Drip campaigns are the best way to personalise the enrolment journey for every family.
Remember those 'choose your own adventure books'? Well, drip campaigns are a lot like that! A drip campaign is a series of behaviour-based messaging delivered through marketing automation with the intention of engaging new leads, gaining new enrolments, and/or bringing back lost opportunities.
Take a look at how to use drip campaigns at your organisation.
What Really is a Drip Campaign?
Drip campaigns allow you to communicate with prospective families based on how they interact with the content you share. Because these messages are all part of a single campaign, you can better monitor their effectiveness, your return on investment, and how the recipients are responding.
For example, in a typical drip campaign, you would send out an email to all prospective parents. Those who opened and clicked through could then be given a task in your CRM to follow up with them by phone. Those who did not open the email could automatically be sent a text at a designated time of your choosing.
Best Practices for Using Drip Campaigns
1) Segment Your Audience
Dividing your lead audiences into segments can help you create more meaningful parent experiences, improve your email performance rates, and increase enrolment. You can start by identifying groups that have the same statuses, unique interests, or attributes. This will drive a higher conversion rate and faster movement through your pipeline. Some examples of segments are:
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Similar expected start date
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Age groups & classrooms
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Waitlist by reason
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Lost opportunity by reason
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Centre event attendees
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Stalled or lost opportunities
2) Customise Messages for a Better Parent Experience
Now that you’ve spent time deciding who your target audience is, create content that they will be inclined to view and respond to. Stay top of mind by delivering emails and text messages that are tailored to their needs. Harness your unique benefits and features by age groups or specific interests of a group of people. This will boost your email performance and ultimately, move your families to the next stage in your enrolment funnel. Below are a few content ideas that you could send to specific segments:
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Similar expected start date - "3 ways you should prepare your child before their first day"
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Same age group or classroom - "What's going on this week in the Toddlers' Room"
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Similar lost opportunities - "5 reasons early education is essential"
3) Test Alternate Messaging
The smallest change in an email subject line can deliver a completely different result. That's the power of A/B testing. By split testing two versions of your campaign, you’ll be able to see which version is attracting more interest from your prospective families.
Some examples of changes could be as simple as:
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Email Subject Line A: Have you heard about our new program?
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Email Subject Line B: Our new program is here! Have you heard?
Test alternate messaging, email sender names, delivery times, and mediums. For example, are more parents responding to your message via email, or is a text message proving to be more effective? Launch both versions of your campaign and check in after each touchpoint. Being able to see a clear ‘winner’ will allow you to course-correct for future messages.
Drip campaigns allow you to send valuable and relevant content about your centre in a timely manner - to anybody in your pipeline via email or text message. And the best part is - you don't have to lift a finger!
To see how ChildcareCRM can help grow your enrolment with drip campaigns, schedule a demo.
