B2B Drip Campaigns - 7 Case Studies - MarketingSherpa Jeanne Jennings Oct-2010

Jeanne S. Jennings
Consultant, Email Marketing Strategy
JeanneJennings.com, Inc.
Successful Drip Email Nurturing
Campaigns

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Copyright2010Itisillegaltodistributethispresentation.
• What is a Drip Campaign?
• Case Studies
• PRWeb
• Nortel
• U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)
• XOsoft
• BreakingPoint Systems
• National Education Association (NEA)
• Jaspersoft
• Additional Resources
Presentation Overview
April Showers
Bring May Flowers
But…
Drip
Campaigns
Drive
Revenue!

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Drip Campaigns
• Named after drip
irrigation…
• which saves resources by
allowing water and
fertilizer to drip slowly to
the roots of plants through
a network of valves, pipes,
tubing and emitters
Source: Wikipedia, September 2010

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Drip Campaign
• A communication
strategy that sends or
“drips” a pre-written set
of messages to
customers or prospects
over time
• Email marketing is the
channel most commonly
used
1. The timing of the
messages follows a
pre-determined
course
2. The messages are
“dripped” in a series
applicable to a
specific behavior or
status of the
recipient
3. Each message stands
alone but also builds
on those sent before

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Benefits of Drip Campaigns
• Evergreen: build them once, use them on
an ongoing basis
• Not Resource Intensive: automatically
triggered
• Consistent Messaging: complete control
over the information and how it is relayed
• Top of Mind Presence: build your case
over time

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CASE STUDY: PRWEB
Successful Drip Email Nurturing Campaigns

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Case Study: PRWeb
• Challenges
• Many visitors signed up for a
free PRWeb account, but few
went on to use the service
• No revenue is generated until
the registrant uses PRWeb to
send a press release
• Goal
• Increase the free-sign-up to
paying-customer conversion
rate
• Campaign Elements
• Existing Website content
• Email drip campaign welcome
series
• 4 effort series sent to all new
registrants over a 4 week
period
Source: Client Case Study, JeanneJennings.com, Inc.

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• Key Features, Benefits and Advantages
– Reach beyond just journalists, also search engine visibility
– Extensive tracking and reporting to quantify results
• Overcoming Obstacles to Using PRWeb
– Ability to write a press release
– Determining which service level fit their needs
• Testimonials
– Didn’t include these but should have!
• Incentive
– Significant upgrade on first press release send
• Urgency
– Deadline to quality for the upgrade
Drip Campaign Message Map

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• Increase in attendance at the
New User Orientation
Webinars
• More traffic to previously
“hidden” help pages
• Significant lift in conversions
from free registrants to paying
users
Source: Client Case Study, JeanneJennings.com. Inc.
Results

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CASE STUDY: NORTEL

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Case Study: Nortel
• Challenge
• Nortel had recently filed
bankruptcy and was in the
process of being acquired
• Goals
• Overcome prospects’
temptations to “wait and see”
what would happen with the
company before buying
• Keep prospects eager to buy
from signing with competitors
• New microsite
• Paid search and social media
• In-person and online events
• Email nurturing
• 4 effort series sent to new
prospects over a 6 week period
Source: Marketing Down the Sales Funnel: How Nortel’s Q4 Push Touched 30% of Pipeline and
Helped Close Deals, MarketingSherpa, March 3, 2010

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• Assurance
– Alleviate concerns about adopting Nortel tools and technology
– Highlight recent company growth and product innovations
• Rebuild Trust
– Focus on Nortel’s reputation for quality equipment, service offerings,
market share and history of innovation
• Urgency
– Emphasize strong product discounts and the importance of staying
current with technology to overcome the “wait and see” obstacle
• What’s Next for Nortel
– Give prospects a sense of the future of Nortel, including insights into
technology development, industry consolidation and other trends

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• Assurance
– Nortel’s role in providing communications infrastructure for the
2010 Vancouver Olympic winter games
• Rebuild Trust
– Third-party analysis of the value of implementing VOIP
networks
• Urgency
– Reminders of the special deals and discounts being offered for
Q4
• What’s Next for Nortel
– An analyst report about trends in the IT industry, and how CIOs
should evaluate the impact of mergers and acquisitions
Drip Campaign Content

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• Email Lead Nurturing Series
– Open Rates from 31.3% to
43.6%
– Click-through Rates from
7.1% to 17.0%
• 34% of revenue generated in
November and December
2009 came from prospects
that had interacted with this
program
Results

