The beauty of a drip campaign lies in its automation. You craft and schedule a series of messages that are deployed based on preset triggers. Your team can save time and effort by creating a journey that runs without intervention. Bonus if you can feed new contacts into the process without any manual input. But with automation comes the opportunity for error, and when you find out the drip campaign’s dropped the ball, what do you do? 

Find the leak

Drip campaigns can break in a number of ways. Maybe one of your triggers didn’t work appropriately, or one of your calls to action didn’t close the loop. Human errors, like accidentally selecting the wrong cadence or leaving one of the pathways open, can leave subscribers in limbo. Figure out where people are inadvertently dropping off and what information they missed while you weren’t in touch. 

Make a patch

Not-so-great news: sometimes the opportunity is lost if the drip campaign breaks down. If you were in a regular cadence, then took a break, starting up again might feel weird or disingenuous. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity to at least partially recover. Based on the timing, the emails they missed and your current outreach needs, it may make sense to send a one-off email to deliver your missed messages. The good news: most consumers don’t know they’re in a drip campaign. As long as your one-off email is relevant, helpful and timely, it may be all you need to bring the recipients back into the loop. 

Repair the system

You know why the drip campaign broke and you’ve made a makeshift repair; it’s time to address the crux of the issue. Every journey is an opportunity to refine and enhance for the future. Often, the automation is more complicated than necessary, so you make moves to simplify the process next time. 

Don’t toss the strategy after one snafu! 

It can be easy to abandon a drip campaign because of the sometimes complicated setup. But these specialty journeys are valuable, especially when you have a small-but-mighty marketing and comms team. The best path forward is through, even if that means making some tweaks along the way. If you’ve had trouble with drip campaigns, or have been too nervous to start, we can help. Get in touch so Obsidian can help you start, manage or reinvigorate your automated messaging.