Drip marketing comes from a marketing tenant that prospects need to see or read your message multiple times before doing business with you. In technology companies, 90% of salespeople give up on a lead after 3 contacts, yet 80% of deals are closed after the 7th(!) contact. Sales often moves on to greener pastures to follow hot leads, because they are easier to close.
Staying in constant communication with clients and prospects is a requirement to closing more business. Drip marketing is a direct marketing strategy that involves sending out customized communication pieces over a period of time to subsets of leads. The pieces can include whitepapers, letters, webinar invitations or event announcements.
Content is King
Before you launch a drip marketing campaign, it’s imperative to build a library of value-added, fresh & interesting content. One of our clients calls them “SOVs” or “something of value” – I love that term. These can include whitepapers, product reviews, industry trends, webinars, newsletters, or forums just as examples. Currently video is becoming one of the hottest SOVs. Google & Tech Target released a report last year showing 72% of IT buyers watch video as part of their decision-making process.
Get a Content Generation SYSTEM
Don’t have time to develop all the content yourself? Get others to write it for you! Partners and affiliates will often write blog posts or short articles in exchange for a back link to their website and co-promotion. Or outsource your writing – Clarity Quest has a staff of technical writers that ghost write on topics as varied as software development systems and medical devices. The key is to have a system that churns out content on a consistent basis – even when your internal teams do not have the time or energy.
OK, I have content. What’s Next?
After you have a library of content, you’ll need a reputable email service provider (ESP) and the ability to add content to your website in the very least. We currently switched to iContact as our ESP because their ability to deliver email past spam filters is very good.
However, to take full advantage of drip marketing, we recommend marketing automation/demand generation systems which will be covered in an April blog post and our April e-newsletter. If you not already on our e-news mailing list, sign up today on our blog page.
Labels: direct marketing, drip marketing, marketing automation
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