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How to Set Up an Email Drip Campaign

A drip campaign, called an autoresponder series in most email software, sends a sequence of emails to each subscriber automatically, starting the day they join. A welcome email today, a case study in three days, an offer next week, all without anyone touching a dashboard. This guide sets one up in Email Campaign Engine, the free open source engine behind our Email Broadcast app, and everything here applies to the hosted version too.

Broadcasts vs Drips: The Difference

A broadcast is one message to many people at once, scheduled by you on a specific day. A drip series is many messages to one person, on a schedule relative to when that person enrolled. Someone who signs up today starts at message one today. Someone who signed up last month might be on message six. Every subscriber moves through the same sequence at their own pace.

Drip email consistently outperforms one-off broadcasts because it arrives at contextually relevant moments: right after signup, while interest is highest, and at a steady rhythm afterward. The strategy side is covered in our email drip campaign guide, this page is the hands-on setup.

Step 1: Create the Series

Pick the rhythm. In the admin area, create a series and choose daily, weekly, or monthly spacing between messages. The engine handles the clock from there: sends happen during sensible hours, quiet hours are respected, and you can set skip days.

Match the rhythm to the job. Onboarding and welcome sequences work daily or every other day for the first week. Educational nurture reads better weekly. Long-term keep-warm sequences can run monthly. Email tolerates more frequency than SMS, but the unsubscribe link is one click away, so earn each send.

Step 2: Write the Message Sequence

Message one is the handshake. It should arrive right after signup, confirm what the person subscribed to, and deliver whatever was promised, the discount, the download, the getting-started guide. Later messages each carry one idea and one call to action, with ##UNSUB## and your postal address in every single one.

Personalization placeholders work in every step: ##FNAME## for the first name, tracked links as https://yourdomain.com/click.php/##SUBID## so clicks are counted per subscriber and per step, and ##UNSUB## for the hosted one-click unsubscribe page. Per-step engagement data is what lets you improve the sequence later.

Step 3: Enroll Subscribers

Three ways in. Wire your signup form to the responder/create API endpoint so new subscribers enroll themselves the moment they submit. Bulk-enroll an existing file with responders/upload. Or add someone manually in the admin area. Each subscriber's schedule starts from their own enrollment moment.

During business hours, the first message goes out immediately on enrollment, which is what a welcome email should do, arriving while the signup is still fresh in the subscriber's mind is worth real engagement. Enrollments can carry a feed tag for source tracking, and can skip specific ISP groups if needed. Field-by-field details are in the API documentation.

Step 4: Test With Your Own Address

Enroll yourself first. Before pointing real traffic at the series, enroll your own email. Confirm the welcome message arrives promptly and lands in the inbox rather than spam, the name placeholder fills correctly, the tracked link redirects properly, and the unsubscribe link actually stops the series.

Unsubscribes are handled everywhere they can happen: the hosted unsubscribe page, the native unsubscribe button in mail clients via the List-Unsubscribe header, provider webhook events, and the API. All of them land the address on the suppression list. You can also move someone out of one series without suppressing them entirely using responder/unsub, useful when a lead converts and should switch sequences.

Step 5: Measure and Refine

Judge each step, not just the series. Watch opens, clicks, and unsubscribes per message. A step that sheds subscribers came too soon, said too little, or asked too much. A step with strong clicks is a candidate to move earlier. Small per-step improvements compound across every future subscriber, because the sequence runs forever.

Keep drips and broadcasts coordinated. A subscriber in a daily onboarding sequence should probably sit out your weekly promotional broadcast until the sequence finishes. Separate lists and feed tags make that easy to control.

Consent still rules. A drip series is commercial email, and every enrollment needs real opt-in consent. The signup form that feeds responder/create should say plainly that the person is agreeing to receive a series of emails, and CAN-SPAM requires the unsubscribe link and your postal address in every message of the sequence.

Email Campaign Engine is free and open source, with drip series built in. Set up your first sequence today.

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Prefer it managed? Contact our team about the hosted Email Broadcast app.