Drip, Drip, Drip
I was still thinking of micron channels as lifetime subscriptions. This meant creating fresh content daily. This arose from my desire to make microns a habit in the life of the recipient. That worked in some cases. But it is not easy creating new content daily forever outside of the news world. Which led to think of microns that could have a short life – in the sense that the subscription to channel is for a few days rather than for life. My mind went back to a factoid I had read when I was young: the mayfly lived for just 24 hours. Could the microns become the mayfly of content?
This is where the idea of “micron moments” came in. There are many times when we need to know more, to be nudged repeatedly. Ads do that – we don’t buy a product the first time we see its ad. Repeated exposure creates an imprint and somewhere along our resistance to purchase falls. Microns can help brands in the same way. Convert an initial interest into a short relationship with periodic nudges to prod towards an eventual transaction. As long as the content was useful and triggered by a context – the micron moment – I would be open to opting in to receiving the email. I know when signing up that this is a brief relationship. It gives me additional time to decide – or simply works as a repeating reminder of something I have read. There are many use cases in which microns could fit.
Marketers have used drip campaigns for a long time. Wikipedia defines drip marketing as “a communication strategy that sends, or “drips,” a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over time. These messages often take the form of email marketing, although other media can also be used. Drip marketing is distinct from other database marketing in two ways: (1) the timing of the messages follow a pre-determined course; (2) the messages are dripped in a series applicable to a specific behavior or status of the recipient. It is also typically automated… The phrase “drip marketing” is said to be derived from “drip irrigation”, an agriculture/gardening technique in which small amounts of water are fed to plants over long periods of time.”
Here is more from Joe Stych:
Email newsletters are a great way to send out your team’s latest announcements, but they have a major problem: new subscribers only see new emails, and never get the first emails you’d sent out to your list. All they’ll see is the stuff you send after they sign up.
Often called drip campaigns but known by many other names—drip marketing, automated email campaign, lifecycle emails, autoresponders and marketing automation—the concept is the same: they’re a set of marketing emails that will be sent out automatically on a schedule. Perhaps one email will go out as soon as someone signs up, another will go out 3 days later, with one more going out the next weekend. Or, the emails can be varied based on triggers, or actions the person has performed like signing up for your service or making a purchase, which is why they’re also sometimes called behavioral emails.
So, clearly, the idea of a short series of messages where every new person starts with the first message in the sequence has been around for some time. How could microns make a difference?
