Good to the Last Drop

And that’s not coffee we are discussing this week. It’s another form of an email newsletter campaign that we want to put on your radar: the Drip Campaign. This type of campaign hones in on your most attentive customers, and if done well, it will create new, very attentive customers.

Here’s how it works:

Say you have 100 emails in your campaign. Let’s use a Drip Campaign comprised of three emails.

Email Number One:

• Send out to 100 emails. General newsletter about a product / service / special.
• Results – 70 did not open. 30 opened.
• Resend the same email with a different subject line to the 70 that did not open.
• Resend garners an additional 20 opens. Add them to the 30 previous and you have 50 for your next email. The 50 that did not open on the second email either – put on ignore and don’t include them in the remaining campaign.

Email Number Two:

• Send out to the 50 emails that opened Email One. The information on the product / service / special gets a bit more specific – more engaging with a better call to action.
• Results – 25 did not open. 25 opened.
• Resend the same email with a different subject line to the 25 that did not open.
• This resend adds 15 that opened and another 10 that did not. Add the 15 and the initial 25 that opened this second email for a total of 40 email addresses that are still with your campaign and send those 10 that did not open to join the other 50 uninterested emails.

Email Number Three:

• Send out to the 40 email addresses of the most committed customers. Make this final drip very compelling – these 40 will receive something special, such as exclusive access to information or a coupon.
• Results: 5 did not open and 35 did open.
• Resend the final email with a different and final subject line to the final 5.
• Bet this last resent adds 4 if not 5 of the outstanding emails to your success list, making your overall campaign 45% successful.

For some, this type of email newsletter campaign may seem onerous. It’s not something you want to perform monthly but is a great way to filter large email lists to access those customers that will be your biggest fans and buying customers. Based on the Pareto principle (80/20 rule), these fewer but more engaged customers will become your best customers, resulting in less money spent in your marketing to reach and keep them as opposed to the rest of the non-openers that will require much more marketing dollars and efforts to reach and acquire. It all depends upon your marketing goals.

Now, to do this in your own email marketing application, you’ll have to create groups to target with each resend. For example, if you are starting with a large group of emails all under a Constant Contact list of Firearms Retailers, you will go into that list after the initial email and create a new list (i.e., Email Campaign 100) and move the ones that opened into that list and remove from the Firearms Retailers list (important you remove them from the initial list so they do not receive the resend).

After the resend, go back in and move any opens to the Email Campaign 100 list and remove them from the Firearms Retailer list.

Second campaign you will use the Email Campaign 100 list and follow the same steps as you did before with the initial email blast. Call this one Email Campaign 101, resend to the unopened, and move the 2^nd time openers.

Third campaign, you’ll use Email Campaign 102 and name the new list of Email Campaign Best Retailers (or something) and follow the same procedure you did before, but now you will end up with a tight list of prime retailers that have shown how interested they are in your products or services. Give them lots of love and attention and you will be rewarded!

But if you got lost somewhere between the first and second email and decided the time was better spent picking out the goo between your keyboard keys, not to worry, you can still be a marketing hero by enlisting a company to create and manage your drip campaign. We’ve worked with Grand View Outdoors on a Drip Campaign with great success. Mike Kizzire of Grand View Outdoors, worked closely with our client to create a compelling campaign built around a product launch before a major trade show. The result was not only increased media attention during the event but also a significant increase in buyer orders during the event.

Mike explains, “Based on recent metrics delivered through Grand View Outdoors Bullseye 3-drip email campaigns, it is clear that, as readers move through the 3-drip funnel, advertisers are delivered very interested and focused leads with very impressive open rates compared to our traditional email campaigns. Once into the third email of a 3-drip campaign our open rates shot up to an average of 67.6 percent, versus a 30 percent average open rate on traditional email campaigns, which is still considered very good. 3-drips allow those emailed to either drop out/not engage with the content or stay fully engaged through the end, which in turn gives advertisers a chance to deliver their message to a very interested lead and not continue to email those not interested.”

Again, an email newsletter Drip Campaign can be a highly effective method to drill into existing lead lists for the most productive customers. Why throw money at customers who don’t care when you’ve just panned for gold? Now, that’s the kind of coffee that is good to the last drop!

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