Like many people, I'm a habitual email unsubscriber. I really, really dislike promotional emails clogging up my inbox, so I've become good friends with the "Unsubscribe" button.
But every now and then, I get a drip email that's good enough to keep me subscribed. From subject lines to CTAs, these emails are sharp, different, timely—and even a wee bit entertaining. Here's everything you need to know about drip campaigns, plus examples to inspire your next email marketing campaign.
Table of contents:
What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a series of emails that trickle (or "drip") into a customer's or lead's inbox. These emails can be triggered by an event, like signing up for your business's newsletter, or sent at different intervals, like one week after a customer makes a purchase.
Why are email drip campaigns important?
Email drip campaigns (or drip marketing) are essential for lead nurturing because they allow you to get the right information in front of the right audience at the right time. For example, if someone just subscribed to your newsletter, you can set up a drip campaign to immediately send a welcome email with another email two days later that shows off some of your most-read content.
Drip marketing isn't just limited to leads, though. You can also leverage the information you have about customers to deliver personalized marketing at scale. If you run an eCommerce business, for example, you can use drip emails to build brand loyalty by offering discount codes, birthday treats, and other rewards.
Drip campaign best practices
Drip campaigns have similar best practices to other marketing emails. Here are some key practices that can boost your marketing campaign.
Use email drip campaign software
When it comes to launching an email campaign, ditch the regular providers like Gmail and Outlook. In order to manage even a moderate volume of emails and subscribers, you're going to need email drip campaign software.
Platforms like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and ActiveCampaign are designed as all-in-one tools that provide marketers with everything they need to run an email drip campaign. Many of these apps also offer a wide range of drip campaign templates to help you kickstart the building process.
With Zapier, you can connect your email marketing software to thousands of other apps. This way, you can automatically do things like add leads to the right list, keep track of your metrics, and easily manage your sales pipeline. For more ideas, check out these ways to automate your email drip campaign. Or get started with one of these premade workflows.
Subscribe new Facebook Lead Ad leads to a Mailchimp list
Create or update ActiveCampaign contacts for new form submissions in HubSpot
Update Google Sheets spreadsheets when MailerLite emails bounce
Zapier is the leader in workflow automation—integrating with thousands of apps from partners like Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Use interfaces, data tables, and logic to build secure, automated systems for your business-critical workflows across your organization's technology stack. Learn more.
Segment your audience and send personalized messages
There's nothing worse than getting hit with nonstop emails that don't apply to you whatsoever. By creating different email lists (or segments) for specific groups, you can create highly targeted email sequences, sending segments only relevant emails that appeal to their interests and needs.
You can also leverage AI for smart email segmentation. The AI will analyze data to identify patterns and behaviors that we might otherwise miss, allowing for more precise and effective segmentation. For instance, it can segment your audience based on actions like past purchase behavior, email engagement patterns, and website browsing history.
Place your main message above the fold
No matter how much you have to say, keep your email short. Emails that don't ask a lot of the reader are more successful than those that appear dense or require a lot of focus.
On that note, your emails should also lead with the most valuable and actionable information. If you place important information like discount codes and CTAs at the bottom or buried within dense text, readers will probably stop reading before they get to the parts that matter.
Keep your email simple and skimmable
Busy patterns and tons of bright colors are the visual equivalent of a wall of dense text—they tire your readers' eyes out. Stick to one or two colors and fonts, and apply text formatting to help guide the eye and make your emails easy to skim.
Analyze your campaigns and adjust as needed
Email marketing is an extremely time-intensive practice. When something's not working, you want to find out right away so you can stop doing it and adjust your strategy. Test and track these key email metrics so you can continually improve your drip campaign tactics:
Open rate. This is the percentage of emails your recipients actually open.
Bounce rate. This is the percentage of emails that are undeliverable, usually because the address is invalid or doesn't exist.
Click-through rate. This measures how many people click on the links within your emails.
10 drip email campaign examples to inspire your next campaign
There are endless types of drip campaigns you can create. Here are common categories and examples of each that you can use to nurture your leads and get them ready to turn into paying customers.
Welcome email campaign
Welcome emails act as an immediate intro to some of your company's top content and as a primer on using your product. They're also a nice way to say, "Hey there, glad you're here!"
Take this welcome email from the founder of an at-home fitness app, Le Sweat. It covers all the bases: a short welcome message, links for getting started and popular workouts, and an eye-catching CTA above the fold.
You don't have to wait for a lead to become a paying customer or subscriber to kick off a welcome email drip campaign, either.
Here's an example from the tinned fish company, Fishwife. I've never purchased my own supply, but I've done plenty of online perusing. This welcome email does a great job of gently reeling me in with a warm welcome and enticing me to follow through on an order by offering a discount code.
