Easy Does It: What A Hit Song From 1981 Can Teach You About Drip Marketing

Do you remember 38 Special’s 1981 hit Hold on Loosely? It goes, “Just hold on loosely, but don’t let go. If you cling too tightly, you’re gonna lose control.” For business owners, those words couldn’t be truer. Often overworked, business owners stretch themselves thin trying to run every aspect of their business instead of delegating responsibility—either because they don’t have the resources to do so or are micromanagers who aren’t ready to trust others.

One question you probably asked yourself many times when feeling overwhelmed is “Am I ready to let go of my marketing?” Most business owners would say “no” or be very hesitant. So, what do you do? Continue wishing there were more hours in the day and going crazy? Not if Pel Hughes can help it.
Introducing Drip Marketing, one of the best options to keep you in touch with your marketing while giving you the flexibility and freedom from it that you desire. Drip marketing can smooth out the ups and downs in your business by prompting continuous cash flow. If you’re unfamiliar with Drip Marketing, it is a communication strategy that sends, or “drips,” a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over time. These messages often take the form of email marketing, although other media can also be used. Drip Marketing is distinct from other database marketing in two ways: (1) the timing of the messages follow a pre-determined course; (2) the messages are dripped in a series applicable to a specific behavior or status of the recipient.

Committing to marketing for the long-haul will give you a great chance of having primed customers available when you need them. But making that commitment is difficult for most businesses. To help, Pel Hughes can completely automate and manage your Drip Marketing plan, from strategy to execution. How? First, we sit down with you to develop a personalized Drip Marketing plan. You decide how often you want to “drip” and with what sort of media you want to use (direct mail, email, SMS, or any combination of these and more). These drips can be as simple or complicated as you want. We can easily send a direct mail piece to your customer and be done. But, we can also trigger an email as soon as that direct mail piece is delivered, telling them to check their mailbox. If you have their phone number, we can shoot them a text too. Plus, we can add links to all of your social media sites on any marketing outreach. We can even make those links in the form of QR codes for easy integration.

There are two general categories of drip marketing plans—nurturing existing customers and generating new leads. When it comes to nurturing, the key is to have all of your previous customers think of you first when they’re ready to do business again. To do that, it’s important to constantly stay in front of them, reminding them of your message and your value. This kind of Drip Marketing is focused on building customer loyalty and generating repeat business. Previous customers are easier to convince than brand new ones, and automated Drip Marketing can help you hold onto them.
Lead generation is all about gaining new customers. Sales people always need new leads, and a lead generation plan is a great way to fill their pipeline. This kind of Drip Marketing is focused on capturing customer data, and their business. You want to try and learn as much about these prospects as you can so your Drip Marketing will become more and more relevant as you continue the conversation with them.

Regardless of which plan you focus on, once you confirm your schedule, we handle it from there—allowing you to finally take that breather you’ve been wanting. You have full transparency into our system, so you don’t have to worry about what’s being done, you can just log in and see for yourself. You can easily see what’s in progress and what’s coming up.
So if you’re ready to hold on loosely, but not completely let go, contact us at 1.800.253.0249 to discuss how we can create a Drip Marketing plan for you.