Just like any good chef needs a well thought out recipe for a successful dish, any good marketing campaign also requires specific ingredients for success. There’s always that one special ingredient or rather that “secret sauce,” as they call it, that makes a recipe stand out and a marketing campaign deliver.
When we talk about nurturing our bodies with food or nurturing a relationship with potential customers, they both need care and that “secret sauce” for growth and development.
Your nurturing campaign is a valuable digital marketing asset that welcomes potential customers to your company, creates a good first impression, encourages repeat purchases, and turns hesitant leads into paying customers. So what is this mystery ingredient for campaign success?
Drum roll please….
What is drip marketing?
Drip marketing actually comes from an agricultural term where farmers use drip irrigation to water their crops. By slowly watering their crops, they don’t overwhelm them, and their crops aren’t thirsty. The same concept has been brought to the digital marketing world using drip campaigns to educate and stay in touch with consumers, without overdoing it. When drip marketing is used in a campaign, as a prospective customer, you feel nurtured, not bothered.
Only 2% of sales are made on the first contact, so planning a drip marketing campaign increases the likelihood of building relationships with prospects to ultimately help close sales.
80% of sales are made between the 5th-12th contact, so drip marketing helps your company establish itself as a trusted resource, the right way.
The drip marketing model
Differentiate:
Why is your product or service different? What separates it from the rest? How do you position yourself?
Reinforce:
How can you remind your customers of your product and services as well as their experiences with them? How can you strengthen your brand message?
Inform:
How can you educate your potential and existing customers of your brand, products and services?
Persuade:
How can you get your customers interested in learning more and purchasing? Have you emotionally connected with your prospective customer to encourage them to behave in a certain way?
What is a drip campaign?
Drip campaigns refer to any automated sequence that engages customers after they’ve completed an action. They’re executed by sending messages to customers or prospects at pre-planned intervals. These intervals are usually several days apart to ensure the receiver isn’t bombarded by marketing content. The information included may be related to discounts, new product announcements, company news and more. The goal is to keep your business top of mind so, when the time comes to make a purchase, customers will consider shopping with you.
Drip campaigns are usually associated with email marketing, but with the rise of mobile marketing, Messenger and text marketing are also powered by automated communications. You can also use a combination of email and Messenger Marketing to launch an automated drip campaign. Marketers often segment groups to send targeted, more relevant messages in order to improve conversion rates.
Drip campaigns used in Messenger Marketing are often referred to as sequences. Facebook Messenger sequences have exploded in popularity lately and for good reason. They’re super convenient for both the user and the brand and the user can get information and value, while brands can automate lead generation.
The sky’s the limit with Messenger sequences. You can use them to increase eCommerce sales, get email subscribers, and reduce customer service support costs. If you make a compelling sequence, your conversion rates will go through the roof and your customers will be happier than ever.
A drip email triggers action from potential customers, but isn’t the most effective method. Messenger sequences are quicker than email drip campaign sequences because with an “email campaign sequence, you typically should wait a day or two before sending additional emails.” When you use Facebook Messenger, you can send multiple messages in the “next 10 seconds, 10 minutes, 10 days, whatever you want.”
While drip email marketing is very effective, people are much more likely to open and click on a messaging app than they are with an automated email.
How do you use drip marketing?
Here’s a fun fact for you: marketing automation brings an average 451% increase in qualified leads. Forbes.com tells us that “when automated drip campaigns are done well, they can help convert prospects into more qualified leads. Drip marketing assists marketers in moving prospects through the sales funnel more quickly, provides sales teams with “warm” leads and rewards people with exclusive offers and incentives.”
Drip campaigns are implemented using marketing automation. Forbes tells us 75% of marketers are already using some sort of marketing automation. Companies that have managed to master the art of drip campaigns are able to generate 80% more sales while reducing their costs by 33%.
Drip campaigns are great for lead nurturing because of the automation. ManyChat helps you automate & combine Facebook Messenger, SMS, and E-mail to grow your business by building drip campaigns.
