What Is a Drip Campaign?
TL;DR
A drip campaign is a series of pre-written emails released on a fixed schedule once a contact enters it, with no branching on recipient behaviour beyond stopping when they reply. The schedule is the whole logic, which is what separates it from a sequence that reacts to what the contact does.
How is a drip campaign different from a sequence?
A drip is time-driven: every contact receives the same messages in the same order, offset from the day they entered. A sequence can branch on behaviour, mix in calls and manual tasks, and change what comes next based on what the contact did, so the schedule is one input among several.
That makes the drip the simpler thing to build and the weaker thing to run outbound with. Cold outreach depends on reacting to replies, referrals and role changes, and a structure with no branch points cannot express any of that.
When is a drip campaign the right choice?
When the content order genuinely is fixed. Onboarding, an educational series, and a slow nurture track for contacts who are not in a buying cycle all have a natural sequence that does not depend on the reader doing anything, and a drip expresses that cleanly.
The failure case is using one where the reply should change the path. A drip that keeps delivering lesson three to someone who asked a question in reply to lesson two is answering a schedule rather than a person.
Frequently asked questions
No. A newsletter goes to the whole list on the same date, so everyone receives the same issue at the same time. A drip is relative to each contact, so two people who joined a month apart are receiving different messages on the same day.