Abandoned cart campaign
Ditching a fully loaded shopping cart is unfortunately pretty common, especially in the eCommerce space. It's probably why most eCommerce platforms offer abandoned cart features, including the ability to automatically send abandoned cart email campaigns. They help you re-engage those on-the-fence customers and encourage them to finally hit "checkout."
This abandoned cart email from Graza—an olive oil company—nails it: it shows me the items I left in my cart and includes a persuasive CTA ("Finish shopping"). It even tries to sweeten the deal with a code for free shipping.
The high-protein cereal company Magic Spoon doesn't just remind you that there are items sitting in your cart—it includes an animated GIF of a cursor clicking the CTA, which has the effect of making you want to mirror that action.
If your budget doesn't stretch far enough to include fancy animations or highly produced visuals, that's ok. Plain text emails can be just as effective, if you know how to craft a compelling message.
Here's another abandoned cart email from Magic Spoon—a plain text one. Even if you only skim the cleverly-written message, the CTA ("grab that pack you've been eyeing") still stands out and reminds you to complete the purchase.
You don't even need to sell physical products for an abandoned cart drip campaign to work. With an app, for example, you can use a specific sales page—perhaps one that breaks down the benefits of your pro-level plan compared to the basic one—as a trigger, and send some follow-up info to anyone who visits that page but doesn't convert.
Recommendations campaign
Product recommendation emails target user segments based on which aspects of your service they use most, or what kinds of content or products they're most interested in. These kinds of drips allow you to get other products in front of your customers to cross-sell or upsell them.
For example, I've bought products from the apparel company Knix before, but never their bras. This email is trying to change that by suggesting a list of top-rated bras I might be interested in.
If that wasn't enough, the email continues with brief customer reviews of specific, top-rated bras and CTAs to shop each style.
Many of the email drip campaign examples I've highlighted so far focus on the contents inside the email. But don't sleep on the subject line—it's just as important to craft an engaging subject line that piques your reader's interest and compels them to click.
Parachute does this really well with their subject line: "Oooooh, what about these?" I'd already bought a duvet cover from them, so it made perfect sense for them to recommend more bedding options that match.
Re-engagement campaign
If a customer hasn't made a purchase, interacted with the company, or opened emails in a while, a re-engagement (or win-back) drip campaign is a good way to connect with them. These types of drips invite recipients to return to your site and look around. They'll also often include incentives, like a discounted rate, for coming back.
Here's one from the fitness membership app ClassPass. Along with a preview of some of the classes I could be getting sweaty in if I rejoined the app, there's also an offer for a heavily discounted first-month rate.
Instead of extending a discounted rate to use its service, the parking app, ParkMobile, offers a $30 Nift gift card to disengaged customers as a pre-emptive thank you for choosing to use ParkMobile again in the future.
Confirmation campaign
Confirmation emails are simple messages sent immediately post-purchase to thank your customer and assure them that their order went through successfully.
Check out this email from the swimwear company Left on Friday. There are no flashy graphics—just a simple email with an order summary, a link to view my order history, and a CTA inviting me to continue browsing their site.
This confirmation email from eSIM provider Airalo takes it a step further and includes a link to a step-by-step guide on how to install their product, along with a video demo on the process. Including these increases the likelihood that I'll use their product and, if satisfied, will return for more eSIMs.
Email drip campaign examples: FAQs
If you ask me, creating an effective email drip campaign is more art than science. And by art, I mean there are no hard-and-fast rules—but there are plenty of helpful guidelines. With that said, here are answers to commonly asked questions about drip campaigns.
How many emails should be in a drip campaign?
How many emails are in your drip campaign depends on the type of campaign, your audience, and the industry you're in.
My best suggestion is to experiment, evaluate, and tweak.
For example, let's say you create an abandoned cart drip campaign. Perhaps you start with four or five emails, with the first two sent within one to two days of the cart being abandoned, and another two or three sent four days to two weeks later. Run A/B tests to identify the most effective timing for each type of campaign and adjust accordingly.
How long should a drip campaign last?
Similar to the previous answer, this one depends. A lot of companies send drip emails over the course of several weeks or months, depending on the campaign. The key is to not draw it out too much. You can send only so many welcome or re-engagement emails with discounts for a "limited time" before the term loses all meaning.
How can I measure the success of my drip campaigns?
No matter what kind of drip campaign you set up—one for customer acquisition, engagement, or education—it's important to first identify your campaign goals and the metrics you'll use to measure success. Here are some key email metrics to start with.
At the end of the day, be sure that whatever you measure loops back to the "why" of your campaign.
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This article was originally published by Hannah Herman in February 2024. The most recent update was in September 2024.
