10 Winning Email Drip Campaigns – Part 1

Lead nurturing can be accomplished through several channels: phone, direct mail, social media, and email. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, nearly 60% of Internet users check email daily, so a winning email drip campaign is a logical choice for lead nurturing.

Studies show it takes an average of 3 to 30 impressions to become successful at creating interest through an email marketing campaign. So how can you be effective at lead nurturing through a drip campaign without filling your prospects’ mailboxes with useless marketing fluff? The short answer: provide value. Although the purpose of a drip campaign is to create top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) for your offering, each message should be valuable to your audience while earning trust in your company.

In this two-part series, we’ll discuss 10 ways to provide useful information that makes an email drip campaign effective and engaging. The ideas in this series are not presented according to any specific metric, but each should be used within a comprehensive engagement strategy in order to be effective at nurturing leads.

1. Newsletter – Invite prospects to subscribe to your newsletter. Avoid simply asking for a subscription; provide a sample of the content to whet a prospect’s appetite for more information. By giving readers a sample of stories it will allow them to determine if a subscription would be beneficial. One effective technique is to provide the actual headline and a portion of the article with a Read More link to a signup form.
2. Best Practices – Business professionals are constantly seeking ways to improve. By providing information that assists your prospects in their business activities, your company gains trust and value. For B2B consulting or B2B service vendors,  providing free information can be effective in persuading prospects to purchase premium offerings, such as research studies or software development contracts.
3. White Papers – Thought leadership is a highly coveted position among B2B marketers. Producing white papers filled with relevant statistics and hard-to-find data has been shown to be a productive means of lead nurturing. Introduce prospects to your white paper through email messages. Use a lead-in within your message to generate interest. You can create several drip messages by highlighting different findings within the paper.
4. Info-graphics – Create a visually appealing email filled with statistics and other data for quick consumption. USA Today is a major media outlet, due in part to its focus on easily digestible graphs, charts, and lists. This strategy works for B2B email campaigns because readers are often sifting through multiple emails at a time. An info-graphic gives prospects a quick dose of relevant information and provides a valuable reason to reach out to your prospects.
5. Webinar – Sending an invitation to a free webinar you are hosting or participating in can provide value to your leads. One effective technique is to introduce event topics and presenters in the email message. It helps to provide an easy registration process and a follow up message with simple connection steps to make attendance easy for your prospects.

It’s important to schedule email blasts with a frequency that isn’t too pushy but allows you to achieve TOMA as soon as possible. In Winning Email Drip Campaigns – Part 2 we’ll discuss five more ways to nurture leads by providing value to your prospects through effective email messages.

For more ideas on drip campaigns and other lead nurturing strategies that boost your marketing effectiveness, contact us today!