5 Steps to Create a Drip Campaign for B2B Manufacturers

Even if you haven’t heard the term “drip campaign” you know what it is. Every morning when you check your email we all see it – another email from our favorite retailer (or the retailer we just signed up with to get that 10% discount). What that retailer is doing is repeatedly sending you (the prospect) marketing information in order to nurture you to make a purchase. As a manufacturer in the B2B space you may be wondering how you can use a drip campaign to nurture your own leads. Here is a step-by-step guide for how manufacturers can use drip campaigns in their B2B marketing.

Step 1 – Implement a Marketing Automation Platform

Choose the email or marketing automation platform that fits your business best. Once you do this, you can set up your drip campaign one time and it will automatically run (send out your emails for you). If you don’t have a marketing automation platform, you can still use the steps below to nurture your prospects but the work will need to be done manually rather than automatically.

Step 2 – Segment Your Prospects

If you haven’t defined who your buyer personas are, you’ll need to do this. Instructions on how to create your buyer personas can be found here. After you define the types of buyers you’re focusing your marketing efforts on, you need to segment your data. Create a list for each buyer persona. Prospects on your lists should be buyers that you consider “Marketing Qualified Leads.” It’s important to segment your prospects because the messaging you use to speak to each of your buyer personas will be different. You want to make sure your message resonates with them and speaks to their pain points, so it’s important to take the time to create individual campaigns for each buyer persona rather than trying to use one overarching message.

Step 3 – Define Your Goal

What are you hoping to achieve from your drip campaign? Do you want your prospects to set up a meeting with you, request a quote or some other type of event? Whatever your goal is, give your recipients the option to do this with every email you send. For example, include a call-to-action at the end of every email that the reader can click to request a quote. Once you define your goal, you can determine what content you should send your prospects.

Step 4 - Gather Your Content

What content would your prospects find valuable? This is the content you’ll want to include in your drip campaign emails. Think case studies, blog posts, infographics, industry articles and how-to guides. You don’t want every piece of content you send to be sales-focused on your company. Put yourself in your prospects shoes; would you want to receive emails that are constantly trying to sell you something? Keep the focus on resources that your prospects can use to make their purchasing decision. The more valuable and relevant the content, the more likely your prospects are to open and engage with it.

Step 5 – Analyze your Results

After you send an email, look at the following metrics:

• Deliverability (how many emails were successfully sent to your prospects)
• Open Rate (percentage who opened your email)
• Click Rate (percentage who clicked on a link in your email)

Note which pieces of content and topics are getting the most (and least) engagement and tweak the rest of your drip campaign as needed.

What other drip campaign tips have you found to be successful? Share them in the comments below.