8 email drip campaign examples and best practices

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Omnisend research shows that automated drip campaigns perform two times better than promotional campaigns. That proves that delivering the right message at the right time to the right person really pays off.

Rather than crudely blasting people with random and irrelevant sales pitches, email marketing uses subtle, sophisticated drip campaigns to nurture leads, re-engage lost customers, upsell, promote regular communication with their communities, and more. 

In this post:

• What is a drip campaign?
• How many emails should be in a drip campaign?
• Drip email software
• Email drip campaign best practices
• Drip campaign examples
• Key takeaways

What is a drip campaign?

A drip email campaign automatically sends a series of pre-written emails to subscribers over time. These emails are “dripped” out based on triggers and predetermined schedules to nurture leads, maintain engagement, and drive conversions. 

Drip emails can nudge, remind, and engage subscribers with interesting and relevant content based on their behavior and preferences.

The advantage drip email campaigns have is they are automated, letting you send out a sequence of emails for every stage of your customer journey. Because drip emails are automated, they are also consistent. For example, every person who places an order gets the same confirmation email at the same interval after making their purchase.

How many emails should be in a drip campaign?

There is no limit, but typically a drip campaign can have between four and eleven emails sent at least a few days apart. 

The best number depends on the type of the campaign, though. For example, a lead nurturing campaign can include multiple weekly emails, while a welcome campaign can have a longer delay between the first and the second message.

Here’s a table showing examples of drip email frequency and quantity:

Email drip campaign	Time period	Number of emails	Goals
Welcome series	One week	3-5	Introduce new subscribers to product offerings
Abandoned cart	Three days	2-3	Encourage completion of abandoned purchases
Win-back emails	Three months	6-8	Re-engage inactive or dormant customers
Seasonal promotions	Two weeks	3-4	Highlight special offers during holidays or events
Loyalty program	Monthly	4-5	Reward loyal customers with exclusive discounts

Here’s an example of a drip welcome campaign consisting of three emails:

Drip email software

Effective drip campaigns need a good marketing automation platform. There are many excellent tools in the market to choose from, each offering a variety of unique features and pricing structures.

• Omnisend. A popular email drip platform for ecommerce with a free plan. Gives you everything you need: campaign templates, premade automation workflows, drag-and-drop editor, and analytics for improvement.
• Klaviyo. Email marketing software that lets you create complex customer journeys and targeted campaigns. Key engagement metrics and analytics will also allow to improve the personalization of automated campaigns.
• Mailchimp. An email marketing automation tool for marketing agencies and big websites. Lets you design advanced drip email automations and evaluate their performance with A/B testing.

Email drip campaign best practices

1. Define your drip campaign audience

Drip campaign recipients can be easily defined when a simple trigger like a new sign-up or birthday occurs. 

However, the more conditions you create, the more complex things become. Custom drip campaigns require a careful review of the rules that you set to ensure that there are no conflicts that can lead to confusion. 

For example, if a customer has registered in your store but hasn’t filled in their profile, you’ll have to make sure that the automated reminder to do so won’t be sent at the same time as your welcome series. Sending too many emails at once can overwhelm and irritate a new customer, and potentially lessen their engagement.

2. Send targeted messages for more relevance

Pay attention to your content. Don’t send random, impersonal emails to customers that you are familiar with.

Think it over: what is relevant at this particular moment for them? Your email copywriting should address your customers’ current needs.

You might send:

• A welcome email series
• Seasonal promotions 
• Abandoned cart messages

If it’s a cart abandonment email, try to convince your prospect to seal the deal right away. Think of what issues they may have encountered: Perhaps the shipping was too expensive? Or maybe your returns policy wasn’t clearly laid out? 

There are two important CTAs in the following Amundsen email – return to checkout, targeting abandoned carts, and shop now, linking to a product category relevant to browsing behavior:

3. Map out your campaign

Before launching your drip campaign, consider the following points:

• Identify your overall goal 
• Determine your ‘triggers’
• Decide how many emails you will send in your drip email sequence
• Decide how you will personalize your content
• Know when to remove customers from a drip email sequence

Include all emails, SMS, and other messages in your plan to avoid overlapping. Nothing is worse than getting a discount coupon for the product you bought last week!

4. Keep the main message above the fold

Our goal with each drip email is to convey a message that convinces our subscribers to take action. So, we need to ensure that our subscribers will not miss it.

That’s why we need to have the main message above the fold.

Like here, the headline from Baking Steel mentions the value for the recipient (get $20 off) at the top of the message:

5. Make drip emails easy to skim

Most email recipients don’t actually read the entire email. Instead, they skim the content searching for something they like. For us, it means that writing long emails might not make a lot of sense — many subscribers will skim no matter how informative the content is.

To ensure that more subscribers read our emails, make them easy to skim. This means structuring them in a way that allows them to take in as much information as possible quickly.

To make skimmable emails, use:

• Short paragraphs
• Headlines and subheadlines
• Bullet point lists
• Images and gifs
• A lot of white space

Let’s see an example of a simple and skimmable email.

This drip email campaign from Stitch Fix contains a headline, a subheading, a short paragraph, and visuals. Together, these elements help get the message across easily.

6. Evaluate and adjust

Drip campaigns are very convenient and time-saving, but don’t forget to follow their results and adjust your messages and targeting to improve them. 

Use email marketing metrics such as open rates, click rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates to measure engagement over time. 

For ecommerce stores, measuring conversation rates and email ROI is crucial for transactional drip messages like abandoned carts and seasonal promotions. 

Usually, marketers follow the conversion performance of their campaigns in Google Analytics. UTM parameters help to do that.

