monthly drip guide - bill good marketing · ment review message receiving a monthly drip message...

© 2001 Bill Good Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction, adaptation, or translation without prior written permission is prohibited, except as allowed under copyright law. Permission granted for System users to reproduce and/or adapt for own use. Gorilla and Gorilla Marketing are trademarks of Bill Good Marketing, Inc.

CONFIDENTIAL

Monthly Drip Campaign Overview

The Monthly Drip Campaign is the key to:

1) Client Retention 2) Business Now 3) New Assets 4) New Clients

What Is Dripping? Dripping is repetitive mailing and low-key calling.

It seems to work best on existing Clients and Prospects, but in many documented cases it has worked well on target markets.

There is no evidence it works well on a general market, such as pre-retirees, but there is also no evidence it won’t work there.

Dripping on Clients 1) Here is something you can write down in your book of things known to be true:

Key Concept: If you can’t talk to them this month, you’d better send them at least one message.

Where RRs have religiously dripped—as well as maintained telephone contact through the “No Contact” Procedure—and then changed firms, we get reports of their taking 90% of Clients with them.

No question: Dripping on Clients increases retention—because it demonstrates your ongoing intention to keep them well informed on any information that may affect their financial goals.

2) Dripping also generates business now.

Simple. Whether you run a transaction-oriented business or more of a planning approach, at least some of your messages should solicit direct response, either a coupon or a “call me.”

The good news is that many of these coupons and incoming calls will be from people you don’t normally have time to call.

3) Dripping also generates future business.

Here we are referring to our now famous “Find the Money” messages. You should periodically do these, and not only will you find all kinds of assets you didn’t know about, you will train your clients to routinely tell you when they get new money.

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Dripping on Prospects When you get a new lead, you naturally pursue it now. But many people aren’t ready now.

Hence, dripping until they are!

We believe that at least half of your new accounts will come from your prospect file, i.e., those people who have become prospects and with whom you have maintained contact by mail and pe-riodically by phone.

So The Benefits of Dripping Are 1) Retention

2) Business now

3) New Assets

4) New Clients (from responses and referrals)

5 Kinds of Drip Messages There are 5 kinds of messages available. You’ll use a different mix of messages, depending on the kind of business you do.

1) The Product Message Even if you’re a financial planner, you should send an occasional product message.

Why? Because when people happen to have sources of funds they haven’t told you about yet, the product message is most likely to flush them out.

If you’re transaction-oriented, you’ll send more product messages than a planner, but if you only send product messages, they will wear thin.

Example: “Important information for (everyone in BGM stock/all retirees/small business own-ers). Call me right away!”

Now if you were a Client and received this short, powerful message, what would you do?

Simple: You’d call!

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2) The Concept Message Concept: a group of related products or services.

“International Mutual Funds” is a concept. “Tax-Free Bonds” is a concept.

The best concept messages would not even hint at the name of a product, and they draw their power from their ability to arouse curiosity.

Suppose you did a series of messages on why someone should invest in stocks. You wouldn’t mention a product of any kind.

The slogan of this kind of campaign is: Sell the concept, not the product. The all-time classic concept message is “The Elliott Message.”

3) The Service Message “Service” is something that you can do for a person. We wrestled with this type of approach for years before we cracked it with the “Find the Money” message, which in all modesty is one of the best messages written in this or any industry.

All our Survey or Questionnaire messages are also service messages.

In a service message, you basically offer to perform a service if people will send back a question-naire or survey.

The two things we really want to have happen from this style of campaign are:

1) Referrals, and

2) Identifying current or future selling opportunities.

4) The Education Message In an “education message,” all you want is to educate, and in the process, build identity.

The very best “education” messages are the “Connection” messages. These are so low-key you can easily miss their strength and power.

So even if you don’t have a “product of the month” to send out, you can put some kind of inter-esting information in front of your Clients and Prospects.

5) “Feel Good” Messages These are wonderful.

Some are Routine Messages, such as “Appreciation” and the various “Thank You” messages. Some are birthday messages. And some are just heart-warming messages that we come across from time to time.

Probably the best of all is the “High Flight” message. The response when we got our Clients to send it out for Memorial Day, 1994, (and also the 50th Anniversary of D-Day) was spectacular.

“Feel Good” messages just generate that most intangible of assets: good will.

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The Campaign Process There are several different Monthly Drip Campaign styles to choose from.

Campaign Style Possible Uses

Monthly Drip Master Coordinates all Monthly Drip and Statement Review Campaigns.

