The Power of Drip eMail Campaigns

Drip Marketing, aptly named after an agricultural process known as drip irrigation, can be a very powerful strategy in your email program to convert leads to sales. In gardening and agriculture, the drip irrigation technique delivers a slow steady flow of water to a plant or group of plants over a scheduled period of time, instead of delivering a heavy flow of water all at once which may harm, drown, or overwater the plant. Similarly, drip marketing purposefully delivers a flow of messages to a specific market over a prescribed and planned period of time. Even though drip marketing techniques can be used in a variety of marketing media (advertising, direct mail, etc.), email offers the most powerful and cost-effective means to help marketers maximize the power of drip by leveraging advanced technology, enhancing email ROI, strengthening name recognition and brand awareness, and shortening the lead-to-sales conversion cycle within email campaigns.

Drip email marketing requires advanced planning and specialized delivery tools. Most reputable email service providers or email delivery management systems have built in advanced features to help e-marketers with the setting up and auto-firing of customized and targeted drip email campaigns. Actions taken by the lead or prospect, such as registering for an event, completing an online inquiry or subscribing to the companyâ??s email list, can trigger the chain of drip email communications. When this initiating action occurs, the system automatically and intelligently launches a set of predetermined customized email communications sent at specific intervals to continue the conversation with that prospect.

The Internet has made an impact on how we sell and market our businesses. Your web site is an integral part of your sales process, so increasing traffic to your site is critical. More importantly, you need to know how and why they came to your site in the first place. This â??Business Intelligenceâ? will help you maximize your marketing efforts.

Google has a free tool, Google Analytics, which can help you improve your online results. It shows you where your visitors are coming from AND how they interact with your site. Knowing what pages they are visiting and tracking their conversion ratio (purchasing) will help you write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites.

Email marketing is another tool that offers a wealth of analytics, boosts your website traffic and your sales. Similar to Google Analytics, with email marketing you can track who opened the email, who read it, who clicked on links in the email, and which links they clicked on. By combining email and Google Analytics, you can track each emailâ??s impact on your website and bottom line. It also enables you to see where you are losing your email â??clickersâ? so you can make the proper adjustments.

Google Analytics is simple to add to your web site, and itâ??s one of the best things you can do for your business.