drip marketing – definition

Drip marketing is based on automatic sending of communications to customers. Shipments can be made based on a developed schedule or in response to specific recipient behavior.

Why drip? The name comes from irrigation. You develop your relationship with the customer slowly, step by step, providing him with more information about your company and offer. Just like a gardener watering and tending his garden; it is known that plants at each stage of development only need a small amount of water. Pouring a whole bucket over them at once will do more harm than good.

The most important goal of drip marketing is to maintain (and increase) relationships with customers, plus skillfully providing them with further incentives to make purchasing decisions by presenting valuable content that they are looking for.

Drip marketing is effective when placed in the right context. In other words, it’s a waste of time to generically present your new city bike offering in the middle of winter December. Each marketing message has its place and time – a well-chosen one in terms of context sells more and is better received by customers.

Drip marketing – when to use it

You must have Marketing Automation platform. Without marketing automation, there is no point in starting a process that relies on customer data from your database. You can collect this data manually if you have a database of 50 contacts (although this is time-consuming), but in the case of databases with thousands of contacts, it is physically impossible to manage.

Your website must be set up with a marketing automation system. Most drip marketing activities are triggered based on specific user actions on websites. You don’t know what the customer clicked or viewed – you won’t be able to send him a personalized message that meets his expectations.

An automatic drip marketing campaign is useful in nurturing already acquired leads. Under no circumstances should you leave them without proper care, because they will quickly go to the competition. A lead at the beginning of the purchasing path is not yet particularly willing to spend money. You have to – metaphorically speaking – take him by the hand and slowly guide him through all the stages, gradually showing him the most important advantages of your solution, and above all, arouse in him the need to have the product that you offer. Marketing automation allows you to keep your finger on the pulse at every stage of activity, ensuring that you will not neglect anything or forget about anything.

Recommendations (the famous “you might like”) are the basis of every e-commerce. However, blind recommendation is pointless. Yes, you can offer the best-selling items in your store to all customers. However, you are more likely to get better sales from automatically adapted recommendations, created thanks to marketing automation based on data about customer behavior and activity history. This is another advantage of drip marketing.

Drip marketing will work well in automatic reminders about expiring deadlines, e.g. about a subscription contract for your services that is about to end. In the database you have detailed customer data collected by the Marketing Automation system. Use them to build scenarios containing automatic notifications. The closer to the end of the contract, the more personalized (e.g. containing attractive discounts) messages you can send.

Drip marketing – examples

Example 1.

Someone has just signed up for your blog newsletter. An automatically set drip marketing campaign will send a welcome message (a short thank you message with the announcement of valuable content – don’t write too much). In a few days, a message will be sent to this new contact with suggestions for several of the most frequently read articles from the blog.

After signing up, the customer will not be left to his own devices. You will immediately engage him in a relationship with your company.

Example 2.

Abandoned cart. The customer does not finalize the purchase, the Marketing Automation system sends a sequence of several messages encouraging him to place an order. Based on customer behavior, you will plan a schedule for such messages. The key is to strike a balance between keeping the customer interested and not flooding them with intrusive messages.

Thanks to marketing automation, you have a lot of knowledge about consumers’ shopping habits. You can create communication scenarios that will recover at least some of the abandoned carts.

Example 3.

The customer unsubscribes from your newsletter. You can accept this, but you can also fight for the client one last time. Instead of the usual “thank you, we are deleting your contact”, try to generate automatic responders with a suggestion to maintain contact on channels other than e-mails – maybe in social networks?

Summary

Drip marketing is an effective strategy, especially in long-term sales processes, where building relationships with the customer plays a key role. By appropriately adapting the content to the stage of the customer’s purchasing path, the company can increase the chances of conversion and maintaining customer loyalty in the long run.