How many interactions does a customer need to have with a brand before they buy?
 
It depends on who you ask.
 
However, one thing is for certain.
 
It takes multiple times of being exposed to your brand before a customer usually buys from a company.  Once you gain that familiarity, you’re in good shape for earning their business. 

According to Accenture, 90% of customers say they are more likely to purchase from a company they’re familiar with. 

That’s where drip campaigns can help you get that sale. 

Drip campaigns are a series of content pieces that are delivered to the customer in a predefined frequency over time. It’s an online marketing tactic that is used to keep your customers engaged with your company and brand. 

Successful selling involves giving people information at the right time. 

If you give people too much info at a time, it’s hard to retain. 

Also, if you try to close before someone is ready, you’re more likely to lose the sale. 

Drip campaigns solve the problems of timing, brand exposure, and the amount of info communicated. 

Drip campaigns are an automated series of emails sent to a customer, each one focusing on a different point. 

The key to creating a successful drip campaign is not just about the content you provide, but also about how you schedule it. 

Experiment with different frequencies (e.g., three emails in seven days) and email content to see what receives the most sales, website visits, and email open rates. 

There are a few common customer interactions that are often used for drip campaigns. 

 

 

It’s great to capture the email address of potential customers. 

The question is: what do you do with them? 

One of the most effective things you could do is to create a drip campaign that triggers when someone provides an email to you on your site.

For example, say you are trying to get new patients for a doctor’s office. 

In the initial email, you can have the campaign send a brief email introducing yourself and asking them if they would like to meet or ask additional questions. 

If they don’t respond to the email, a few days later you could send an email that talks about the doctor’s credentials to build trust.  Then if they don’t respond after that, you can have it send an email to talk about the healthy benefits of a procedure/exam the doctor does. 

See how drip campaigns build familiarity with your brand, and lets you emphasize key selling points? 

 

Baymard Institute says that 69.57% of online shopping carts are abandoned. 

That means that for every sale you’re getting today, two other people were interested in buying, but didn’t for some reason. 

So obviously the question is, how can you turn those into sales? 

You constantly want to tweak your checkout process to see if something there is causing customers to leave. 

However, you should also think about implementing something like abandoned cart emails.

If you capture visitor email addresses before they make the purchase, you can leverage these to send follow-up emails to the customer. 

In your first email, you can remind people that they didn’t complete the purchase.  Of course, they’ll know that, but perhaps they didn’t finish because they got distracted.  Or maybe, they were on the fence and this extra nudge will give them the encouragement they need. 

If they don’t respond in a few days, maybe you could offer them a discount or a special deal.  Or maybe you could try to highlight some of the benefits of your product/service in a follow-up email. 

 

A great time to start a drip campaign is right after someone signs up for an account. 

After a customer signs up for an account, they are generally sent a welcome email.

However, that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. 

You could send subsequent emails.  You could send emails that talk about other products/services that you think that they may be interested in. 

If they bought a product that usually only lasts for a certain duration, like a toothbrush, you could send them a reminder to purchase another one in a month.

Welcome emails are usually read, so it's a great time to start a campaign. 

According to Experian, welcome emails have a 58.7% open rate on average, while normal emails sit around 14.6%.

Drip campaigns are a very cost-effective way to get people to buy.  They offer a way to build trust with your brand while ushering people towards a purchase decision. 

If you don’t already use email software that can run automated campaigns, check out Mailchimp or Drip.  Both of them have plans that scale with you, starting at $10-15/month.