Drip campaigns are the best way to personalize the enrollment 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 behavior-based messaging delivered through marketing automation with the intention of engaging new leads, gaining new enrollments, and/or bringing back lost opportunities.
Take a look at how to use drip campaigns at your organization.
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.
Learn additional ways to get the most out of your marketing efforts. Avoid these mistakes when communicating to Millennial parents.
Best Practices for Using Drip Campaign Marketing
1) Segment Your Audience
Drip campaign marketing helps attract families, or leads, to your centers. Dividing your lead audiences into segments can help you create more meaningful parent experiences, improve your email performance rates, and increase enrollment. 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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Center event attendees
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Stalled or lost opportunities
2) Customize 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 enrollment 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' Classroom"
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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 Campaign Marketing Is a Must for Childcare: Grow Enrollment In Record Time!
Drip campaign marketing allows you to send valuable and relevant content about your center 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 LineLeader by ChildcareCRM can help grow your enrollment with drip campaigns, schedule a demo.
