Cultivating your email drip campaign
Posted by George Palatine on May 5th, 2009
With spring in the air now, many people will begin their yearly routine of yard work and gardening. Just as it takes a proper (and variable) combination of elements to germinate a seed, your email marketing also requires the right mixture for success. I am referring to a strategy known as a drip campaign.
The theory of using a drip campaign in your email marketing efforts is not new. What is a developing trend, however, is the level of complexity that sophisticated email marketers are using in these type of programs today.
A drip campaign describes an email program that automatically delivers emails to customers or prospects on a predetermined and scheduled basis, basically a steady “drip”. In the past, these email events would continue though their pre-programmed linear series of deployments until reaching the end of the cycle. Perhaps this process of treating your prospects like lemmings (all behaving the same way) worked before but it does not with today’s sophisticated consumers; a more advanced drip campaign is required.
Today’s successful drip campaigns are neither linear nor simple. In fact, some of the most successful programs I have seen when all laid out look like a wiring diagram for the space shuttle. These programs are a massive system of triggered events that send pre-constructed messages based on a series of observed customer behaviors. The program will continue to change and deploy varying messages based on the last consumer action.
Let me try explaining this concept using only a simple series of events. Let’s say a group of consumers visit your website and browse for outdoor camping equipment. They spend some time looking at tents and other items. They add several items to their cart but do not complete the purchase. It would not be generally considered cutting-edge email marketing strategy for that retailer to then deploy an auto-triggered message, including an incentive (free shipping, percentage off, etc.) to encourage the completion of the sale. Do your triggered events end there or do they continue and adjust to what the consumer does next?
Some will return to the site and complete the purchase, while others will return but not purchase and others will not have even opened your email to see the added incentive. A follow up email can be sent with an added incentive to the people who returned but did not purchase. There, you create another split; you will have some who return and purchase, others who return without purchase and some who will not open the email. After a few rounds of incentive messages without the desired result (a sale), this company may elect to trigger a short survey to better understand the situation.
Below is a diagram of how this seemingly simple series of events can quickly get complicated. (click the image for larger view)
drip-s
Just think how this would look if another trigger was added representing people who did make a purchase but only bought one of the items originally in their cart? Suffice to say that the level of complexity and number of triggered events should be carefully considered based on your business model, sales cycle, seasonality, revenue per sale, etc.
Setting up an effective drip campaign can be a complex process that takes a fair amount of time and effort. But like your garden you reap what you sow. The difference in email, however, is that once the system is in place and producing measurable results it should only require basic “care and feeding” to keep the triggers and the messages optimized.
Great and short article about Triggered Campaigns – it’s also important to stress here that this is part of the grander idea of Lifecycle Email Marketing; bringing Email in as a long term relationship communication channel, an enabler, rather than just broadcasting your message.
I would perhaps consider rewording away from “Drip Campaigns” – nothing could sound more boring, or bring the thoughts of the Chinese Water Torture to mind more!