Hello and welcome to Tactical Execution, an information series exploring innovative marketing and strategic business positioning for entrepreneurs and small businesses in an increasingly competitive world. My name is Patrick and I’m your host. You can find written versions of these podcasts at TacticalExecution.com and I encourage your candid feedback at the same location. Today, we’ll be talking about an evolving strategy called drip marketing so let’s get started.

Drip marketing refers to a strategy where you send out marketing messages in a deliberate and sequential pattern. Essentially, you select the market you’re looking to target and then you begin a program where you keep your marketing message in front of them on a regular basis. It’s all pre-planned and measured, and it follows a lot of the same methodologies driving modern direct mail campaigns.

We talked about this in the last chapter. Most research suggests the average person doesn’t even recognize that you EXIST before they’ve seen your marketing message at least 7 times. And there are SOME people who think that number could, in fact, be as high as 30 times! Either way, the success of the program depends on a regular and repetitive barrage of your message to the same group of recipients.

If you think about it, there are certain products or services where drip marketing makes more sense than others. For example, anything where timing is an issue can benefit from this approach. Think about a realtor. As a homeowner, you might not be ready to sell your house on the exact day a realtor runs an ad. You might actually LIKE the ad. It might speak directly TO you. But if you’re not ready to sell your house, it really doesn’t matter. Same thing with a Mortgage Broker. What about a commercial leasing agent? Same thing. Even financial advisors to some extent. All these professions need to stay in front of their audience so they have a chance of getting the business when the RIGHT time finally arrives.

Incidentally, a lot of people in the real estate industry call this technique “farming”. You get your list – that’s called your “farm” – and then you start farming. You start sending out mailers on a regular basis. They call it farming. And I’m sure the vast majority of junk mail you get everyday comes from people in the real estate field. And why? Because it works.

You can do drip marketing electronically as well. Email newsletters are perfect examples of drip marketing. You’re staying in front of your audience. Any type of pre-planned deliberate email campaign is a form of drip marketing. Of course, the problem with email marketing these days is the effectiveness of spam filters in diverting your email to the junk mail folder. But if you can find a way of getting past those filters, the regular marketing message will eventually sink in.

If you think about it, even podcasting is a form of drip marketing. I’m posting a new episode every week. I’m staying in front of my audience. For sure, it’s a form of drip marketing. Now, in my case, the timing is less important. The best time to implement some of the strategies I’m telling you about is NOW. There’s no better time. But even still, the regularity of my podcast chapters is a form of drip marketing.

Now, we’ve already talked about a lot of this in earlier chapters. True. What I’d like to do today is focus in on a couple under-utilized techniques that can really blow this up. And I’m going to stay in the offline mentality as well. Last chapter, we talked about direct mail. During that chapter, we talked about the envelope you’re using and I mentioned that the greeting card envelopes have a much higher chance of getting opened – just because of their size. Well, I’d like to drill down on exactly that point.

Greeting cards might be one of the most under-utilized marketing tools in existence. Now, I realize this isn’t applicable for everyone so let’s start with that distinction. Everything we’ve been talking about so far – particularly the online marketing stuff – is a great way to market to the world in general. The internet is a big place and your online marketing efforts will draw people from all over the globe. I recently launched the G7 website and had over 1000 visitors in the first 5 days and they came from 31 different countries. Amazing. But what if my business was local in nature? What if I wanted to attract customers right here in my own backyard?

There’s no question that online marketing can be a poor choice for local businesses. A friend of mine runs a local dating service. And yes, he has a website to support his business but he only holds events here in the San Francisco Bay Area. So the marketing he does online has to be focused on the local market because an internet browser from Texas or Toronto does him absolutely no good.

I found the same thing as a Mortgage Broker. The success I had with my first podcast series was amazing but it resulted in potential deals all across the country. Now, as it turned out, I DID do a bunch of those deals but they weren’t ideal. The house values are much lower in different parts of the country and that makes the loan amounts lower as well. And besides that, it’s nice to meet your customers and that wasn’t easy for me. Still today, I only meet about one in every four of my clients. It’s the nature of my marketing. They find me online and the whole transaction is done by phone, fax and email.

