Drip campaigns

What a drip campaign is

A drip campaign is a series of emails sent automatically at set intervals after something happens: a signup, a download, a purchase, a booking, a date passing. It is written once, wired into your sending platform once, and then it runs. Each person moves through it from their own starting point, so on any given Tuesday one subscriber is on email two and another is on email six.

The value is that it keeps working after you stop thinking about it. The risk is the same thing. A series nobody has reread since it was built will send a price that changed last year to a customer who bought last month, and go on doing it until somebody notices.

It is not a newsletter, which is written fresh, dated, and sent to everyone at once. It is also not the platform work. I write the emails, the triggers and the exit rules and hand them over; wiring them up is a separate job and I will say so before you buy.

Which of the three you need

Three services here are automated series, and the difference is the trigger and the reader.

A welcome sequence is triggered by joining the list. It is short, runs over about a fortnight, and is for somebody who does not know you yet.

A lead nurture sequence is triggered by buying interest and is aimed at a person weighing a decision. It answers objections in a deliberate order.

A drip campaign is the wider category: any automated series on a timer or a trigger. Onboarding a customer over their first ninety days. A course delivered a lesson a week. A renewal reminder starting sixty days out. If your series fits neither of the other two, this is the one.

You do not need a drip campaign for a one-off announcement or a single follow-up. One email is one email, and paying for a series to send it is waste.

What I write

• The trigger. Exactly what starts the series, stated so precisely that the person building it cannot interpret it two ways.
• The emails. Each written to stand alone, because in a long series most people will not have read the previous one. No email begins by referring to an email they may not remember.
• The timing. The gap before each send, set against how long the decision actually takes. A ninety-day onboarding series and a seven-day trial series are not the same shape.
• The exit rules. What stops the series: buying, replying, booking, unsubscribing, or reaching the end. A customer who has already paid should never receive email four asking them to consider paying.
• The branch, if there is one. Where the series should split based on something you actually know about the reader. One branch, at most two. Every branch doubles what has to be maintained.

What you get

The emails. One document each, with subject line candidates, preview text, body copy with links in place, the single action asked for, and the send delay. Written to read as well in eighteen months as in a fortnight, which means no season, price or named member of staff except in a clearly marked line you can update.

The flow document. One page, in plain language, showing the trigger, each email in order with its delay, every exit condition and any branch. It is what the person configuring the platform works from, and what you read later when you need to remember what the thing does.

A review date and a maintenance note. A date, written into the flow document, by which somebody should reread the whole series, and a short list of the lines most likely to go out of date. This is the part everybody skips and the reason old drip campaigns embarrass businesses.

Notes on consent and leaving. Where the unsubscribe sits, and how consent recorded at signup carries through an automated series, in plain terms and within Canadian anti-spam law. Not legal advice: where a question is genuinely legal, I will say so and point you to a lawyer.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Calgary company that sells and services commercial coffee machines has an eight-email series built four years ago by a departed marketing coordinator. Nobody has opened the folder since. It quotes a service plan that was discontinued, names a technician who left in the first year, and sends its fourth email, offering a machine, to customers who bought one the week before.

The rebuild splits it in two. The first series is triggered by installation and runs over ninety days: descaling, water hardness, what the warning light means, when to book the first service. Six emails, no selling, exit if a service is booked. The second is triggered by a service falling due: three emails over three weeks, one booking link, exit the moment a booking is made. Prices sit in one marked line per email, so an update takes ten minutes, and the flow document carries a review date every twelve months.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What happens that should start a series, what you want it to achieve, and what is running now. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The number of series, emails in each, branches, and revision rounds, agreed before anything starts.
3. Inputs. Read access to your sending platform, whatever is already automated, and the prices and terms the series may refer to. Three to five working days.
4. The flow document first. Approved before any email is written, because changing the shape later means rewriting everything downstream of the change.
5. The emails, then handover. Delivered in one batch, usually two to three weeks after the flow is signed off, with one round of revisions and a call with whoever builds it.

What it costs

A drip campaign is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because a four-email series with one trigger and a twenty-email series with three branches are not comparable jobs. Building it in your platform is quoted separately. The pricing page shows the four ways of working, and the number is fixed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

A working drip campaign usually exposes the two ends of it. At the front, people join and get nothing for a fortnight, which is the first five emails. At the back, a share of the list stops opening anything at all, and the job there is waking a quiet list without damaging deliverability. Businesses that find themselves guessing at the order of the emails often want a map of what a buyer actually reads and when before building the next series. This piece of work is complete on its own, and nothing further is assumed.