I get clients asking all the time about building DRIP type campaigns in SuiteCRM. While SuiteCRM is great for certain types of email marketing, DRIP campaigns are not one of them. I usually recommend Mautic, which synchs contacts pretty seamlessly with SuiteCRM as a great marketing platform to achieve DRIP campaigns with SuiteCRM.
What is a DRIP Campaign
The key to a drip campaign is that it sends a timed series of emails at a relative date to when the person was added to the campaign. SuiteCRM is great at sending campaigns to a campaign list on a specific date. Not so much at a relative date. Salesforce, has a similar shortcoming. With Salesforce, most people use Pardot software to achieve the same thing as a SuiteCRM and Mautic combo.
To better understand the concept. It’s valuable to review the different types of emails that can be sent from both SuiteCRM and Mautic.
Template Emails in SuiteCRM
Template emails in SuiteCRM are sent once, either manually by selecting a contact then selecting an email template. They are sent one by one on demand.
Template emails can also be used to send an automated email based on a trigger. For example. Introductory call completed = Send post call email. This is done via workflow to trigger the email template when the event happens.
An email template is also required in the Campaigns Module. When a Campaign is set up an email template is required to send via the Campaign.
Campaigns in SuiteCRM
Campaigns are a group of people. That’s it. When you add a lead or a contact to “Campaign #1” it just defines them as part of the “Campaign #1” group. It does nothing further.
- In the Campaign you can elect to send an email to a campaign group of people, or a series of emails to a campaign group through the campaign module.
This is not automatic and does not back date emails and send them to new additions. Campaigns emails are sent once on a specific date to anyone in the campaign group on that date. - Campaigns can be sent on a specific date (once), you cannot send a series of 10 emails to a campaign automatically. You would have to trigger each of the 10 emails manually. This is why we need Mautic.
- You cannot send the same email to a person twice in a campaign. If you wish to send the same email to the same group of people, you have to create a new campaign.
Example: A monthly newsletter. You define a list of people in the Campaign. Every month, you create an email template and send that email template to the “Newsletter Campaign”.
DRIP Campaigns in Mautic.
A DRIP campaign is an automated set of rules that define who is in the campaign. Subsequent to qualifying (or being added), We set up and send an series of automated rules that send emails as specific time periods after a lead has been created.
Example: In order for someone to get the series of automated emails that we have set up, the following must be true:
- It’s a lead with an email address
- It’s not dead or converted status
- It is either designated as industry=“chemical industry”
- Lead Source = “Website”
The definition above defines a “segment”. A drip campaign is a series of emails sent to that identified segment.
Note: leads that come in from the web are automatically set as lead source = “Website” if you set up your lead form that way. If you enter a call in that came from the web, as long as you select lead source=”Website” (along with the other criteria above) the lead will get the series of timed emails.
Note: If you enter a lead source “trade show” for example, the lead will not get the series of emails. We can set up rules for other types of leads as well. You need one campaign per segment (generally).
Why do we need to Use Mautic?
- The key reason we need Mautic is because the emails are sent at a RELATIVE date to when the person was added to the segment. While this is possible with Workflow module in SuiteCRM, it becomes messy very fast if you have more than a few emails to send.
- People are added to a campaign segment dynamically based on the conditions set. (SuiteCRM cannot do this with the Campaign module).
- The conditions can be pretty much anything that define the group of people you want to send the drip email campaign to.
- Mautic’s drag and drop campaign builder makes this so much easier. Plus, you get a graphical representation (flow chart) of the campaign that’s easy to visualize and modify if need be.
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Check out out SuiteCRM Consulting page for more information.