Drip Marketing Success Story: Follow-up and Secret Sauce

How Drip Marketing Leads to Leads

Drip marketing is not something I just talk about, it’s the primary marketing strategy I’ve integrated into my business for the past 6 years. (I’ve actually relied on drip marketing for more than 20 years, but it’s only been recently that drip marketing automation software has scaled to desktop use for SMBs, small sales teams and consultants. Cost is no longer a barrier to entry; for under a few hundred dollars a month, any size company can compete digitally for more business with drip marketing automation.)

I’d like to share one of my personal drip marketing success stories with you. It’s a great example of why it’s so important to implement a drip marketing strategy sooner rather than later. 

About a year ago, The Database Diva received a referral for a new prospect who wanted to set up a customer database. Golda Cohen, our marketing manager, talked with the company owner initially, and then sent him a proposal for our services.

Then we put him on a “Proposal Follow-Up” Drip Marketing Campaign

Golda continued to follow up on the sale at intervals he requested. But the drip campaign was running in the background, too, continuing to educate him about all of our other services that he had not yet asked about. Additionally, now that he was a high-priority prospect, he was also receiving e-mails inviting him to our live events.

I don’t remember that this sale took longer or shorter to close than normal, but we did finally get the order. Golda then scheduled an installation date for our Senior Consultant and a different day for database marketing training with me.

Our client’s database was installed without a hitch (we love when this happens), and now it was time for training. Several months had passed since our client first entered our sales pipeline, and throughout his journey with us, all the way up to his day of training, I never once had a conversation with him.

On the day of training, I showed up at our new customer’s office and waited for him while he finished a phone call. Then he appeared and exclaimed to me…

(The Big Reveal)

“Lori–are you ‘“THE Database Diva?’
“I’ve been reading your stuff, and
I was “really looking forward to meeting you!”

Frankly, he caught me completely off guard! I was looking forward to meeting him, too, of course. But he was really looking forward to meeting me! In fact, he already felt like we knew each other, even though we’d never said even as much as a “hello” to each other.

That’s because for months, he had been absorbing everything we sent him about our sales process, our implementation team, our quick-start tips and our case studies. He was now an informed customer who was eager to taste his own success. So we got down to business and had a great training day.

The proposal follow-up drip marketing campaign is one of 7 Must-Have Drip Marketing Campaigns I believe every sales organization needs to differentiate itself from the competition. More important, these drip campaigns reduce the risk factor all prospects inherently feel while going through their buying process. The customer knows he must make a decision to buy or not to buy. But that doesn’t mean he enjoys the decision making process. If anything, he’s looking for reasons to eliminate you from his short list to make his selection that much easier.

As I reflected on it later that evening, I realized…

Wouldn’t it be great if every new business relationship started out just like this one-with a customer who was thrilled and delighted to be doing business with us?

Drip Marketing, The Secret Sauce

Having a well thought through proposal follow-up campaign, in this case, was a critical factor in closing this sale and giving our customer an overwhelming number of reasons to validate his wise decision to select us as his vendor.

Yes, it took me several hours to think through the sequence of messages I wanted to include in my drip marketing campaign. And, yes, then I had to write all the messages.

And I wasn’t satisfied that this was a perfect drip campaign. I wanted to include more information than I had room for. (I only wanted the campaign to last about as long as my typical sales cycle and then end.) But “done is better than perfect.” And my one-time investment of thought and copywriting continues to reap goodwill and smarter clients and prospects as I add them to this same drip campaign.

Drip Marketing’s 85/15 Ratio

A successful drip marketing campaign is 85% strategy and only 15% technology. That’s why they’re so hard to execute. Most companies starting out with drip marketing get this equation all wrong.

One of the biggest mistakes I see marketers make is thinking their marketing automation software gives them license to repeatedly blast the same promotion 24/7. Boring! And ineffective.

Marketers know intuitively this approach won’t work. Yet they don’t know what to do instead. They end up missing out on a special opportunity to help prospects fall in love with them via education to make better buying decisions and then kicking off good, solid business releationships with more engaged customers.

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