Some ways to use drip campaigns are:
- Nurture leads
- You can send a sequence of messages to educate, share a customer review and a sale, or discount code
- Welcome new contacts and customers
- This creates an immediate connection between brand and consumer
- Connections build loyalty
- Loyalty leads to sales
- Continues to build the relationship once the sale is made
- The consumer feels important when thanked for their business and kept in the loop on new products, special insider sales and more
- Reconnect with customers
- Use a series of drip marketing emails or messages to gain the attention of customers you haven’t heard from in a while
- Share new products and services along with special discount codes for welcoming customers back
- Education
- Your business should be viewed as the go-to expert in your field
- Offering thought leadership blogs is a great example of informing consumers about your industry as an authority figure
- Abandoned Cart
- If you’re experiencing shopping cart abandonment, re-engage your customers and encourage them to buy something if they didn’t follow through with a purchase
- You can choose the abandoned cart trigger in ManyChat to fire off a series of automated messages when someone leaves products in their cart
ManyChat also integrates with Drip, the marketing automation tool that allows you to craft every interaction with your leads, trial users and customers like a pro. You can send custom drip emails based on user behavior and automate your marketing, which saves a ton of time and money.
When you create an automated chatbot in ManyChat, your drip marketing campaign will provide your bot with all the information to deliver effective and personal marketing to increase lead conversions and sales. You can use your chatbot to schedule an automated drip campaign delivered right to your target market’s Facebook Messenger. Why is this important?
Messenger Marketing is the process of getting people interested in your products or services using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, or other messaging apps. Messenger bots help drive successful Messenger Marketing efforts through automating conversations so that business owners can narrow their focus on the interactions only when they’re needed.
People are responding to Messenger bots in record numbers including 88% open rates and 56% click-through rates compared to e-mail, where the average open rates hover around 18 percent, and click-through around 2.69 percent. Wow!
Drip Campaigns utilizing Facebook Messenger creates better engagement and offers your brand more presence than an automated email campaign. Drip marketing comes into play as you consider your cross sell vs upsell strategy as well, encouraging customers to make purchases. In fact, updates to followers in Messenger see 8X better open rates than other channels.
ManyChat can help you use SMS to nurture your customers towards conversion by creating SMS Drip Campaigns. That makes sense since 1.3 billion people use messenger every day.
How to start a drip marketing campaign
ManyChat allows you to set up message sequences, which are essentially automated drip campaigns from within the ManyChat dashboard. The Sequence is a feature that allows you to subscribe users from your target audience to a chain of messages that can be separated by delays of different lengths. This is helpful when you want to avoid reaching out to your contacts in the middle of the night as they probably wouldn’t appreciate that.
You always need to provide your users with a way to opt-out of your communications if they want to. There are two ways to do this. First, as ManyChat suggests, you can let your users know they can unsubscribe by sending the word “stop” or you can create an unsubscribe button.
Drip marketing examples
Through both a Messenger and email channel, you can engage your customer after they’ve purchased and keep them coming back. Customers want to feel appreciated for their brand loyalty and it’s important they don’t feel abandoned once they purchase your product.
Post-purchase thank you
Once a customer places an order in your store, you can send an automated ‘thank you’ through Facebook Messenger. You can give customers the option to track their shipment and return to your store to continue shopping.
Fulfillment messages
Once an ordered is shipped, you can send a message with shipping tracking information and get your customer excited for their package.
Customer reviews
Once a customer has received their product, you’ll want to check in a few weeks later via email. With a drip marketing campaign, you can send an email asking for a product review to show you value their opinion. Product reviews also help you sell more products to other customers by sharing them online.
Using ManyChat, you can direct people from the email to Messenger to leave a product review.
Customers that have a great experience with a brand spend 140% more than those who felt they had a bad experience. If your customer gave you a great review, you can send them a coupon via Messenger. Cross-selling messages can help you jump on the opportunity of post-purchase excitement.
Loyalty programs
A good loyalty program can encourage customers to spend more and strengthen the relationship you have with them. Ask your customer if they’d like to be part of a special brand loyalty program. You can offer points, rewards, and membership levels in an effort to edge out your competitors.
From here, you can send shoppers to a sign-up flow and into your store to buy more stuff.
That’s the power of drip marketing. Pretty cool, right?