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CASE STUDY: U.S. GENERAL
SERVICES ADMINISTRATION

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Case Study: GSA
• Challenge
•Assist government procurement
professionals with spending
American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds
• Goals
•Educate procurement officers
about GSA programs
•Encourage them to contact GSA
for help
•Drip Campaign
•Originally 10 messages,
downsized to 6
•Focused on 4 key requirements
of ARRA spending

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• Four Key ARRA Requirements
– Speed: meet accelerated timeframes for spending
– Value: provide the maximum benefit from funds
– Transparency: show fair and reasonable
distribution of money
– Accountability: protect against fraud, waste, error
and abuse

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Strategic Plan
• 10 email messages; 2 phases (5 messages each)
– Each phase includes:
• 1 general email to set the tone (all 4 key requirements)
• 4 additional emails, each focusing on one key requirement
– Speed | Value | Transparency | Accountability
• Sent weekly over the course of 10 weeks
• Only 6 email messages were actually sent
– Phase 1, email 1
– Phase 2, emails 1 through 5

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Letter
Format
• Lotus Notes
• It’s not about
images – it’s
about the
information

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Content
Strategy
General Info (same all efforts)
1. GSA logo
2. ARRA logo
3. Key Links in left column
4. Call to action
Info specific to key
requirement of the email
5. Quote from peer
6. Timely fact about ARRA
spending
7. Benefit-oriented bullet points
1
2
3
5
6
7
4

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• It’s important to look at the performance of each effort
individually
• And also the average performance over the entire campaign
Tracking and Reporting
Phase Effort # Date Sent Send Q Bounce Rate Open Rate
CTR
(Unique)
CTOR
(Unique)
Forward
Rate
Unsub
Rate
Spam
Complaint
Rate
NA 5.9% 29.1% 6.4% 22.0% NA < 0.5% NA
1 1
7.21.09 - 7.24.09
(staggered) 52,621 13.4% 14.3% 1.0% 7.2% 0.01% 0.2% 0.00%
2 1 8.4.09, 3:00 PM 52,514 15.4% 12.6% 0.7% 5.9% 0.00% 0.2% 0.00%
2 2 8.18.09, 2:00 PM 52,410 16.1% 12.6% 0.7% 5.2% 0.00% 0.2% 0.01%
2 3 9.1.09, 1:52 PM 47,426 6.5% 13.8% 0.6% 4.6% 0.00% 0.2% 0.00%
2 4 9.15.09, 2:00 PM 47,338 7.5% 13.3% 0.6% 4.7% 0.01% 0.2% 0.00%
2 5 9.29.09, 5:05 PM 47,265 8.1% 11.9% 0.4% 3.4% 0.00% 0.1% 0.00%
AVERAGES 49,929 11.2% 13.1% 0.7% 5.2% 0.00% 0.2% 0.0%
Epsilon Q1 2009 Email Trends and
Benchmarks; Business Products and

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• You should also look at overall campaign performance
• Average open rate over all efforts was 13.1% (11.9% to 14.3% range)
• The cumulative unique open rate shows the value of multiple sends
• A total of 12,772 unique people opened at least one email in the series
• This is 28.9% of the average number of email messages assumed delivered for
each send
• With each send, the cumulative unique opens grew by an average of 10.6%
Send 1.1 Send 2.1 Send 2.2 Send 2.3 Send 2.4 Send 2.5
Unique Opens (cumulative) 6,541 8,547 9,944 11,199 12,068 12,772
Lift Send over Send (#) 2,006 1,397 1,255 869 704
Lift Send over Send (%) 31% 16% 13% 8% 6%
Average Lift 10.6%
Opens

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• A similar analysis of key link performance drives the point home
• The link to the GSA Advantage landing page was one of the top four links
in all of the email messages
• Click-through rates on individual efforts ranged from .07% to 0.18%
• A total of 359 unique people clicked on this link during the campaign
• This is nearly 5 times the number of clicks from the first effort
• The cumulative unique clicks grew by an average of 25.2% per send
Send 1.1 Send 2.1 Send 2.2 Send 2.3 Send 2.4 Send 2.5
Unique Clicks (cumulative) 73 150 220 284 334 359
Lift Send over Send (#) 77 70 64 50 25
Lift Send over Send (%) 105% 47% 29% 18% 7%
Average Lift 25.2%
GSA Advantage

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CASE STUDY: XOSOFT

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• Challenge
• Find a cost-effective way to handle
an onslaught of leads
• Suddenly 25% of unique
Website visitors converting to
leads
• Sales reps with limited time
needed to focus on “hot” leads
• Goal
• Convert a higher percentage of
leads to genuine sales opportunities
• Lead qualification system
• Targeted drip campaign based on
prospect segment
Source: Best Practices in Email Marketing Handbook (2009), MarketingSherpa
Case Study: XOsoft

