What is a drip campaign?

A drip campaign is a series of emails sent on a fixed schedule, no matter what the recipient does. Day 1, Day 3, Day 7. The clock ticks, the emails send. Think of it like a course syllabus. Lesson 1 on Monday, Lesson 2 on Wednesday, Lesson 3 on Friday. Whether you did the homework or not, the next lesson arrives.

The defining feature: drip campaigns are time-based, not behavior-based. If you open the first email and click every link, you still get the second email on Day 3. If you never open anything, you still get the second email on Day 3. The schedule is the schedule.

This is different from automated workflows, which send based on what you do. A workflow might send email 2 only if you clicked email 1, or send a different email 3 if you opened but didn't click. Drips don't branch. They march forward on the calendar.

Drip campaigns work well for onboarding new users ("Here's feature 1, here's feature 2, here's feature 3"), educating subscribers over time (a 5-part course on email authentication, one lesson per week), or nurturing trial users through a predictable timeline ("Day 1: Welcome, Day 3: Here's what you can do, Day 7: Your trial ends soon").

Most modern ESPs call these "drip campaigns" or "email series." Mailchimp, Brevo, ActiveCampaign, and ConvertKit all support them. You set the schedule once, add people to the series, and the platform handles the rest.

The main limitation: drips can't adapt. If someone converts halfway through, they keep getting emails until you manually remove them. If someone ghosts you after email 1, they still get emails 2 through 5. That's why most senders now use behavior-triggered workflows for anything complex. But for simple time-based nurturing, drips are still the easiest tool to set up.

If you're building your first automated email series, start with a drip. Pick 3 to 5 emails, space them 2 to 3 days apart, and see what happens. You can always graduate to workflows later when you need branching logic.