Setting Up An Effective Email Campaign (Drip Marketing)

This will also work for other campaigns such as Send Out Cards, Ace of Sales and others that offer drip campaigns.

A few years ago, I was introduced to Send Out Cards, a local company here that sends out greeting cards that they print and mail to customers. They started with A few cards and then it kept getting bigger and bigger. They also found that business people liked to receive thank you cards and greetings to celebrate birthdays and other occasions. They soon had a calendaring program that would remind you of these key events.

About five years ago, they came up with a program called Send Out Campaigns. It allowed you to set up a scheduled card program to deliver to your customers. When I owned the newspapers, we did this for several years. Here is what our program looked like:

Sent immediately after signing up – Thank you card from the salesperson.
Sent one week later – Thank you card from me, the publisher and information to get to key people at our company (accounting, graphic artists and customer service representative.)
Sent three days after last card – Invite to the upcoming seminars that we were holding.
Sent one week after second thank you card – A promotion card for some additional services – Inserts, classifieds and other programs.
Sent a week after last card – A card to make sure their first ad was successful
Sent a week after last card – A card then informed them about a referral program we had.
Sent a week after last card – Another promotion card for other items that we offered.
Sent a week after last card – Invite to the upcoming seminars that we were holding for the next month

And so on for 11 cards in all that they received. With this program, we had many people send us referrals. Some sent referrals because we offered them something but many more gave them to us because we asked for them. Many gave me more than one and one gave me a whole page of advertisers he was interested being on the same page as him (Awesome!)

When Survey Monkey came out, we used them occasionally to ask about how we were doing for our customers. We asked before this but the salespeople didn’t remember to ask most of the time.

All of this led to us getting and keeping more customers.

Today, email programs have started doing this same program. In fact they will do so much more. My newsletter goes out by Ace of Sales (Outstand is their new name). I also still use my Send Out Cards account for birthday greetings and some thank you cards.

This is great for either new customers or current customers. You set up the systems that you want to run for each type of customer and then apply the system for either a group of people or a single individual. After I have sent out my weekly newsletter, I can then add it to the end of any system that is right for that newsletter and it sends it when it is time for a newer customer to get it. I don’t send all newsletters out, especially if they are timely or dated. Others I send out as additions to the regular newsletter.

I know there are other programs like AWeber and the professional version of MailChimp that do this as well.

They can also send out a birthday greeting each year that won’t be the same as last year.

Lets look at a modern use of this type of marketing. This is for customers:

Thank you email – immediately
Survey of how you did – 2 days later
If previous was positive, Ask for online review – 2 days later – If not 5 stars, emailed to you for your follow-up. If it is 5 stars, login to their choice of review sites
If 5 stars were given, a referral is sent 1 week after review.
Newsletter sent to keep them in the know
Offer made for return visit (if appropriate) about three weeks after last visit
Another newsletter sent – Two weeks after last newsletter (adjustable to suite how often you want one sent
A referral incentive is made if no referral was received.
If no return, a better offer can be made for return visit
Repeat as you want.

This may seem like a lot of emails. If you gave great service, your customer won’t mind giving you a great feedback. When they give great feedback, they will be glad to be reminded to post a review, especially if you asked them to when they were leaving. A referral is good to ask for within a few days of a positive review. Some have spaced these out but have found from surveys that this works really well. It is your call though.

One additional thing to keep in mind; if you do get a negative or less than desired survey or review, follow-up immediately and find out what went wrong. If it was posted without your intervention, respond to it. See the Getting Great Online Reviews chapter about this.

The other thing is to have someway to stay in touch. A newsletter is a great way. A blog can work when you use it as both a blog and newsletter. When I post something on my blog or add something to my website, I send out a newsletter. I know some that use a favorite recipe or a favorite saying. Some will re-post someone else’s blog and give credit to them. All of these things will help you engage with your customer. Be sure to have a way for them to write comments. Sometimes a poll is great.

If you think your customers may want you to slow down on sending a newsletter, ask them. I used to do my newsletter once per month because that is what I thought they wanted. When I finally asked them, they said once a week would be okay but every two weeks was great too. That is the best – ask several and then occasionally ask more people to make sure of the results.

Next week I’ll finish this up with other ways to use campaigns.

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