How to Set Up Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Drip Schedules
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Understanding the Three Main Cadences
Every drip campaign runs on a schedule that determines the gap between messages. The three most common cadences each serve different purposes and work better for certain campaign types.
Daily schedules deliver a message every day or every other day. These work well for short, intensive sequences like a five day welcome series, a course delivery drip, or an abandoned cart recovery where urgency matters. Daily drips need to be short, usually three to seven messages, because contacts will disengage quickly if they receive daily messages for weeks.
Weekly schedules send one message per week, which is the most common cadence for ongoing nurture campaigns. A weekly rhythm gives contacts time to read, absorb, and act on each message before the next one arrives. Lead nurture sequences, educational content series, and newsletter style drips all perform well on a weekly schedule.
Monthly schedules are the lightest touch. These work for long term relationship maintenance like renewal reminders, quarterly check ins, or loyalty campaigns. Monthly drips can run for a year or more without wearing out the contact, making them ideal for products with long purchase cycles.
Setting Up a Daily Drip Schedule
Daily drips are best for sequences where each message builds on the previous one and the contact needs to receive them close together. Here is how to configure a daily schedule on the platform.
Open the Email Broadcast or SMS Broadcast app and create a new drip sequence. Give it a descriptive name like "5 Day Welcome Series" so you can identify it later.
Choose what starts the drip. For a welcome sequence this would be a new subscriber signup. For an abandoned cart recovery it would be a cart abandonment webhook. The trigger determines when message one goes out.
Set the delay between messages to one day (24 hours). If you want a slightly less aggressive pace, use every other day (48 hours). Each message in the sequence gets its own delay value, so message two sends one day after message one, message three sends one day after message two, and so on.
Even with daily intervals, you want messages arriving at a consistent time. Set your preferred send hour, typically mid-morning (9 to 10 AM) for email or early afternoon (1 to 2 PM) for SMS. The platform uses the timing settings you configure to hold messages until the right window.
Daily drips should be short. Set a maximum of three to seven messages, and add a conversion goal that stops the sequence early if the contact takes the desired action, such as making a purchase or booking a call.
Setting Up a Weekly Drip Schedule
Weekly drips are the workhorse of email and SMS marketing. They provide consistent touchpoints without overwhelming your audience, and they can run for months.
Map out at least four to eight messages before you start. Each weekly message should deliver standalone value, since contacts may miss one or two. A lead nurture drip might alternate between educational content, case studies, and soft calls to action.
In your drip configuration, set the delay between each message to seven days. This ensures exactly one week passes between touchpoints. Some platforms let you specify a day of the week instead, which is more predictable for the recipient.
Choose the same day each week for delivery. Tuesday through Thursday tend to perform best for business email. For SMS, avoid Mondays (people are catching up from the weekend) and Fridays (people are checking out). Test different days with your specific audience using A/B testing to find the best performer.
Unlike daily drips where messages build on each other, weekly messages should make sense even if the contact skipped the previous one. Reference earlier topics with links back rather than assuming the contact remembers the details.
After your weekly drip ends, decide what happens next. Move contacts to a monthly check in drip, add them to your regular broadcast list, or route them to a different segment based on their engagement during the sequence.
Setting Up a Monthly Drip Schedule
Monthly drips keep you in front of contacts who are not ready to buy yet but should not be forgotten. These sequences work best for high value products with long decision cycles, annual renewals, or ongoing relationship maintenance.
Monthly drips need a clear reason to exist. Common use cases include renewal reminders starting three months before expiration, annual loyalty rewards, quarterly product updates, or long cycle nurture for expensive purchases like software, real estate, or professional services.
Configure a 30 day delay between messages. This creates an approximately monthly cadence. For drips tied to specific calendar dates, like a first of the month update, you may need to use the platform's workflow automation to schedule based on calendar dates rather than relative intervals.
With only one touch per month, every message must deliver significant value. Monthly messages should feel like a helpful update, not a sales pitch. Share industry insights, product tips they have not tried, or personalized recommendations based on their contact data.
Even monthly messages can wear out a contact over time. Track open rates and click rates across the sequence. If a contact has not opened the last three monthly messages, consider pausing them or moving them to a re-engagement campaign before continuing.
Combining Cadences in One Sequence
The most effective drip campaigns do not stick to a single cadence from start to finish. They start aggressive and taper off as the sequence progresses, matching the natural drop in attention that happens after the initial trigger event.
A common hybrid pattern looks like this: send three messages in the first week (daily), then switch to weekly for the next four weeks, then transition to monthly for ongoing nurture. This front loads the most important content while the contact is most engaged, then gradually reduces frequency to avoid fatigue.
To set this up on the platform, you configure different delay values for each message in the sequence. Message two might have a one day delay, message three a two day delay, message four a seven day delay, and message ten a 30 day delay. Each message controls its own timing independent of the others.
You can also use chain commands to move contacts between sequences at specific points. For example, after the daily welcome series completes, a workflow trigger automatically enrolls the contact in the weekly nurture drip.
Time of Day and Timezone Considerations
The schedule cadence determines how many days between messages, but the send hour determines exactly when during that day the message goes out. Both matter for open rates and engagement.
For email drips, the best send times vary by audience. B2B contacts tend to open email between 9 and 11 AM on weekdays. B2C contacts are more responsive in the evening between 6 and 9 PM. SMS messages should always be sent during business hours, typically between 10 AM and 7 PM in the contact's local timezone, to comply with regulations and avoid annoying people late at night.
If your contact list spans multiple timezones, the platform can hold messages and deliver them during the appropriate window for each contact. This requires having timezone data on your contact records, which you can collect at signup or infer from area codes for SMS contacts. See the timing guide for detailed instructions on configuring timezone aware delivery.
Consistency matters more than finding the perfect time. Contacts who expect a Tuesday morning email will be more likely to look for it and open it when it arrives predictably. Pick a time, stick with it, and only change it if your performance data shows a clear reason to adjust.
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