Email funnels & drip campaigns
True story: one of us had a 15-month-old baby who pointed at Multnomah Falls, pictured here, and commented, "Drip." Understatement of the year!
It should be an understatement to call your email marketing funnel a 'drip' campaign, too. Your email funnel should guide your prospects throughout the buying journey, and should gently nurture your customers through what may be a long sales process. Your email funnel should not take you away from your core business. And your email funnel should just about guarantee that when your prospect is ready to buy - they buy from you.
More about email nurture campaigns
If you ask 5 different marketing gurus for a definition of a nurture email campaign, you'll likely get 7 or 8 different answers. And some will get very passionate about the technical sides, and whether or not you're splitting your prospects and customers into groups according to which emails they open, and so on.
Here's the thing. It's enough to know that the point of an email nurture campaign is to make sure that you don't lose the leads you've worked so hard to find, and that when they are ready to buy, they think of YOU.
How does it work? Like this:
Whether you've acquired your leads through your website, your inside sales department, or some other source - you want to make sure they remember you when they are ready to buy.
So you send them an email - an extremely useful email, chock full of wisdom and insights that they will find relevant. Depending on your business or niche, of course, you might send them industry tips, coupons, or whatever - but you make sure your USP is woven throughout, without being spammy or annoying.
You provide your prospects with value, before they become your customers. The basic idea is to put yourself in the shoes of your target market, and find ways to help them. For example, if you're a manufacturer selling through a network of distributors, you won't just bombard them with BUY THIS WONDERFUL PRODUCT emails - because if you do, they won't. But you might send them sales tips and techniques, teaching your prospects' sales staff to close more effectively, or how to ask their customers leading questions. Suddenly your prospects are looking at you as a trusted adviser, and buying from you becomes the natural outcome.