Retain Health and Wellness Customers With SMS Drip Campaigns

If you’re in the health and wellness space, you sell much more than a set of products — you sell a lifestyle. 

The data says that subscription-based brands experience an average drop-off rate (that’s customers who abandon their subscriptions) of 5.6%.  

Your customers thrive when they have constant access to your products and services, which means you’ll need a way to keep them tuned in and invested in your brand. The question is, how do you keep those customers coming back after their first purchase?

Drip campaigns are the answer. If you’re new to the world of marketing, you may not be familiar with the term, but don’t worry, we’ll lay out all the details.

Read on to learn more about drip campaigns, including how they work and how to make them work for your health and wellness brand.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What Are Drip Campaigns?
• Examples of Health and Wellness Drip Campaigns
• How Drip Campaigns Work

What Are Drip Campaigns?

Simply put, drip campaigns are a series of messages you set up to send automatically to your contacts over time — whether it’s days, weeks, or months after a trigger event (like someone signing up to receive your texts). 

In the text marketing industry, drip campaigns are also called “autoresponders.” 

Why do we recommend drip campaigns specifically? There are a few reasons.

• They ensure that your customers hear from you consistently. It can be tough to stay on top of weekly or monthly messages to your contacts, but with drip campaigns, your texts send on schedule without you having to lift a finger.
• Business owners are, well, busy. Using drip campaigns to encourage your customers and drive new sales can give you and your staff hours back each week.
• An ongoing drip campaign makes it easy to design your sales flow and messaging strategy ahead of time so your messages are cohesive and effective.

Examples of Drip Campaigns in Health and Wellness Marketing

Now that you’re an expert on setting up drip campaigns, the question remains, how do they fit into a strong health and wellness marketing strategy?

When thinking about turning one-time purchasers into loyal recurring customers, keep a few key priorities in mind.

• Make the long-term value of your products clear to your customers. If you sell ready-made meal kits, share some statistics on the benefits of good nutrition over a person’s lifetime and connect those benefits back to the high-quality ingredients you use.
• Make sure customers get their questions answered quickly. 82% of consumers expect a response from a business within 10 minutes, so staying on top of concerns can make or break many of your customer relationships.
• Keep your messages personal. 76% of consumers are frustrated when businesses don’t offer personalized experiences, so use tools like contact segments (groups of contacts who have something in common) to make sure each customer only gets the information and offers they’ll want to take advantage of. 

Once you’ve got your priorities firmly in mind, you can start to shape your drip campaign strategy. 

Here are a few ways to encourage recurring sales using drip campaigns.

Track Buying Habits

If you run an online store, it pays to know what, when, and how often your customers buy from you. 

Choose an SMS platform that allows you to integrate with tools like Shopify to keep track of purchases. You can then send targeted messages to buyers based on what they bought last to encourage them to refill or reorder their chosen product.

Prevent Abandoned Carts

The average cart abandonment rate in e-commerce is right around 70%. Over time, that represents a lot of lost revenue. 

Luckily, texts are a fast, effective way to catch the attention of shoppers who abandoned their cart and remind them to come back and snag their favorite product.

Instead of just sending one abandoned cart text message, schedule a series of messages designed to follow up if the shopper doesn’t respond to the first message. Here’s an example workflow:

1. Send the shopper a text message reminder that they left an item in their cart.
2. If they don’t make a purchase after the first text, send them another reminder a few days later.
3. Still no purchase? Offer them a discount to complete their purchase.

Reward Loyalty

Of course, part of keeping customers around long-term is rewarding the ones who keep their subscriptions active.

Set up a text to congratulate the customers who stick around and offer them a discount or free product along with it. 

Cross-selling Relevant Products

You can also use texts to cross-sell and introduce existing customers to their future favorite products. Once you know what each customer tends to buy, set up texts to draw their attention to other products they might like. 

How Drip Campaigns Work

Those are the basics of why and how to use drip campaigns for your wellness business’ marketing efforts, but now it’s time to get into how to set up your campaign. 

The process varies depending on which SMS platform you use, but here’s how it works at SimpleTexting.

1. Log into your SimpleTexting campaign and choose Autoresponders from the left-hand side menu.

2. Click New autoresponder.
3. Name your autoresponder, choose which contact list it will go to, and select SMS or MMS.
4. Write out your message.

5. Choose whether your autoresponder will send right after each opt-in or after a delay.
6. If you choose to send your message after a delay, you’ll specify how long until the message sends.
7. Lastly, you can select Advanced scheduling options and set a more detailed schedule for your text.

8. Click Save autoresponder, and you’re all done.

The Wrap on Health and Wellness Drip Campaigns

The health and wellness e-commerce space is unique among online businesses. 

Where other online stores can serve their customers with one-off purchases, wellness subscriptions designed to support a healthy lifestyle can only really fulfill their mission and help their customers if those customers stick around for the long haul.

Thankfully, SMS marketing tools have evolved for exactly this purpose, and well-built drip campaigns can go a long way towards getting your consumer base to their goals — and they can help you keep your revenue up, all with a few minutes of effort on your part.

Want to try SMS for your health and wellness business? Test drive SimpleTexting free for 14 days — no credit card required.