What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a series of emails that send automatically based on time or behavior, rather than all at once. Someone signs up, and over the next days or weeks they receive a planned sequence: a welcome, a nudge, a useful tip, an offer. The word drip is the point. The emails arrive a little at a time, each one triggered by where the person is, not by your calendar.
Drip campaign examples worth copying
- Welcome series. Three to five emails that introduce your brand and move a new subscriber toward a first action.
- Onboarding. For software, a sequence that walks a new user to the feature that makes them stay.
- Abandoned cart. A reminder, then a nudge, then a last call, for someone who left without buying.
- Win-back. A short sequence aimed at subscribers who have gone quiet.
- Post-purchase. A thank you, a how-to, then a request for a review or a reorder.
A drip campaign is the difference between sending email and having email that works while you sleep.
What makes a drip campaign work
Three things separate a good drip from an annoying one: a clear trigger that starts it, sensible timing that gives each email room to breathe, and a single goal per email. If every email asks for one thing and the timing respects the reader, a drip converts far better than the same content sent as one blast.
Running drips without babysitting them
SmartMailing builds drip and welcome flows that run on their own once set up, each new subscriber moving through the sequence automatically, every email on your brand. You can build one and see it on your own brand for free.