With a coupon

Call Me style without coupon Mail Only (Product Targeting or Personal Targeting)

FYI (typically for education or hand holding purposes)

With a coupon Mail Only with Watch for It Calls Call Me style without coupon

With a coupon Mail Phone

Call Me style without coupon

FYI (typically for education or hand holding purposes) Saturation (Wave)

With a coupon or Call Me

Special Cases

Campaign Style Possible Uses

Monthly Statement Review

Annual letter sent to your Clients, mailed in 12 equal monthly parts, informing them you have reviewed their statement. Hand-written notes on the statement advise them to call or “All OK.”

Referral

Letter sent to your Clients approximately two weeks after they receive the statement review letter telling them how hard you work and that you do appreciate their referrals.

First, you complete the Campaign Order to activate the Monthly Drip Master Campaign. This campaign does not print any messages. It schedules the planning and training needed to produce a variety of drip campaigns. The Monthly Drip Master Campaign issues the Campaign Order for the rest of the Monthly Drip Campaigns.

The Mail/Only—Product Targeting and Mail/Only—Personal Targeting Campaigns use Selec-tion Rule Refinements to divide the CGs selected by your default Selection Rule into four weekly mailings for the month. If you want to use a different Monthly Drip Campaign style for one or

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more of the mailings (e.g. Mail/Phone), you activate a Drip Campaign of that style and flush the CGs to the new Campaign. You can also change the sequence of the drip mailings by reschedul-ing any of the “Send Message” steps. You can make this as intricate or as simple as you like.

The Monthly Drip Master issues a new Master Campaign Order to start the following month’s cycle and handles other administrative tasks such as staff campaign training and scheduling a Planning Meeting for your staff.

The Statement Review Campaign and the Referral Campaign The Statement Review Campaign is one of the most powerful parts of the Monthly Drip. Here’s what happens:

1) You set up the Statement Review Campaign once each year, selecting all Clients to whom you send monthly statements.

2) Each month you print a statement review letter for 1/12th of your clients in the campaign (don’t worry, the System handles the math). This ensures that you have a chance to re-view your Clients’ accounts at least annually.

3) When the letter has been printed, your CO pulls the corresponding statements and deliv-ers them to you with the letters.

4) You make notes on the statements, such as “We need to talk”, “Call Me”, “Call Jewel for Appointment” or, “Looks good”, “All OK.” You write on each statement: “Reviewed by: __________,” and return them to your CO.

5) Your CO adds a note into Gorilla to record your comments to the Client, as well as any information from you and mails the “Monthly Statement Review” message with the statement. (Note: Ideally, these will be sent the same day as your first drip message. As this letter has no letter date, if necessary you can mail some each day over the next week or up to two weeks. Waiting longer than two weeks to mail them could cause the referral letters to be received at the same time as the statement.)

6) After printing the Statement Review Letters, those receiving letters are moved to the Re-ferral Campaign and scheduled to receive a referral message two weeks later. They must be flushed to the Referral Campaign before any Drip Campaigns for the current month are populated. This will eliminate the possibility of the current recipients of the State-ment Review message receiving a monthly drip message the same month.

7) You wait for the phone to ring, at which time your Service Assistant should schedule a phone or in-person appointment for you with the Client.

When to Mail the Monthly Drip Messages Ideally, schedule your mailings in weekly segments so that approximately 25% of your Clients and Prospects receive a message each week of the month. This spreads the coupons and/or calls coming in over the whole month, eliminating “down” weeks.

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The following is a sample calendar for Monthly Drip Campaign mailings for the month starting at the bottom of the calendar shown. It incorporates the Statement Review Campaign.

Monthly Drip Calendar

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 1 2 3

This is the pattern for the rest of the mailings.

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 1

Approximate Start date for coming month’s Drip Campaign. Com-plete the Monthly Drip Master Campaign Order. If you will be run-ning the Statement Review and Monthly Drip Referral Campaigns for the first time, complete the Statement Review/Referral Campaign Order.

By now, mes-sages should be back from Compliance.

Statements arrive in office; Statement Review letters are printed and delivered to RR for review.

First week’s Drip messages are sent. Statement Review letters are mailed with Statements.

Second week’s drip messages are sent.

Third week’s drip messages are sent.

Fourth week’s messages are sent.

An additional mailing can be created, if de-sired, for the occasional five-week month.

Around this date (RR’s choice), new Monthly Drip Campaign Order Form to be printed, starting next month’s cycle.

