Drip! Drip! Drip!

Do you ever find yourself bogged down with trying to put together a newsletter? Me, too.

Part of marketing is consistently and continually engaging your followers and fan base. There’s email, social media – thanking each person for [coming to see you | visiting your booth | following you on Twitter], then letting them know about your events takes A LOT of time.

That’s where drip campaigns can come in handy. Drip campaigns are pre-planned emails that go out on a set schedule. There is no minimum or maximum number of “drops” in a campaign, but it does take some thought and a little prep time. Why? Because these emails have to offer high quality content AND be timeless.

Getting Started with Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns are a technique you can use with social media, as well as email. I’m going to focus on email, but the same processes apply if you want to do this with your other platforms.

The easiest drip campaigns to set up are the ones with start with new contacts that you’ve added to your email newsletter list.

Let’s say I just returned from a book festival where I collected emails from people who left a card or bought my award-winning book about birdwatching with kids. I also got emails for people who brought their own copy to get autographed.

1. Add all the emails to my newsletter list so that I can send them a “thank you” email. I have a canned email that says “thanks,” and also gives them more information about me. I explain the kinds of programs I do; ask them to let me know what they think of my book;, and also invite them to add a review to Amazon (with a link to my product page).

2. Set the send conditions in my email program. [I use Mailchimp, but there are others out there.] This isn’t an email that i want to send to everyone on my newsletter list. I want to send it ONLY to my newest contacts. I also want to send it out five days from now.

To do that, I write a rule that says something to the effect that

IF I add new people to my newsletter list
THEN launch the “thanks” email five days later. Done!

Done! Now, whenever I enter names the “thanks” email triggers five days later, and I don’t have to think about it.

TIP! If you use use a contact form on your website or blog, you may want a more generic welcome or thanks-for-signing-up email. Alternatively, you can have a second signup list that is for people you meet and those who just sign up via form. That’s called ‘segmenting’ your list.

3. Write and schedule the rest of the drips in this email campaign. So that I can continue to engage with my new subscribers, I am going to launch a second email 43 days after they receive my “thanks” email.

These emails must have high quality content. Since my book is about birdwatching with kids, I might …

send some links to my favorite blogs about birdwatching.
share a couple tips about how to identify a bird by its feathers or voice.
include a PDF version of a set of bookmarks (about my book) to download.
Share a video about how to make an Origami bird.

You get the idea. It might just be those four emails. It might be six or eight, it depends on what I want to talk about. BUT I need to set up all of the emails before I start sending to the list.

Remember! This is about engagement, not selling. That means I need to

make sure that I am not always talking (directly) about me or my book. Email, like other social, is about communication and building relationships.
pick topics that don’t have an expiration date. The idea of a drip campaign is that it will serve you well forever.

If you’d like to see drip campaigns in action, sign up for one of my Reading Tub newsletters. We have two segmented lists, with two kinds of drip campaigns. One is just literacy tips and ideas (six weeks). The other sends you a book recommendation each month, based on the kind of book your child likes to read and their age.

Have you tried drip campaigns or do you have one in place? Share your story – or your newsletter signup list in the comments!

Here’s to marketing made a little easier, courtesy of drip campaigns.

IMAGE CREDITS, Flickr Creative Commons