Tip! Boring Email Marketing messages don’t keep your customer’s attention.
Ever let the garden hose drip water on a freshly planted tree or shrub to help it stabilize and grow? That’s the concept behind drip email marketing - sending periodic emails to prospects and clients that will hopefully entice them to your website and purchase products and/or services. It is an effective and useful tool for generating new prospects as well as keeping in contact with your established clients.
Tip! Often, boring Email Marketing messages don’t get read.
Drip Email Marketing came about based upon the assumption that no one purchases online products or services immediately. It can take between 3 to 30 or more visits before a visitor becomes a customer. With that in mind, how are you supposed to maintain their attention and awareness of your services and what your business has to offer? This is where setting up a drip email marketing campaign will come in handy not only with prospecting for new clients but with you current clients as well.
Tip! Don’t be afraid to go long. In the early days of email marketing, short copy was the rule.
Let’s start with the prospective customer; they have just viewed your site or left your office and given you their email address. Depending upon their area of interest, you set up a drip email marketing campaign catered to their specific needs. Each email offers more information and insight into their inquiries while subtly reminding them of you and your services. This is keeping your name in front of them without hassling them. That is the key to effective drip email marketing - sending useful and relevant information to the prospect in each email. Remember, you are not selling anything; you are giving advice and information centered on their particular needs and wants.
Tip! Automate Your Programs and Routines. To optimize your email marketing software efforts you should automate processes including subscriptions, unsubscribe, monthly newsletters and more.
For your current clients, your approach is similar in that you are addressing their wants and needs with each email. But because they are already your client, you must tailor the email differently than one for a prospective client. The email should address information and ideas concerning the client “after the sale”; again while passively reminding them you are ready to assist them whenever they require it. And just like with the prospective clients, your email drips must be relevant information that will help the reader not a bunch of useless content that reeks of over-selling. Then when your client is ready to purchase again, you have established yourself as a constant in their life and they will seek you out for your products and services.
Tip! My Email Marketing messages were boring and sleep inducing (which is not really the ego strokes I am looking for).
Now, it probably sounds like you will need more than one type of Autoresponder or email marketing software to handle the prospective and current clients as well as the variables within each set. However, there are many programs available that can handle all of your email drip marketing needs with an infinite number of customers and leads. It will be necessary to have this kind of flexibility with the Autoresponder program or service due to the fact that each client or prospect should be handled according to the stage of development in your pipeline.
Tip! More often, boring Email Marketing messages get put right into the delete box.
The most important tactic you should always abide by is that your emails should have a purpose or message - a real reason for contacting them, not just “a note saying Hi!” or “Just checking in”. If your email drip marketing campaign cannot hold the client’s interest then it is off to the trash bin the second they read the sender’s email address. You are trying to build and/or increase their trust in you and you cannot do that if they never open your emails. The email subject line must grab their attention and make them want to read your message. Once this rapport of purposeful emails has been established, your clients and prospects will actually eagerly wait for your next email. This is the whole strategy behind an drip email marketing campaign - to develop a trust with your customer that is based upon valuable information and knowledge. When you establish a bond of trust, your customers will seek you out and even recommend you and your services to others. Is a drip email marketing plan useful for prospecting and cultivating clients? You bet it is!
Tip! Start using a permission-based email marketing software that allows you to easily create newsletters, automatically manage subscribes, unsubscribes, bounces, and view reporting statistics like opens and clickthroughs.
Sarah Reiter is president of Creative Agent Solutions, a virtual marketing company that specializes in real estate services. Creative Agent Solutions is a member of the International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA), the Southeast Valley Regional Association of Realtors (SEVRAR) and Scottsdale Association of Realtors in Arizona (SAAR), as well as a Certified Virtual Assistant (CVA) with the Settlement Room ?.
