PressLinesVolume 28, Number 1 • Winter 2018 Courtesy of Ripon Printers

Do Your Marketing Campaigns Drip with Success?

Drip marketing campaigns are all the rage. You’ve likely heard of them and perhaps even used the concept. The intent of this article is to take your knowledge to a higher level, whether you’re in the consideration phase or looking for ways to make yours better.

What Is Drip Marketing? Known by a lot of names from marketing automation to autoresponders, a drip campaign is a set of marketing communications that are sent automatically on a set schedule. While many campaigns are pure digital, usually email driven, they may also be used in direct mail or phone-based marketing. Better still, they may include elements of each.

The communications can be sent based purely on timelines or they can be triggered by certain actions. And while the preparation can be somewhat demanding – everything is prewritten and designed – the automa-tion ultimately kicks in and takes over the heavy lifting. You can then spend your time analyzing results, testing and refining the program.

Above all, drip campaigns are about nurturing. So, you’ll want to consider personalization at each step, regardless of the communication channel. The drip concept centers around “right target, right information, right timing.” Successful campaigns convert prospects to customers and customers to long-term relationships.

But Do They Work?According to Joe Stych, product marketing manager for Zapier, a company that enables connecting everyday apps and automating workflows, drip campaigns work very well. Citing research from Emma, an email market-ing platform provider, relevant targeted emails produce

18 times more revenue than globally-broadcasted ones. What’s more, recipients who read drip emails click the links at an increased rate of 119 percent.

To quote Stych, “That’s huge, especially considering that you can reuse content, and everything is sent out automatically.”

Multiple Applications There are many ways to use drip marketing campaigns. Here are some common applications identified by Stych:

• Lead nurturing. Get your prospects more sale ready and inspire them to make larger purchases. You can use drip campaigns to accomplish tasks such as educating them about your products, offering free trials and helping them use certain features.

Successful Marketing campaigns...continued

• Welcoming. New subscribers to a newsletter, for example, have little idea what’s been published in the past. Create a drip campaign that delivers some of your most popular posts or offer case studies on how other customers use your products.

• Onboarding. Along with welcoming drips, you can add target sells that might include signing up for a webinar, downloading your app or upgrading to a premium service or subscription.

• Abandoned shopping carts. Get that hard-earned sale back by confirming that the product is still avail-able and reinforce features and benefits. Don’t move so fast as to seem creepy, but keep in mind that most people who return do so within 24 hours.

• Recommendation engine. The more you know about customers’ buying habits, the more you can predict what they will like. Drip campaigns are perfect for suggesting products and services as well as delivering coupons to entice another purchase.

• Renewals. During critical renewal periods, drip campaigns can provide notifications to auto-renewal customers and re-up emails to non-auto-renewals. When you do get the renewal, the customer can receive a thank you and perhaps an opportunity to enlist a friend.

• Confirmations. Send instant purchase confirmations and include links to your product’s or service’s latest features. You can also try making an upsell or include a coupon for a future purchase.

• Engagement. It’s no revelation that the more someone engages with you, the more likely they are to purchase. Use drip campaigns to encourage return visits to your site. If activity still lags, some experts suggest offering incentives, altering your schedule or writing a new call to action.

• Courses. Use the drip concept to offer a pre-set number of communications on a topic related to your business, such as six lessons to help you have the greenest lawn in the neighborhood. You may be able to use existing content, and you’ll increase your open and clickthrough rates significantly with series courses.

• Unsubscribes. Instead of just telling someone you’re sorry to see them go, try using an autoresponder to promote other channels like Twitter or Facebook. Sometimes people just want to interact in a different way.

Why Bother with Print?Not everyone does, but not doing so can be a real mistake.

For starters, there are areas such as financial services and healthcare where most people prefer mail for reasons such as privacy and security. And in general,

Names are important to me. They are the identi-fier of who we are as people. One of my goals is to call people

by their name – “Hi, Jerry” and “Hey, Sara” vs. “Hi” and “Hey,” and I’m betting that most people like to be called by their name. I know I do!

