Drip Marketing Strategy: How It Works for Lead Engagement and Conversion

Drip Marketing: Meaning, Concept, and Importance

Inspired by a farming practice called drip irrigation, drip marketing refers to disseminating a set of messages to the intended audience at the right time. Drip marketing can be used to turn prospective customers into leads and digital marketers often deploy tactics to leverage it to its full potential.

Drip marketing can prove beneficial for a number of factors. Actions like lead generation and engagement, customer onboarding, and customer service can be performed by following drip marketing essentials.

The time span of message dissemination in drip marketing is subjective. For some businesses, weekly reminders work well, while for others, monthly and yearly engagement is better.

In this article, we will go through the nuts and bolts of drip marketing and discuss how digital marketers can use it.

Lead Engagement and the Role of Drip Marketing

The time when shoppers would stroll onto a website and buy products left, right, and centre is now gone. The average time for a prospect to become a paying customer has increased dramatically.

In such a situation, users need to be hand-held by digital marketers through the process of lead conversion.

When prospective customers arrive on a website, they have no intention of buying a product. Furthermore, they are unable to process the avalanche of information given to them upon arrival. This is where drip marketing comes into play.

Through concise content marketing, digital marketers first try getting the contact information of a prospect. This can be done by offering an email subscription to prospects or other incentives. Once a prospect provides contact information, he/she is converted from a prospect to a lead.

After becoming a lead, digital marketers can begin engaging with them and begin the sales cycle.

In the beginning, a lead is hesitant to buy because they do not know much about a business or product. Through a series of drips (or messages), leads are made aware of a company as their gap of knowledge regarding the product is slowly reduced. These drips can include ebooks, webinars, videos, or any other form of content that informs the lead about a product or service.

The Process of Lead Conversion Through Drip Marketing

The main upside of drip marketing is its ability to aid in lead conversion. However, this involves a series of steps as listed below.

Choosing the Target Customer

The first obvious step is to identify the type of customer being targeted. Each type of customer may require a different type of messaging. For instance, a college student would respond to a message about a mobile phone launch differently compared to a middle-aged woman working a regular job.

Thus, digital marketers have to clearly segment their audience and then develop different messages for each segment.

Establishing a Basic Buying Cycle

Create an outline of the steps that have to be taken to convert a lead. A brief example of a buying cycle is given below:

Identifying the Problem You Are Solving

In this step, digital marketers have to make leads realize the problem their product is solving. A mobile phone company has to explain which new problem they are solving. Maybe it’s a new feature or a low price. Once leads can clearly understand the problem you are solving, the first step is complete.

Usually, a lead should immediately understand the problem your product is solving. Do not complicate the process and be direct about this.

Introducing Your Brand to the Lead

Tell the leads about your brand. Now that the leads know the problem you are solving, they would probably want to know about your brand. This may not be a big problem for top brands, but small firms and startups need to educate leads about who they are.

Point out the vision of your company. Let the leads know you better and associate with your brand on a higher level. Many startups have a loyal base of customers because they are able to sell their users a higher vision.

Each message you send is part of an overall drip marketing effort.

Brand Evaluation Stage in Drip Marketing

Brand evaluation is the part of the drip marketing effort where digital marketers help leads evaluate their brand. This is where a lead begins to think about becoming a customer and starts evaluating the brand.

At this stage, digital marketers have to use drip marketing messages to make the lead see value in the brand.

Handling Objections During Drip Marketing

This is not a necessary stage, but many digital marketers may have to deal with this. After brand evaluation, a lead may raise an objection to the price. At this stage, digital marketers again have to use drip marketing to inform the lead about the reason behind the evaluation. In some cases, digital marketers are given the power to provide discounts. The main objective of this stage is to make sure the lead chooses to become a customer.

The Final Decision-Making Stage

Once a lead knows everything there is to know, the final decision lies with the lead. All a digital marketer can do at this point in time is reinforce the messages sent during the drip marketing campaign.

Aligning Content With the Buying Cycle

Depending on where a particular lead is in the buying cycle, digital marketers have to align the drip marketing messages being sent to them.

At each stage of the buying cycle, a lead responds to a specific kind of message. Based on this data, digital marketers have to frame messages accordingly.

Thus, each stage has a specific mail associated with it. Depending on the decision of the digital marketing team, messages are sent to the lead over a fixed period of time. Depending upon the response of the lead, digital marketers move them ahead on the buying cycle.

Setting Goals for a Drip Marketing Campaign

A lead can be moved ahead in a buying cycle based on the response to a message. The desired response depends on the message itself.

If a message contains a link to a website, the desired response would be the lead reaching the website. In other cases, a message might contain a giveaway ebook or the link to a seminar. In such a case, the desired response would be downloading the ebook or viewing the seminar.

If a lead gives the desired response, then he/she can be moved forward in the buying cycle. Every lead that moves forward highlights the success of the drip marketing campaign.

Drip Marketing: Benefits and Drawbacks

Drip marketing has a lot of upsides. For one, it increases the reach of a brand and improves the click-through rate.

In many ways, drip marketing is based on the principles of inbound marketing. Customers are slowly made to see the benefits of a given product and eventually turned into customers. Many inbound marketing campaigns integrate drip marketing into their strategy.

Drip marketing narrows the focus when it comes to the timing and content of messages sent to leads.

Another benefit of drip marketing is its low-cost setup. Since there is no type of advertising involved, drip marketing is virtually free of cost. There is a heavy investment of time involved, as digital marketers have to do a lot of research to frame the messages and identify the type of audience to target.

Due to its structured nature, drip marketing is very attuned to the end goals of a cycle, i.e., conversions. Each message sent to a lead is framed with the simple purpose of getting one step closer to gaining a customer. Since the messages are framed before the drip marketing campaign even begins, the entire process can be automated.

One disadvantage of drip marketing is the long process involved. For firms looking to make quick gains, drip marketing might not be a great idea as leads take a long time to become paying customers. Furthermore, the process itself is far from easy and requires a lot of work.

Drip marketing can also make brand content seem repetitive. Many firms try to fight this drawback by constantly experimenting with their messaging, which again requires significant time investment.

Conclusion: Is Drip Marketing Worth the Effort?

In conclusion, drip marketing is a useful tool to infuse into a firm’s inbound marketing strategy. Despite the investment of time required, drip marketing is worth the effort and can become a constant source of new customers. If done well and overseen by skilled digital marketers, drip marketing can help new firms and startups scale their growth methodically.