The Magic of Drip Effect Marketing
Welcome to our blog dedicated to the magic of drip effect marketing.
By clicking on this page, you're clearly taking your marketing seriously and doing your due diligence on how drip marketing could multiply your leaflet distribution response rates.
On this page, we will cover:
What on earth is drip effect marketing?
Is it a way we can trick you into ordering more?
Why we believe this is the most critical decision of your whole leaflet distribution order.
How to decide the most appropriate number of stages and frequency for your business.
How to benefit from multi-stage savings.
What on earth is drip effect marketing?
Drip effect marketing (also known as drip-feed marketing or drip marketing) is where you drip-feed your marketing message to your specific audience. It is the plant, cultivate and harvest principle.
How does it work? For leaflet distribution, you send a flyer to your chosen target areas frequently. Typically, businesses new to door-to-door trial it over three stages. For example, they distribute to the same 30k addresses in September, October and November (this would be a 3-stage monthly campaign).
This marketing principle is age-old and used across all marketing media. Unfortunately, businesses often opt for the ineffective one-hit-wonder approach when it comes to leaflets. It is like going to the gym once and expecting to see instant results! All of our most successful clients use multi-stage drip effect marketing campaigns.
Is it just a way we can get you to order more?
At first glance, I'm sure that may have come to mind! And granted, it is, of course, better for us if you order more. However, if you've spotted our core values, you know that's not the reason. Here they are:
We will build your business
It should be a no-brainer decision
Advise and educate rather than sell
We know that the one-hit-wonder (one-off distribution) is nowhere near as effective as a multi-stage campaign - both from years of experience in the industry and industry stats (see some below).
Using the drip marketing strategy will build your business more than a one-off. It is a no-brainer decision to choose something proven to be considerably more effective, and that's why we look to advise and educate you on this. Therefore, providing multi-stage campaigns encapsulates our core values.
Gosh, that was deep! But, hopefully, you see how critical we know this decision to be in the success of your business growth!
"Advertising mail delivers increased customer value by increasing sales activity through long-term engagement." DMA
"Mail isn't a one-off thing in a box; it's about building connections over time." JICMAIL
"Your advertising mail (including leaflets, flyers and brochures) will deliver the best results if you design it with a big-picture view. Ensure that you map your customer journey out over a full year." DMA
Why we believe this is the most critical decision of your whole leaflet distribution campaign
The best way to demonstrate why we believe this is such a critical decision is to illustrate it.
Let's take a thermometer.
A hot lead may account for 0.1-1% of your recipients. What makes them hot?
Usually, they were already looking to purchase your offering right when they received your flyer. E.g. They just received an MOT reminder, and then your garage promoting MOTs sends a flyer to them at the perfect time.
The small remainder of hot leads are impulse buyers. Your flyer design was so good, and your call to action was so compelling and relevant to them that they wanted to purchase it immediately.
So what about the remaining 99%? They fall into the warm and cold leads.
A warm lead may account for 1-50% of your leads.
A warm lead likely won't respond to your first distribution. They aren't in desperate need of your product or service right now. Life's busy, and they lose or misplace your flyer and forget about it.
But at least you sparked their interest in your business. You've created some brand awareness - you're no longer a stranger to them. They may even decide to contact you 'when the time is right'.
Your task now is to heat them up! Turn them from warm to hot. The best way to do this is frequency. Keep going back to them. It may only take one more flyer, two, three or more - so keep persisting with them.
The cold leads then account for the remaining 50% of receivers.
These guys don't perceive any need for your product/service. They are opposed to flyers, or any marketing for that matter. They try and throw your flyer away before they risk being enticed to respond!
But you never know; their circumstances may change. Or someone else in the house may get to the mail first that day. They may just surprise you (and themselves) and get in touch.
To help improve these odds, to see the warm leads go way above 50%, it's all about reaching the right people and sending them the right message.
When you send to people who are most likely to love your service, they are the ones most likely to buy from you. That's why we created our complimentary targeting tool for you.
It's then a case of creating eye-catching, compelling, actionable artwork that resonates with them.
How to decide the most appropriate number of stages and frequency for your business
Generally speaking, we recommend a 3-stage, every four weeks campaign for businesses new to leaflet distribution and/or relatively new companies. This is a good trial.
A four-weekly frequency is soon enough so people don't forget you and long enough so they aren't annoyed.
For established businesses and those familiar with door-to-door marketing, we recommend a six-stage campaign going out every four weeks.
The only scenarios where a one-off campaign makes sense are for last-minute, time-sensitive events or if you're publicising a public notice.
Usually, a weekly campaign is too frequent. Rather than keeping your business in people's minds (like a monthly campaign), it just bugs them!
However, weekly is ideal when you have an event. This can have a great impact if you send out your flyers on a countdown basis - three weeks before, two weeks before and then a final reminder flyer one week earlier.
Monthly campaigns build excellent brand awareness and, within that, brand engagement. Once that brand awareness is established, you can reduce frequency without reducing impact.
Therefore, once you've done a three- or six-stage campaign to set postcode sectors, you could do another three- or six-stage one, but every eight weeks instead.
How to benefit from multi-stage savings
As if all the benefits to your ROI aren't enough - we give you one last prod to choose multi-stage campaigns with multi-stage savings!
It's so easy to achieve the savings - you simply choose a multi-stage campaign!
For three stages, we provide a 5% saving and a 7.5% saving for six stages.
The savings are applied to your final stage. For instance, if each stage costs £2,000 and you do three stages, your final stage would cost just £1,700. For example:
Stage 1 - £2,000
Stage 2 - £2,000
Stage 3 - £1,700
(£2,000 x 3 = £6,000 - 5% = £300, £2,000 - £300 = £1,700.)
In Summary
We do hope this blog has helped you understand what drip marketing is, how it can multiply your returns, and which option is likely most appropriate for your business.