Soon after Master Campaign is activated, a Planning Meeting is held to plan all Drip Campaigns for the month. Monthly Drip Campaign Order is issued.

RR completes review of Statements and returns them to CO. Clients who received Statement Review letter are flushed to Monthly Drip Referral Campaign. Other Monthly Drip Campaigns are then activated.

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What to Mail Your monthly mailings should ordinarily comprise multiple, precisely targeted messages, with the final mailing sent to all other Clients and Prospects. When you activate the Monthly Drip Manager/Mail Only Campaign, the Campaign Wizard will show you how many CGs are selected for Selection Rule Refinement. These Refinements can be modified at that time if desired.

Much of the content for messages can come from the BGM Letters Library™ at www.billgood.com. (Check for versions of letters that have already been approved by compli-ance.) Or, on occasion we will send periodic updates to users such as the Wendell Cayton arti-cles you can publish as your own “ghost-written” articles or timely Monthly Drip letters selected by BGM staff writers.

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Statement

ReviewCampaign

Set up the Statement Review Campaign.Add in all Clients.Set up Referral Campaign.Set up the Monthly Drip Master Campaign.

Print the Statement Review letters for a portion ofyour Clients to be sent out this month.Recipients are re-tracked to the Letter Sent track.Flush the Letter Sent track to the ReferralCampaign before activating the Monthly DripCampaigns.

Step 2

Statement

ReviewCampaign

ReferralCampaign

The Referral Campaign has a Campaign Type of"Monthly Drip," (the Statement Review Campaigndoes not).The default Selection Rule for Monthly Dripexcludes CGs who are in a campaign with a"Type" of "Monthly Drip."Clients in the Referral Campaign are NOT includedin the Monthly Drip Campaigns.

Campaign Type

NOT Monthly Drip Monthly Drip

Monthly

DripMail-Only

Add remaining Clients and Prospects to theMonthly Drip Mail-Only--Product Targeting orMail--Only Product Targeting Campaign.

Adjust Selection Rule Refinements to meet yourselection requirements for the current month.

1st Refinement

2nd Refinement

3rd Refinement

Default SelectionRule

Narrow Target

Medium Target

Broad Target

Everyone Else

Flush tracks to the appropriate campaign.

Mail/Mail/Phone

Mail/Phone

Mail/Phonewith Watchfor It Calls

Set up a campaign for any Monthly Drip CampaignStyles to be used this month in addition toMail-Only.

Mail-Only: Leavein Campaign

Step 5

Step 1

Step 3

Step 4

Mail/Phone

Mail/Phonewith Watchfor It Calls

Mail/Mail/Phone

The Monthly Drip Campaign Cycle

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Monthly Drip Mail-Only Campaigns(Personal or Product Targeting)

This track contains staff actions such as training and setup.No Contact Groups in this track.Staff Actions

Drip Message:First Refinement

As responses are received, the CG is handled with Lead Processing Speedbuttons and re-tracked to theRespondents track.

Destination Track

Respondents

Drip Message:Second

Refinement

Drip Message:Third Refinement

Drip Message:Everyone else

A promotional message is sent to everyone in this track the first week of the month.Typically, this would be your most precisely targeted group. For example, all Clients and Prospects witha particular investment position. This would be a subset of the group defined by the default SelectionRule.(Note: This is only an example, the messages can be rescheduled to go out in any sequence.)

A promotional message is sent to everyone in this track the second week of the month.Your next refinement would select a broader category. For example, everyone with a particularInvestment Type. These CGs would be pulled from the CGs brought into the campaign by the defaultSelection Rule who were not already selected by the 1st refinement.

A promotional message is sent to everyone in this track the third week of the month.This refinement would select a general category, such as everyone with a particular interest. TheseCGs would be pulled from the CGs brought into the campaign by the default Selection Rule who werenot already selected by earlier refinements.

A promotional message is sent to everyone in this track the fourth week of the month.The CGs who were pulled into the Campaign by the default Selection Rule, but were not selected by anyof the earlier refinements, remain in this track.

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Mail Only Campaign with'Watch for It' Calls

This track contains staff actions suchas training and setup.No Contact Groups in this track.

StaffActions

Destination Track

Respondents are re-tracked here whenthey have responded and are beinghandled with Contact ManagementSpeedbuttons.

