Drip Marketing Builds Trust – When It’s Done Correctly

drip marketing builds trust

Trust is a rare and valuable commodity these days.

Every time we turn on the TV news, pick up a newspaper, or even log in to our own e-mail, we get another story about someone who has broken either public or private trust by lying, cheating, stealing, or abusing.

It’s enough to make us all skeptical of everyone we meet – and that’s just what it has done.

So… when you want a new customer you have to do something to gain his or her trust.

Drip marketing can accomplish that task – if you do it with an attitude of giving before you get.

It requires a bit of planning – you can’t just send a message saying “Here I am and I want your business.” Your drip marketing letters need to first show them that you care enough to give them some help or advice with no strings attached.

The second reason to use drip marketing:

Just as one blog post isn’t going to give anyone a strong Internet presence, one letter is probably a waste of time and money. If money for postage is an issue, it’s better to mail repeatedly to a small group than just once to a large group.

Here are the statistics:

People who study direct marketing have determined that of the responses you will get, only 2% will come from the first contact. And you know, when you’re writing to a cold list of homeowners, only a small percentage will ever respond. So unless you’re mailing several hundred letters, you probably won’t get any response at all.

Their studies show that another 18% of the responses will come with the 2^nd through 4^th contacts, and that a full 80% come from the 5^th to 12^th contact. Thus, most recommend that 5 “touches” are a minimum. Touches might be a letter, a postcard, a phone call, or an in-person visit.

Why is this so? For a few reasons.

More letters equal more chances that at least one of your letters will be read.

If your letter arrives when your prospect is out of town, extremely busy, or distracted by one or more of life’s little emergencies, it probably won’t get read.

Would you stop to read a prospecting letter on a day when you just got word that out of town visitors will be arriving by dinner time, or one of your kids came down with Chicken Pox, or you’re hurriedly packing for a vacation?

On days like that, people toss any mail that doesn’t demand their immediate attention.

In addition to building trust, each letter offers another opportunity to show your expertise

When you offer helpful information in each of several subsequent letters, you give your prospects a steady flow of reasons to see you as the expert they can trust. Each letter should build upon the last, giving them something slightly more and different from the last one.

Brief letters are easy to read and don’t take much time…

If you try to put all the reasons why someone should call you into just one letter, the letter will be too long. How many times have YOU been willing to read a five or ten page letter from a stranger?

When you send letters that fit on one page, your prospects are more likely to read them, because they can see that it won’t take long. Of course, that one page has to be broken up into bite-size paragraphs with a bit of white space between them, so that it looks easy to read.

I can help..

Obviously, since I’m a copywriter I’d love to help you create a custom drip campaign, or sell you one of my many prospecting letter sets. But maybe you want to write your own drip marketing letters.

To help you write a hard-working, trust-building drip campaign I wrote a free report outlining the steps that will help you organize your materials and construct a set of letters that build, each upon the last, to position you as the person they can trust.

Follow these steps, and by the time your prospects have heard from you 3 or 4 times, they’ll begin to trust that you are a person who will help them make the right decisions to benefit their own lives. They’ll know that you aren’t just trying to use them for your own benefit.

Please call or write if you have questions or comments,

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Marte Cliff, Real Estate Copywriter
marte@copybymarte.com
208-448-1479

I specialize in making you stand out from your competition – and making people eager to use your exceptional service!

I can help you with custom letters, agent bios, web page copy, custom blog posts, and more.