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How to Set Up an SMS Drip Campaign

A drip campaign, called an autoresponder series in most SMS software, sends a sequence of messages to each subscriber automatically, starting the day they join. A welcome text today, a tip three days from now, an offer next week, all without anyone touching a dashboard. This guide sets one up in SMS Campaign Engine, the free open source engine behind our SMS 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 three weeks ago might be on message five. Every subscriber moves through the same sequence at their own pace.

Drips are where SMS earns its keep for onboarding, lead nurture, and re-engagement, because the work is done once. You write the sequence, wire up enrollment, and every future subscriber gets the full treatment automatically. The general strategy is covered in our SMS drip campaign article, 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: messages only go out during sensible hours, quiet hours are respected, and you can set skip days, like never sending on Sundays.

Match the rhythm to the relationship. Onboarding sequences work daily or every other day while attention is high. Nurture sequences breathe better weekly. Re-engagement and long-term keep-warm sequences can run monthly. When in doubt, space it out, because opt-out rates climb fast when texts feel relentless.

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, a discount code, a booking link, a first tip. Later messages each need to stand on their own: one idea, one call to action, opt-out language included.

Personalization placeholders work in every step: ##FNAME## for the first name, and tracked links as https://yourdomain.com/click.php/##SUBID## so every click is counted per subscriber and per step. That per-step click data is what tells you later which messages in the sequence pull their weight.

Step 3: Enroll Subscribers

Three ways in. Wire your signup form to the responder/create API endpoint so new leads 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.

When the subscriber's local time of day allows it, the first message goes out immediately on enrollment, which is exactly what you want for a signup confirmation. Enrollments can also carry a feed tag for tracking the source, and can exclude specific carriers if your registration limits volume on one network. Field-by-field details are in the API documentation.

Step 4: Test With Your Own Number

Enroll yourself first. Before pointing real traffic at the series, enroll your own phone. Confirm the welcome message arrives promptly, the name placeholder fills correctly, the tracked link redirects where it should, and a STOP reply actually stops the series.

STOP handling is automatic: a subscriber who replies STOP is unsubscribed and suppressed immediately, mid-series or not. You can also remove someone from one series without suppressing them entirely using responder/unsub, useful when a lead converts and should move from the nurture series to a customer series instead.

Step 5: Measure and Refine

Judge each step, not just the series. Watch clicks and opt-outs per message. A step with high opt-outs is telling you something, usually that it came too soon, said too little, or asked too much. Rewrite or drop it. A step with strong clicks is a candidate to move earlier in the sequence.

Combine drips with your regular broadcasts carefully. A subscriber in an active daily onboarding series probably should not also receive your weekly promotional blast in the same window. Keeping audiences in separate lists and feeds makes that easy to control.

Consent still rules. A drip series is marketing, and every enrollment needs the same opt-in consent as any other text. The signup form that feeds responder/create should say plainly that the person is agreeing to receive a series of texts. Our consent rules guide has the wording details.

SMS 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 SMS Broadcast app.