The name on my birth certificate is “Hiram Andersen Lyke,” with the Hiram being from my father’s side, and Andersen being my mater-nal grandmother’s maiden name. Because of the people for whom I am named, I am fussy about getting my name spelled correctly, especial-ly on legal documents. I’m not an Andrew (although I am fond of the name “Drew”), and I don’t have an “O” in my name, either.

I pity some of the children who are just starting to enter kindergarten. The ones I’m talking about are the Kaitlyns/Caitlyns/Katelyns/Catelins/Catelyns/Kaitlins/Katelins/Katelynns, etc., or other more current names with numerous spellings. Will whomever is recording her name get it right? Does it matter?

During the height of immigrants entering through Ellis Island in New

York Harbor, names occasionally got changed on the spot by recorders. Sometimes changes occurred in the rush as they processed thousands of people. For example, I was told of one person’s relative who was recorded as Kathleen when her name was Catherine. But often it was to shorten longer surnames, especially those from Eastern Europe. I suspect the victims of these name changes, intentional or not, probably didn’t appreciate them. Though in fairness, immigrants sometimes changed them on their own to sound more American.

We used to be known as Ripon Community Printers, partly to have the same initials as our local newspaper that we publish, the Ripon Commonwealth-Press. We also prided ourselves as printing for the local community. However, we changed our name about 10 years ago to Ripon Printers to reflect that we are a nationally known printer and work for customers in nearly every state in the country. We are Ripon Printers, not Ripon Printing, as we emphasize that we are a collection of craftspeople who work together to produce quality results.

What’s in your name?

What’s in a name?

Andy Lyke

Headquarters656 S. Douglas StreetRipon, WI 54971 – 0006

(800) 321-3136 (920) 748-3136

riponprinters.com

Milwaukee office16000 W Rogers DriveNew Berlin, WI 53151

Indianapolis office755 W Carmel DriveSuite 209Carmel, IN 46032

studies show that about half of consumers prefer postal mail over email.

Postal mail is often regarded as more personal and carries a higher level of trust. Most people enjoy going to the mailbox and reading their mail. More importantly, study after study shows that direct mail effectively drives engagement from store and website visits to actual purchases.

Additionally, today’s print is high tech. You can do incredible custom-ization as well as connect print and digital with tools ranging from personalized URLs (PURLs) to augmented reality.

Drip Marketing Is a Team Sport Above all, don’t let your campaigns suffer from channel lock. A well-crafted direct mail piece, combined with other powerful digital tools, will stand out, get noticed and build engagement with consumers of all ages better than either print or digital alone.

And if you’re looking for a partner, contact your Ripon Printers repre-sentative. Our Traxion Marketing Support offers a powerful drip campaign platform though Xerox’s XMPie® software. We can create and deliver emails, variable data direct mail and PURLs while providing full campaign analytics. /RP

PO Box 6, Ripon, WI 54971

Perfect Storm Brings Truck Availability to Historically Low LevelsOccasionally multiple factors converge to bring about unforeseen challenges. In this case, the storm began with federal regulations put into effect last December requiring all truck fleets to implement certified Electronic Logging Devices (ELD) to record hours of service activity or risk ticketing for non-compliance. 

Real storms in the form of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit the US Gulf and much of the southeastern states. Add that to an improved economy, a peak retail season and significant winter storms and you suddenly have a short-age of truck availability.

Worse still, the ELD effect has not completely played out. More drivers may choose to abandon long-distance driving when the out-of-compliance penalties kick in on April 1. Analysts’ estimates show that drivers who contin-ue over-the-road trucking will likely cover fewer miles per day, with deliveries in the 400-500-mile range taking two days instead of one.

What this means to you is that incoming shipments such as paper to Ripon Printers, as well as outgoing shipments of finished printed materials, may take a day longer. We are working hard with our raw material suppliers and our shipping partners to minimize delays. We will also be working with our customers to acceler-ate production times to account for potentially longer shipping times. /RP

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