Drip Marketing Campaigns

This article talks about how you can have a perfect communication through email marketing with the help of drip campaigns. Here you will learn all about drip marketing campaigns, its types, and how you can use them to get the best out of your email marketing strategies.

Marketing can be defined as the process of identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customer needs and wants. While marketing products or services there are 4 factors that must be kept in mind which is famously known as ‘Marketing Mix’. It was popularised by American Academic, Neil Borden during the 1950s.

• Product– It can be loosely defined as the item that is to be marketed. It can be categorized as tangible or intangible. This means that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a product in a physical sense, it could also be a service. Examples of tangible products are cars, food etc and intangible products are services provided by doctors, lawyers etc.
• Price– It can be defined as the cost at which a product or service is actually sold. For effective marketing, it must be kept in mind that the price at which a commodity or service is sold, must be just right. It must not be too high or too low, so as to attract more customers.
• Place– It is yet another marketing aspect. While marketing a product it is imperative to keep in mind the place of manufacturing as well as the place of sale of a product.
• Promotion– The way goods and services are communicated to the market is called promotion. During the promotion, it is made sure that the product trying to promote has some good impact on the customer’s mind. Promotion is a plan through which the product outshows the credibility from that of its competitive products. It makes people realize the need for having the product and is focused on the target audience. For example, chocolates target children and cosmetics target women in general.

Although there are lots of ways of marketing or promoting goods and services. Some of the most common forms of promotion include:

• Social Media Marketing– This refers to marketing or promotion of goods and services through social media on websites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. It is an effective form of promotion as not only is it cost-effective, but also provides a wider reach.
• Event Marketing– This refers to the experiential marketing or promotion of goods and services through certain events. Event Marketing involves direct conversation or interaction between companies and their consumers. Examples of this form of promotion include event roadshows, publisher conferences, networking events, etc.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Marketing- This refers to the process of growing the website traffic with the help of blogs, etc., in order to attract more customers towards the goods and/or services being offered by them.
• Email Marketing– According to the Cambridge Dictionary, email marketing is a process of advertising goods and/or services by sending bulk emails to customers. In modern times, where there is fast-paced advancement of technology, companies have used this form of promoting goods and/or services to their advantages as it has allowed companies to connect with a large number of customers, scattered across the vast geographical landscape, at a more personal level. Not only does it allow interaction between companies and their target customers, but it also helps keep customers updated with on-going deals and offers

This article, however, focuses on a single type of email marketing campaign. It focuses on answering a certain question pertaining to the same-

1. What is Drip Marketing?
2. What is a Marketing Campaign?
3. What is a Drip Marketing campaign?
4. What are the different types of Drip Marketing Campaigns or Drip Campaigns?
5. What are the advantages or benefits of Drip Campaigns?

What is Drip Marketing?

Drip Marketing is a form of email marketing in which a communication strategy that sends prewritten messages to the customers. It is also known as marketing automation, email autoresponders, or even transactional emails. These messages are not only transmitted via emails. They can also be sent via SMS or other instant messaging applications such as Whatsapp, etc.

What is a Marketing Campaign?

A marketing campaign can be defined as a specific set of activities performed for a stipulated period of time, with the objective of marketing products and/or services. Now, it is vital to keep in mind that the product and/or services to be marketed may not necessarily be a brand new product. In many cases, it could also be an improved version of an existing product. For example, the Aflac Duck character was used by an American Family Life Assurance Company around 2000. People found it easy to remember about the company through the character and because of this sales were hit from 12% to 90%. Another successful example is Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. People liked the tagline and it was all over the market when it was launched. 

What is a Drip Marketing Campaign?

Drip marketing campaigns are also known as drip campaigns that refer to a method of direct marketing, where information pertaining to either a new product and/or service of a fresh version of an existing product and/or service via email in order to attract more customers. In a lot of cases, most of this information is also shared by sending bulk text messages to prospective customers. You can also use SMTP servers to send free emails. For those who are new to the marketing world, you can read about what is an smtp server here!

Types of Drip Marketing Campaigns or Drip Campaigns

There are roughly six types of drip campaigns:

1. Top-of-mind Drips- The main objective of this type of campaign is to ensure that all prospective customers also known as leads are given the necessary information about the company periodically and throughout the sales process.
2. Educational Drips- These campaigns aim to ensure that prospective customers have complete information about the product that is to be purchased or the service that is to be rendered. Educational drips are time-oriented and talk about the product at that particular time.
3. Re-engagement Drips– These campaigns are designed in order to attract more customers towards the products and services being offered by the company. The product and services are already established in a particular region and re-engagement help to target new customers. This basically improves the reach. For example, A company of car A provides its products in country A, it will indulge in re-engagement drip if it wants to establish its products in neighboring countries. 
4. Competitive Drips- These campaigns are targeted towards the customers of those brands that are customers of a competitive brand. This makes the owner attract more people to its products and services. This is usually done by indicating advantages over that competitors, to the targeted public.
5. Promotional Drips– These campaigns aim at attracting more customers towards their products and/or services limited period offers such as discounts and other promotional offers.
6. Training Drips- These marketing campaigns are used by companies in order to briefly train their clients or rather run through a brief training process. 

Advantages or Benefits of Drip Campaigns

Improves customer engagement and loyalty

Email marketing campaigns allow companies to interact with their customers on an effective, efficient, and personal level. This allows them to interact or communicate with their leads or prospects on a one-to-one basis, indirectly. This is considered to be an effective way of attracting customers and consequently improving customer engagement and loyalty. In fact, research conducted by Experian on the open rate of welcome emails shows almost 60% open rate, while normal emails have a much lesser rate. When you send a welcome email as soon as a person signs up, the open rate touches a staggering 88.3 %.

Encourage relevant content

These campaigns also help in ensuring that prospects or leads are provided with all relevant details on the promotional emails. This helps in ensuring that these emails answer all possible questions that are likely to arise, with reference to the products and/ or services being promoted by the company.

Helps in increasing brand awareness

Innovative drip campaigns or drip marketing campaigns are also an effective way of creating awareness not only about the company but also about the products and /or services. This directly or indirectly helps in attracting more customers towards the products and /or services being offered by them. 

Conclusion

We now know that marketing or the entire activity of promotion not just of goods and services but also of ideas, opinions, thoughts, etc., plays a very important role in the lives of various businesses as well as those of the customers. It is one of the only ways that help in ensuring that customer needs are kept in mind and are duly met.

Furthermore, it also teaches us to be more considerate towards all sections of the society, respect all and most importantly, to be humble and be kind. Additionally, promotion helps in engaging the public with the product which gets difficult otherwise. It is easier to know about the product demand and target a particular set of people. 

In today’s world marketing is considered to be one of the best ways of talking about things. For example, the email-marketing strategy used by BuzzFeed Today is very appealing. They use different images and taglines to make people open their email as soon as they notice it in their email inbox. They keep things precise and up to date and the receiver knows what to expect after they read the subject tagline!

If you have any questions and examples of drip marketing, you can share it with us right now!

Till then Happy Emailing!

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