So, if you’re cultivating a local business, you need to find a different marketing approach and greeting cards is an excellent option. In fact, I suggest you go to the store and buy a few hundred greeting cards with different designs. There are some great options out there; cards with inspirational messages or humorous quips. Then go to the post office and buy a bunch of those new forever stamps.

Once you’ve got everything you need, start writing greeting cards. Make yourself a schedule to write 5 cards per day – to anyone. It could be an old client. It could be a prospective client. It could be someone whose card you picked up at a networking event last week. It could be your neighbor. It could be the mechanic who fixed the brakes on your car.

Develop a huge list of all the people you’d like to stay in touch with and give each contact either an A, a B or a C – some sort of code to reflect their importance on your list. Obviously, the most important people are on your A-list and you should never have more than 150 people on your A-list. These are your top prospects. These are the people who you’ve already done business with. These are the people who have referred business to you in the past. These are the crème de la crème and you want to stay in touch with them at least once each month. At least.

Next up, you’ve got your B-list. These are good customers and prospects, and people you definitely want to stay in touch with. I mean; they’re not your A-list but they’re definitely important people. You could easily have up to 300 or 400 people on your B-list and you want to stay in touch with these people every 2 months. And lastly, you’ve got your C-list; people who could become clients one day, people who you just don’t want to forget about. And you want to stay in touch with those people once every 3 months.

The schedule you pick for your program is up to you. The point is you can quickly and easily end up with a big list full of people you want to stay in touch with. Send them greeting cards; just something to let them know you were thinking of them. Maybe a word of encouragement. Maybe a quick thank you for a recent favor or gesture. You might wish them well on a project they’re working on. It really doesn’t matter what you write; just write something. And add your business card.

This type of program can be extremely effective. People love getting this type of stuff. They love getting a greeting card in the mail. It makes them feel special. It makes them feel good. Just the size of the envelope alone gives you pretty good odds of getting the card opened. And a kind message inside can make a real difference in the person’s day.

You do this stuff on a regular basis and you’ll be amazed at the results over time. If you actually keep it up, you’ll be amazed. The problem is that most people just don’t keep up the effort. I know a few people who have built their entire business around greeting cards. They’ve made it part of their regular schedule. They’re disciplined and they do it EVERY day. Five cards, maybe more, maybe less – but they do it everyday. And over time, you establish a real positive energy throughout your list; a general good feeling about who you are and what you do for a living.

Now, there’s a subcategory of this that we haven’t even touched on yet. And I personally believe it’s the biggest hidden treasure in drip marketing. It’s the biggest missed opportunity. I swear, if people could just get disciplined enough to do this one thing, they would see more tangible results than they would from any other drip marketing tactic I can think of. It absolutely amazes me this is done so rarely.

I’m talking about birthday cards. Not emails. I’m talking about physical birthday cards. I’m telling you; this is an absolute goldmine and most people just let the opportunity pass them by.

A program like this requires two things. It requires that you KNOW their birthday. And this is obviously a lot more common in some professions than others. As a Mortgage Broker, for example, I know the birthday of every single one of my clients. In fact, if they’re married, I get two birthdays from each transaction, so they add up quickly. And if you’re in real estate, you should always ask the Mortgage Broker for the client’s birthdays. If they hesitate for privacy reasons, tell them you just want the month and day – NOT the year. But always ask. Financial advisors should have this information as well.

Now for some professions, you won’t automatically get that information but I’m telling you; you’re well advised to craft a way of getting it. Sending out birthday cards is probably the best possible use of offline marketing dollars and the time required is minimal compared with the potential benefits you’ll get in return.

People LOVE their birthdays. Well, I guess that’s not always true. But in most cases, people love their birthdays and they definitely love getting birthday cards. In fact, they often put all their cards up on the counter and have them on display for a week or two. The size of the envelope makes it obvious it contains a card and the timing of its arrival on or near the person’s birthday virtually guarantees it gets opened. In fact, I’d bet the percentage of birthday cards getting opened is higher than any other type of mailing. I don’t know that for sure but I’d be a tidy sum on it. People open birthday cards. Period.