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Is the Lead Qualified?
Reps Contact all Leads -- 4 Questions
1. Existing Project
– Is there a real project in the works at the organization?
1. Budget
– Has the organization allocated a budget yet?
1. Tech
– Does the organization meet tech requirements?
1. Investigate Commitment
– Is the lead also examining our competitors?
Qualified
leads
immediately
rose from
4% to 17%

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Decision
Tree
Different
communications
based on:
•lead quality
•source
•title of prospect

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Informal Newsletter
Format
• Goal: keep unqualified leads
warm
• Informal style outperformed
more traditional newsletter
format
– 14% lift in open rate
• 48% vs. 42%
– 100% lift in click-through rate
• 16% vs. 8%
– 74% lift in click-to-open rate
• 33% vs. 19%

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Just Checking in Email
• Goal: keep
unqualified leads
warm
• Sent quarterly
Results
• Conversions on
qualified leads rose
to 60%

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CASE STUDY: BREAKINGPOINT

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• Challenge
• Develop a successful lead
generation program for a start-
up without a strong brand or
established customer base
• Goals
• Create a powerful engine to
generate a consistent stream of
high quality inbound leads
from the Web
• Sales and Marketing Alignment
• Social Monitoring
• Prospecting Tools
• Content Engine
• Destination Website
• Company Social Network Presence
• Ready, Willing and Enabled Sales
Team
• Email Drip Marketing
Source: How to use Social Media and Email for Prospecting: 8 Essentials, MarketingSherpa,
January 28, 2010
Case Study: BreakingPoint

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Using Social Media to Drive Email Acquisition
Source: How to use Social Media and Email for Prospecting: 8 Essentials, MarketingSherpa,
January 28, 2010

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CASE STUDY: NATIONAL
EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

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Case Study: NEA
• Challenge
• Use drip campaigns to respond
to add relevance and respond
to member behavior
• Goals
• Encourage members to add a
beneficiary to their
complementary life insurance
plan
• API to share information
between the NEA database and
Web analytics
• Drip email campaign

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Drip Campaign Flow
• Flow begins at
Website registration
• Information passed
from NEA Database
immediately
• Behavior monitored
after each send
• Appropriate follow-
up email messages
are sent

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CASE STUDY: JASPERSOFT

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Case Study: Jaspersoft
• Challenge
• Communicate effectively with
many different customer
constituent groups
• Open source developers
• Customers using open source
version
• Paying customers using
professional edition
• Goals
• Develop a better way to segment
the database and automatically
provide relevant information to
all groups
• Customer profiling
• Database segmentation
• Automated/triggered/drip
campaigns
• Outbound promotions
• Lead scoring
Source: Lead-Gen Revamp with Automation and Scoring: 7 Steps to 190% Increase in Sales
Conversions, MarketingSherpa, November 11, 2009

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Drip Campaign Strategy
• Trial download triggered
• Five emails over thirty day period
• Thank you/welcome
• Tools to help them use the software
• Links to online documentation and forums
for support
• Final email offering sales rep contact to
discuss professional edition
• Recipients sent into sub-campaigns
based on behavior (40 possible paths)
Source: Lead-Gen Revamp with Automation and Scoring: 7
Steps to 190% Increase in Sales Conversions,
MarketingSherpa, November 11, 2009

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

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Additional Resources
• MarketingSherpa Email Summit
2011
• Las Vegas, January 24-26, 2011
• MarketingSherpa Email Essentials
Workshop Training 2010
• Toronto, October 19, 2010
• Miami, November 9, 2010
• Los Angeles, December 7, 2010
• MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B
Marketing Benchmark Report
• MarketingSherpa 2010 Email
Marketing Benchmark Guide
Taught by
Jeanne Jennings
www.MarketingSherpa.com

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Additional Resources
Jeanne Jennings: Independent
consultant specializing in email
marketing strategy and tactics
• More than 20 years of experience in B2B and
B2C online and email marketing
• Sought-after writer and speaker
on Email Marketing
• The Email Marketing Kit
(Sitepoint)
• ClickZ Experts: Email Marketing
• The Jennings Report
Clients Include:
www.JeanneJennings.com

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Thank you all for attending!
Thank you MarketingSherpa for inviting me to speak!
Questions?
Jeanne S. Jennings
Consultant, Email Marketing Strategy
JeanneJennings.com, Inc.
JJ@JeanneJennings.com
www.JeanneJennings.com
202.333.3245

B2B Drip Campaigns - 7 Case Studies - MarketingSherpa Jeanne Jennings Oct-2010

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