Today, I would like us to explore the possibility of implementing Drip Marketing using the PowerAddon Marketing Cloud tool for Microsoft Dynamics 365. By Drip Marketing, we mean the sending of automated newsletters to clearly defined customer segments.
An example of Drip Marketing would be when users sign up for our e-commerce portal and we send them an email thanking them for registering, or when customers make a purchase from our e-commerce portal and we send them the “thank you email”.
The first thing to do, especially when we’re constructing a Drip Marketing Campaign for the first time, is to create segments of like-minded customers. An example might be all customers who behave in a similar way or share a certain feature (e.g. location).
In a drip marketing campaign, in addition to these customer clusters, it is also very important to define the types of email that you want to send and the actions that will lead to the sending of these emails.
Every email that you create needs to contain useful information related to the action that triggers it. For example, it is pointless sending an email that links to special offers on an old collection if you know that the customer in question only buys items from new collections. The most important thing, therefore, is not just to have a series of emails, but to understand the appeal of these emails for a specific customer cluster.
Do these campaigns really work?
According to studies carried out by industry analysts, drip marketing emails have an open rate twice as high as normal email campaigns.
Be careful – this doesn’t mean that customers love being bombarded with emails every day, so don’t overdo it. Otherwise, the conversion rate will drop to the usual levels for other newsletters.
When should you use drip marketing?
There are 9 situations where drip marketing is normally used:
- Nurturing
- Welcome emails
- Cart abandonment
- Recommendations
- Subscription renewal
- Purchase confirmation
- Engagement
- Cancelling a subscription
- When the customer reaches a certain “loyalty level”
It is important for each of these situations to have the right kind of communication that allows the customer to interact with you.
How do I set up a Drip Campaign in Microsoft Dynamics 365?
Let’s imagine that you want to create a new segment containing customers who are interested in the product promoted by the newsletter. First, you need to create the initial segmentation (Marketing List) in Microsoft Dynamics 365 (see image) with the help of the Advanced Find function.
Once this is done, these are the simple steps you need to follow:
• Once you have created the segmentation, launch the PowerAddon Marketing Cloud tool in Dynamics 365 (Marketing Designer Tool)
• Select “Designer List” from the top menu
- Create a new campaign
- Name the campaign “Drip Campaign”
- Open the “Drip Campaign” campaign that you have just created
- Select the item “Input Marketing List” from the menu on the left
- In the configuration panel (right-hand side), select the previously created marketing list (see image)
- Add the “Newsletter” component
- Link “Input Marketing List” to the “Newsletter” component
- In the configuration panel for the Newsletter component, insert the following:
- Campaign name: Enter the name “First Drip Campaign”
- Distribution date: Enter the date when you would like the newsletter to be sent to the linked marketing list
- Cluster type: Insert a new cluster called “Drip”
- Click “Prepare Newsletter” and start preparing the first newsletter to be sent to the linked marketing list
- Once you have designed the first newsletter, add the component “Output Marketing List”
- In the configuration panel for the component “Output Marketing List”, enter the name of the new marketing list that will be made up of customers who reacted to the first drip marketing campaign. You could call it “New Drip Marketing List”
- Link the “Click” output point of the “Newsletter” component to the input point of the “Output Marketing List” component
- Add the “Wait” component
- In the configuration panel for the “Wait” component, enter 4 days
- Link the output of the “Output Marketing List” component to the input point of the “Wait” component
- Link the output point of the “Wait” component to the “Marketing List” input point of the “Newsletter” component
- You can now add a new “Newsletter” component:
- Campaign name: “Second Drip Campaign”
- Distribution date: Do not enter a date (the tool will automatically calculate the date based on the start of the first campaign and the time entered for the “Wait” component)
- Cluster type: Select “Drip”
- In the configuration panel for the component “Output Marketing List”, enter the name of the new marketing list that will be made up of customers who reacted to the first drip marketing campaign. You could call it “Best Drip Marketing List”
- Link the “Click” output point of the “Newsletter” component to the input point of the “Output Marketing List” component
- Add the “Stop” component
- Link the output of the “Output Marketing List” component to the input of the Stop component
- Configure the “Stop” component by entering 5 days
Once you have configured the process, you can activate the “goal” of the “Stop” component in order to assess the effectiveness of the first “Drip Marketing” campaign.
- Activate “Goal Calculation” for the “Stop” component
- Select the item “More Than”
- For “Goal Unit”, leave “Percentage”
- Select the percentage that you consider satisfactory (usually 40%)
Click “Save” to save the flowchart that you have created, and then click “Activate” to activate it.
This is just one example of how you can create a Drip Marketing campaign using the Evolution Builder tool built in to Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Stay Tuned for the next article.
