Key takeaways
- A drip campaign is a fixed series of emails released over time.
- A trigger starts it and a clear exit rule ends it.
- Each email should earn the next one by being useful on its own.
How does a drip campaign work
A drip campaign works by starting a series of emails when a trigger happens, sending each one after a set wait and stopping when the reader takes the action you wanted or reaches the end. The four parts to plan are the trigger, the emails, the gaps between them and the exit.
Branches make it smarter. If someone clicks the pricing link in email two, they can leave the education series and get a note from a seller instead.
What is an example of a drip campaign
An example of a drip campaign is a short welcome series for people who download a guide. Take an invented expense software company whose guide covers travel policy for small firms. The series might run like this.
- Straight away: the guide, plus one sentence on who it is for.
- A few days later: a checklist that puts the guide's main idea into practice.
- About a week later: how a firm of their size usually handles approvals, with a template.
- Later still: an invitation to see the product, sent only to people who opened or clicked earlier emails.
How is a drip campaign different from a sales sequence
A drip campaign is usually marketing email sent to many people on the same path, while a sales sequence is a set of personal touches a seller sends to named prospects, often across email, phone and LinkedIn. Drip emails run on their own once set up. A sales sequence usually includes steps a person carries out, such as a call or a tailored note.
How do you keep drip emails from annoying people
You keep drip emails from annoying people by making every message useful on its own, spacing them sensibly and stopping the moment someone responds or loses interest. A reader who replies to a drip email should never get the next automated one.
Keep the series short and review it every few months. Remove any email that gets unsubscribes and no clicks, and make the opt-out easy to find.
Where Pebbles Ai fits
- CapabilityOutreach contentOutreach content plans multi-touch email and LinkedIn campaigns of up to seven touches and saves email drafts in your Gmail or Outlook mailbox. It writes the content; it does not schedule or send an automated series.
- FoundationCompany IntelThe brand voice in Company Intel (conviction, audience, message and expression) keeps every email in a series in one consistent voice, with your offer described the same way each time.
Common questions
Why is it called drip marketing?
Because the emails arrive a little at a time, like drips, rather than all at once. The idea is steady contact that builds familiarity over weeks.
How many emails should a drip campaign have?
As many as you have something useful to say and no more. Start with three to five and add more only when you see readers engaging with the later ones.
Is a drip campaign the same as a nurture campaign?
They overlap. Nurture describes the goal of helping a buyer towards readiness; drip describes the method of releasing emails over time. Most nurture campaigns use drip emails.
About this page. Written by the Pebbles Ai team for people who run sales, marketing and growth. Last updated .
