Many an MSP company has found notable benefit in drip marketing campaigns. The way in which you apply drip marketing is going to be as unique as your particular business. Essentially, drip marketing is when you casually, briefly, and continuously “drip” marketing material along to the contacts you’re seeking to convert or up-sell.
Commonly, drip marketing today incorporates email outreach. Think of it like filling a rain barrel one “drip” at a time; only the rain barrel is your target customer, and when it is filled, that represents a conversion.
Drip Marketing Tactics
There are virtually endless drip marketing tactics, some work better than others. Following, we’ll briefly go over several which are especially amenable to MSPs, including:
Welcoming New Customers with Drip Tactics–But No CTAs Yet
When you get contact information for a new potential customer, one drip marketing tactic is a welcome email. Perhaps there’s a mild promotion or a product overview segment in the email. But don’t use any calls to action (CTAs) just yet. You don’t want to frighten away your “prey”, as it were.
Use CRM to Track Engagement, and Re-Engage Over Time
Your MSP company would be well-advised to use customer relationship management (CRM) tools as a means of tracking which customers you’ve engaged. This helps you re-engage in a way that’s not repetitive over time. Re-engagement should take place, but you don’t want to spam anybody’s inbox, and you don’t want to send the same message twice.
Drips Focused on Specific Products or Updates
When you have a new product or CRM software indicates that the customer you are messaging would be a right fit for a certain product they don’t have, it can be worthwhile to send out a message. Updates and specific products are prime opportunities to market.
Follow-Ups and Promotions
It’s integral to follow up with existing and prospective customers. CRM helps you avoid doing so twice. Promotions help impel existing customers toward new services or products for which they represent a good fit.
Be careful with promotions–you want to do them at intervals, not continuously. Don’t be like that car dealer who finds a new excuse for some over-emphasized “blow out” sale every weekend; that’s tiresome and hard for the sort of customers you’re courting to believe.
Incorporating Drip-Marketing into Your MSP Outreach Strategy
Your MSP company can use quite a few different drip-marketing techniques, and some are more appropriate than others. Welcome, re-engagement, product, update, follow-up, and promotional drips all have their place. Consultation can help you determine which of these will best serve your MSP, and CRM helps you keep from incidentally repeating yourself. Drip marketing has a lot of value to it; if you’re not incorporating it, you may want to re-evaluate your outreach strategy to include this tactic.