The 'Watch for It' Message is sent first bye-mail. CGs with an e-mail address in theSystem receive the Message, which movesthem to the next promotional track. Thosewithout an e-mail address remain in the track.The 'Watch for It' message is next sent by faxto CGs remaining in the track. If a CG has afax number set up, they receive the fax andare moved to the next track.CGs remaining in the track are called

using the 'Watch for it' script and moved to the next track.

Promotion:'Watch for

It'

After the 'Watch for It' actions are complete, apromotional message is sent to everyone in thistrack. This can be either of the following styles:

As responses come in, the Known CGSpeedbuttons are used to schedule anappointment or send additional information andschedule a follow up call.Respondents are re-tracked to the

Respondents Track.

Promotion:Coupon or'Call Me'Message

Respondents-Done-

Coupon MessageCall Me Message

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Mail Phone Campaign

This track contains staff actions such astraining and setup.No Contact Groups in this track.

StaffActions

Respondents are re-tracked here when they haveresponded and are being handled with LeadProcessing Speedbuttons.

Called - NotInterested

If the optional calls to non-respondents are made,those who are not interested are moved to thistrack.Those who are interested are moved to theRespondents-Done track and handled with LeadProcessing Speedbuttons.

Destination Track

Respondents-Done-

A promotional message is sent to everyone in thistrack. This can be either of the following styles:

1 week later the SA is instructed to reviewnon-respondents and decide if it is productive to call.As responses come in, the SV uses the Known CGSpeedbuttons to schedule an appointment or sendadditional information and schedule a follow up call3-7 days later.Respondents are re-tracked to theRespondents-done Track.

Promotion:'Call Me' or

CouponMessage

Coupon MessageCall Me Message

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Saturation or WaveCampaign

A promotional message is sent to everyone in thistrack and they are moved to the next promotion track.This message can be either of the following styles:1st

PromotionalMessage FYI (Education or hand holding)

Coupon

Respondents are re-tracked here. Processed-Done-

4thPromotional

Message

A promotional message is sent to everyone in thistrack. This message can be one of the following styles:

The CGs remain here until they respond or are flushedat month end.

FYI (Education or hand holding)Coupon

This track contains staff actions suchas training and setup.No Contact Groups in this track.

StaffActions

2ndPromotional

Message

A promotional message is sent to everyone in thistrack and they are moved to the next promotion track.This message can be one of the following styles:

FYI (Education or hand holding)Coupon

A promotional message is sent to everyone in thistrack and they are moved to the next promotion track.This message can be one of the following styles:

3rdPromotional

Message FYI (Education or hand holding)Coupon

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Statement Review Campaign

This track contains staff actions such as training and setup.No Contact Groups in this track.Staff Actions

Respondents are brought back into the campaign so thatthey will be included on the Campaign Status report. In thisway, you can evaluate your campaign.The Respondent track can be flushed at any time. At the endof a year, before the campaign for the next year is activated,this track should be flushed.

Respondents-Done-

Statement

This promotional track holds all CGs who receive monthlystatements in the coming year.Each month, 1/12th of the CGs receive the StatementReview Letter with their monthly statement and are moved tothe Statement Review Letter Sent track.

Promotion:Statement

Review Letter &Statement

Statements are pulled for CGs receiving the StatementReview letter and delivered to RR for review.RR adds note to Client and returns to CO.CO enter RR's notes in Gorilla.CGs are transferred to the Monthly Drip Referral Campaignto receive the Referral Message approximately two weekslater. (By transferring them to the Referral Campaign, theyare excluded from the Monthly Drip Campaign that month.)The Known CG Speedbuttons are used to schedule anappointment or send additional information and

schedule a follow up call 3-7 days later.

Statement

Review LetterSent -- Transfer

to ReferralCampaign

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After they receive the Referral letter CGs are movedhere until they respond or the month ends.As referrals come in, the referrals are processedthrough the Referral Wizard as outlined in the MonthlyDrip Response Processing document.Respondents are re-tracked to the 'Respondents -Done' track.

Referral Campaign

This track contains staff actions such astraining and setup.No Contact Groups in this track.

Staff Actions

ReferralMessage Sent

CGs are transferred from the Statement ReviewCampaign each month to this campaign.A Referral message is sent approximately 2 weeksafter the Statement Review message was sent.

Promotion:ReferralMessage

Respondents are re-tracked here after any referrals areprocessed.At the end of each month, this track and the precedingtrack are flushed so that these CGs will be included inthe next Monthly Drip Campaign.

Destination Track

Respondents-Done-

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monthly drip guide - bill good marketing · ment review message receiving a monthly drip message...

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