So, what do you put inside? Well, it doesn’t need to be much. It can just contain a quick note wishing them a happy birthday but it should also include one of your business cards, or even two. And you might also want to consider a gift of some kind in the card. You might include a $5 Starbucks card or a gift certificate to a local restaurant. That decision will obviously be driven by their importance to your business but the timing is perfect to include a gift. You’re virtually guaranteed they’ll open the envelope and in most cases, they’ll call you personally to thank you.

This was definitely MY experience. My mortgage clients always appreciated receiving those birthday cards and it did wonders for their perceptions of me and my business. Of course, the problem as usual is the time commitment. It’s always the time commitment. And it really doesn’t matter how many people listen to this podcast and like the idea, the vast majority will never follow through, at least not for an extended period of time. It’s human nature. People just don’t do it. Yes, they might do it for a month or two but after a while, it gets to be a pain in the neck and they start to forget.

And then, it’s almost doomed because now you have a couple people you’ve missed and you’re supposed to continue sending out cards even though there were a couple people who never got THEIRS. And maybe one of those people has a spouse that’s also on the list. So do you skip the spouse, just because you accidentally missed the first person? Do you take them off the list entirely? I’m telling you; once you let it slip through the cracks once, the whole program starts getting shaky.

If you think this program would work for YOUR business, commit to it for 6 months. Make sure you allocate some time each and every week and write those cards out. Get it done. And then send them out. See what the response is. Even if you have to get an assistant do it for you, it’s worth the effort because they really do work. Birthday cards, sent consistently, work. No question.

This is exactly the reason I’m developing the myCardHelper.com website. It caters EXACTLY to this market. You can actually upload your customer list into the platform and they you don’t have to worry about it ever again. You select your cards, your message, your return address and your inserts like business card or gifts and we do the rest.

We’ll send out the cards at the right time with the message and inserts you request and the recipient will never know you didn’t send it yourself. The platform even has the ability to classify your customers as A-list, B-list or C-list, and you can specify different inserts or gifts for each list. And best of all, you only get charged for the cards we sent out during that month. If your list had 23 birthdays during June, your credit card will get charged for 23 cards at the end of the month. And of course, you can also do other non-birthday card mailers as well. Just select the card, the recipients and the message, and we’ll do the rest.

It really is a great platform but at the time of this recording, we’re still working out a few of the bugs. It’s actually a fairly complicated platform. People have to have their own accounts and be able to manage and edit their own customer lists. It’s pretty sophisticated and it cost me a fortune, by the way. But please check it out when you get a chance. The website is myCardHelper.com and I’ve added the link to the Tactical Execution website.

Greeting cards and birthday cards represent a huge opportunity that most people are passing by. If you have a list of people you’d like to stay in touch with, greeting cards and birthday cards is an ideal way to do it. Your recipients will love it and it will add warmth to your business offering. Give it a try. You’ll be amazed.

Please visit TacticalExecution.com to get an itemized list of things you can do TODAY to start getting results. It’s a FREE 1-page PDF file in the members-only section so you have to register and log in, and then you’ll find it under the “Resources” tab.

You can also view upcoming topics by clicking the Marketing tab under Podcast Chapters. If you have a suggestion for future topics, please use the Contact form to let us know. And finally, all the websites referenced on this podcast have been included on the Links page.

Okay, thank you very much for listening. If you like what you hear on these podcasts, please tell a friend about them. Modern technology like podcasting can help elevate new and innovative thinkers but we all have to play our part to help spread the word for those who deserve our endorsements. If I am deserving of yours, my thanks.

I DO offer workshops, seminars and keynote speeches as well as consulting services so please email me at Patrick [at] TacticalExecution.com for more information. I’m also doing an extensive podcast series on stock market investing, real estate finance and the economy. It’s called Financial Audio and you can find it on iTunes.

Stay tuned. There is a lot more to come. In the meantime, think big, take action and market strategically. Bye for now.