Does your B2B use email to generate sales? According to HubSpot, nearly nine in 10 B2B companies report email as one of their most effective sales channels. Not all email campaigns, however, are effective at generating leads and sales. Rather than sending a one-off email to your prospective clients, your B2B should consider setting up drip campaigns. This type of lead nurturing has proven to be one of the most successful ways of building customer relationships and generating sales.
What is a drip email campaign?
A drip email campaign is an automated series of emails sent to a prospect or client after they take a particular action (submitting a web form). These campaigns offer relevant resources like videos, whitepapers, webinars and product information to a specific person over several days as soon as they show interest in a topic.
Take, for example, if a prospect subscribes to your blog. Your drip campaign could start with sending a welcome email immediately. Then, follow up with an email showcasing your most popular blog posts, and then follow that up with another email that offers a case study or white paper.
The advantage of email drip campaigns is that they enable your B2B to provide users with the right information they need at the right time. And no matter when they join your email list, they will receive the exact same sequence of emails.
Benefits of a drip email campaign?
Drip email campaigns effectively move prospects along the buyer’s journey. Further, these emails drive up to 18 times more revenue than typical one-off emails. The most notable benefits of drip campaigns are:
Boost engagement
Boosting engagement is one of the most significant benefits of a drip email campaign. Research shows that it takes around eight touchpoints to change a prospect into a customer, and a drip campaign gives your B2B several opportunities to engage with your prospects.
Lead nurturing
One of the most critical aspects of B2B marketing is managing customer relationships. Unfortunately, it is not possible to handhold each customer as you guide them through your B2B sales funnel. But a drip email campaign can help you come close.
A drip email campaign allows your B2B to communicate with each customer in a personalized way, giving them the impression that you are with them at each step of the journey. This will result in more of your leads converting into customers.
Strengthen customer relationships
A drip email campaign will help your B2B build strong relationships with your customers. The more they engage with your email content, the more they will come to see you as a trusted resource in your field. To make this happen, you must provide valuable content and interact with your readers regularly.
Drip campaigns that are well executed will help your B2B increase its loyal customers. Further, these customers could easily become repeat buyers and brand ambassadors.
Types of drip campaigns
Email marketing is an easy and successful method of communication with customers. However, you must personalize the messaging based on where your customers are in the sales funnel.
To help create this personalization, you need to use content mapping. This is the process of tailoring content that addresses customers at different stages in the funnel. Each piece within a content map is designed to meet the customer’s needs at that particular point and help drive them down the funnel.
With content mapping, your B2B can more effectively nurture your leads with content that is relevant and valuable to them.
Let’s look at the most common types of drip campaigns:
Welcome Drip Campaign
This drip campaign aims to introduce your B2B to the prospect who just opted in. Types of actions that could trigger this are signing up for a newsletter or blog.
This is one of the most vital campaigns because its primary purpose is to establish a relationship with your prospect and build brand awareness.
These emails must showcase what the prospect can expect from you and the benefits of opting in. Consider sending them top-funnel marketing collateral to convey this value.
Retargeting Drip Campaign
This campaign is for customers who have engaged with your B2B in the past but did not follow through with the next steps. Take, for example, a prospect who downloaded a whitepaper. Your retargeting drip campaign could follow up with relevant resources to the whitepaper. By doing this, you are warming these prospects up to your B2B, increasing the odds that they will do business with you.
Think of a retargeting campaign as a way to turn your prospects into buyers by providing them with the next logical step in the funnel based on their previous engagements.
Re-engagement Drip Campaign
This type of campaign is geared towards inactive prospects. These campaigns should encourage the prospect to open, read and engage with your brand again. Try sending emails with your best-performing content and the benefits of working with you.
Post-Purchase Emails
It is easier to retain a current customer than it is to attract a new one. In fact, it costs, on average, six times more. A post-purchase drip campaign effectively builds customer loyalty for your brand and encourages customers to continue doing business with you.
This type of campaign can include offers for your B2B’s other products or services and tips and tricks for the product or service they purchased from you. This will help show customers that you appreciate their business and lead to a strong ongoing relationship.
How to build a drip campaign
You can use many different platforms to deploy drip campaigns, from HubSpot to MailChimp. But before you can implement them, you need to plan and devise each campaign. Here are some ways to build a successful email drip campaign.
Identify target audience
Identifying the target audience is crucial when building a drip campaign. This will help you create personalized emails that drive action.
Think about who and why you are emailing them. What their needs are and what questions they will have?
For each target audience, you should create a segment just for them. Segmentation will ensure that the right targeted emails are reaching the intended audience.
Define your goals
You must define your goals from the start. For each drip campaign, answer the following:
- What do you want to achieve?
- Which segment will receive the emails?
- How do you measure the performance?
You cannot create an effective drip campaign unless you know your goals.
What actions do you want them to take
Each drip campaign should push your prospects down the buyer’s journey. This is done by having a call-to-action (CTA) that helps move them down your funnel. These CTA’s can be actions like downloading a whitepaper, watching a video or setting up a meeting.
These actions need to be tied to your B2B business goals. They also must offer a benefit in return for taking action.
Finally, the actions your subscribers take or don’t take should be used as the trigger for the next email in the campaign.
Create an outline
Make sure to outline the steps of each drip campaign and ensure that your content closely aligns with your sales funnel. It’s best to start at the top of the funnel and work your way down. This will help you see the overall flow of each campaign and determine how many emails are needed.
Develop your content
Make sure that your messaging is clear and concise. The content should be based on the resource your prospect initially converted on. Be sure to experiment with different types of content and offers to see what performs the best.
Set your key performance indicators
To measure the success of the campaigns, you should decide on what key performance indicators (KPIs) are needed. The most common ones are:
- Open rate
- Clickthrough rate
- Revenue generated
- Unsubscribe rate
- Conversion rate over time
- Time to customer conversion
Monitor and Evaluate
Once your campaign is running, you must monitor how your subscribers respond. Further, you must evaluate whether your campaign is performing well on not. This is where you look at your KPIs.
Tracking the KPIs will help gauge whether your drip marketing campaign is working well. It will also allow you to make changes and adapt parts of the campaign that are underperforming.
Finally, using this data will help you design more effective drip campaigns in the future.
Email drip campaigns can play a vital role in your B2B marketing strategy. When done correctly, they can help drive sales and increase revenue. It’s all about ensuring the right message is sent at the right time.
Drip campaigns are not a one-size-fits-all solution — you need to consider your leads’ prior engagements with your brand and your business goals. Then you can craft a successful drip campaign.
If you need help with your email marketing, contact Eisenberg at hello@eisenberginc.com.
