Drip campaign

Interest fades quickly. Without a drip, a prospect goes quiet between first interest and the moment they are ready to buy, and by the time someone follows up by hand the moment has usually passed. A drip also produces signals. Opens, clicks and replies show who is warming up and who is not.

• Pick a trigger that fires when the person is receptive, such as a signup, a download or a visit to the pricing page.
• Leave a few days between emails so each one earns the next open.
• Branch the run. Someone who clicks should move faster or reach a person, and someone silent should get a shorter, gentler run.
• Personalise with fields that fill themselves, such as name, company or the page they viewed.
• Add a one-click unsubscribe to every email, and watch the unsubscribe rate as a warning that timing or relevance has slipped.

Few buyers decide after one email. A drip campaign spreads the conversation over weeks, "dripping" one message at a time. Someone downloads a guide, the system starts their run, and a welcome, a customer story, an answer to a common objection and an offer of a call follow at set gaps. Nobody sends anything manually, so the tenth person is treated exactly like the first.

A drip is longer and broader than an email sequence, which is a short run aimed at one specific action.

• Sending the same drip to everyone, whatever they did or need.
• Setting it up once and never reading the results.
• Continuing to send after the person has replied or booked.