DrippingIf you’re looking for a great way to build a relationship with visitors to your website, drip campaigns are a handy email marketing technique that can get you there.

Drip. Goofy name, right?

They’re called drip campaigns because they happen slowly, over time, like that leaky faucet in your bathroom you want to murder.

Drip campaigns are far less annoying. They’re essentially automated emails that keep you and your business top of your visitors’ minds without being super pushy.

If someone has been to your website, and has given you their email, they’re already engaging with you. They’ve shown an interest. A drip campaign can turn those casual website visitors into customers.

How Drip Campaigns Work

  1. You choose an email marketing service like Drip or AWeber or MailChimp.

2, You decide what you want your emails to say, and how often you want to send them out.

  1. You put a sign-up form on your website.

  2. As visitors submit their email addresses, the drip cycle kicks in. They’ll get an initial opt-in email, then an email every few days, depending on what timeline you’ve decided on.

Drip Campaign in Action

Here at Buildicus, we make use of an educational drip. We provide potential customers with something of value — information — in a free 8-part course titled “Everything You Need To Know About Building a Website.”

The drips are delivered over the course of a month. Throughout, we try to foster a relationship, encouraging the recipient to email us with questions, and building up our authority on a variety of topics related to web design.

Of course, we also deliver a sales pitch, though not at first. The strategy goes like this (yes, I’m giving away our strategy. Use it in good health, my friend.):

Email 0: Introduction. Let the customer know what to expect over the next month.

Email 1: Education. Teach something useful right away.

Email 2: More education, soft sales pitch. The important part is still the education, though we start to mention the benefits of using Buildicus in relation to what we just taught.

Email 3: More education, soft sales pitch.

Email 4: Hard sales pitch. A lot less education in this email, and the following one. It’s about positioning Buildicus as the solution to a problem.

Email 5: Hard sales pitch.

Email 6: Education. Back to straight-up education. No sales pitch on this one.

Email 7: Education. In this email, we specifically tell people Buildicus may not be for them. Best to keep things honest, as it builds trust.

Email 8: Education. In this one, we let customers know that although the drip campaign is over, we’re still in their lives, and are just an email away.

What You Should Do Today

If you think a drip campaign might work for your business, start planning out your content strategy.

If you don’t have a ton of content to share, you can share the content of others in your industry along with your thoughts and expertise on the matter. (Make certain to cite the authors of this content, and provide a link back to the original post. Plagiarism is not okay.)

Once you have a good collection of information to share, check out the email services listed above to see which one can cater to your needs.

And check out our campaign for ideas. Just click the pop-up at the bottom left of the Buildicus homepage.

Finally, fix that leaky bathroom faucet. Whattsa matter with you?

More reading: Why You Should Be Collecting Email Addresses All The Time