In Omnisend, marketers can follow the orders and revenue generated from each campaign separately. This is convenient, especially when comparing overall performance with separate campaigns.

Improving your drip campaign emails is a never-ending task if you’re looking to achieve consistently great results. Only by testing different texts, imagery, and additional information will you find what best works for your customers.

7. Consider these “must-have” campaigns

Ecommerce stores should consider these drip email campaigns:

• Welcome campaign: Send cheerful and informative welcome emails to new subscribers immediately after they sign up to kick off your relationship positively
• Browse abandonment campaign: Target customers who have browsed your products but haven’t added anything to their cart
• Abandoned cart campaign: With 7 out of 10 ecommerce visitors abandoning their carts, gently reminding customers about their forgotten items can help recover up to 33.9% of those orders
• Win-back campaign: Reengage with inactive customers by sending targeted messages encouraging them to return and purchase
• Order confirmation campaign: After customers complete a purchase, provide them with order details, shipping information, and any other relevant updates
• Seasonal campaign: Create a series of emails highlighting your seasonal offers, discounts, and product recommendations to capitalize on holiday shopping trends

The chart below shows how various drip campaigns perform in terms of customer engagement:

Drip campaign examples

Let’s take a look at some classic and popular drip campaign examples that are easy to create and serve a range of specific business purposes:

1. Welcome series

Island Olive Oil’s thoughtfully designed welcome series helps establish a boutique, customer-centric experience for its online audience. 

This brand effectively differentiates itself from larger competitors by incorporating educational content, product introductions, and brand storytelling. 

This strategic onboarding lays the foundation for building loyal relationships, and it has achieved fantastic results: a 998% greater click rate and 3,274% higher RPE over promotional campaigns, and an impressive 11% conversion rate.

The welcome series generates 39% of the company’s total email marketing revenue despite comprising only 1.22% of the total email sends.

Here’s an example of one of Island Olive Oil’s welcome emails:

2. Order confirmation

An order confirmation drip campaign is one of the most critical workflows for an ecommerce company. Think about it — how would you feel if you didn’t get an order confirmation email after a purchase online?

Amundsen Sports recognized the importance of a compelling order confirmation email and leveraged Omnisend’s customization capabilities to create impactful automation. 

Its order confirmation email accounts for just 2.4% of their email send but generates 16.7% of its Omnisend-attributed yearly revenue. 

Remarkably, nearly one in three customers who click on the order confirmation email make another purchase, resulting in a 32% conversion rate. The RPE for this automation is also 9.5 times higher than that of its promotional emails. 

Amundsen Sports attributes the success to the simplicity and resonance of its messaging, which eschews additional product recommendations in favor of a clean, brand-focused design that encourages customers to revisit the site. 

Check out more order confirmation email examples from the likes of DoorDash, Crocs, and Puma, where clear branding delivers results. 

See how the workflow can look below:

3. Abandoned cart email

Abandoned cart drip campaigns aim to recover lost revenue, but the most successful ones do more than remind people to complete their purchases. 

To’ak Chocolate recognized the need to go beyond a simple abandoned cart email to engage its luxury audience. It transitioned to a multi-message series featuring content on shipping details, customer reviews, and chocolate pairing suggestions.

The impact of this customized abandoned cart series is remarkable: a 43.9% open rate, 44% conversion rate, and an RPE of $3.64, which is 2,195% higher than its promotional campaigns. 

This single drip email series recovered significant lost revenue and deepened customer connections by providing valuable information. 

Here’s an example of one of its drip emails:

4. Re-activation emails

This email, or series of emails, should be sent when your subscriber hasn’t been active for some time. It mostly depends on the buying cycle.

For an ecommerce company that sells apparel, books, or small electronic devices, we suggest sending the first re-activation email within 90 days of inactivity. If it’s a series of emails, repeat them every week after.

Kerrits uses reactivation emails to re-engage dormant customers, offering incentives like discounts or highlighting its latest products. 

These automated messages have delivered $2.86 RPE, a remarkable 676% increase over promotional campaigns. 

Beyond the impressive financial impact, the reactivation workflow helps Kerrits rekindle relationships with valuable customers, contributing 23% of the brand’s total email sales despite accounting for less than 4% of its email sends.

5. Birthday email

If you want to send birthday emails, don’t forget to include an extra field on your sign-up forms. Without this data, you won’t be able to send birthday emails.

Our best practice shows that these emails are effective when containing an appealing text plus a small discount for the next purchase.

See example below:

6. Lead nurturing series

As the name suggests, lead nurturing emails are created to build relationships with subscribers with helpful content, personalized bonuses, and other incentives. A great lead nurturing drip email engages and inspires recipients to go to your company’s website.

A typical lead nurturing series includes emails with blog content, customer reviews, special offers, and sales notifications.

For example, this email from The 5TH offers VIP access to a 24-hour sale:

The 24-hour time frame for the VIP sale is mentioned twice to emphasize urgency, while consistent branding helps reinforce The 5TH’s identity and builds trust with the recipient.

7. Educational series

Educational emails around free shipping, return policies, and customer service information can overcome obstacles to conversion. Messages that discuss your brand’s value propositions and social policies can also help to build relationships.

Your educational drip series could contain how-to instructions, videos, guides, and advice on solving typical customer problems, or reveal new statistics from your research.

Here’s an example of an educational email drip campaign from Beardbrand, which describes how to dye gray hairs:

8. Onboarding email series

Onboarding emails go beyond the initial welcome message to familiarize users with your product or service. These messages can introduce core features, highlight relevant content, and provide step-by-step guidance to help users get the most out of the offering. 

Here’s an example of Omnisend’s onboarding email providing information on what the recipient’s abandoned cart workflow will do for them:

This email also provides a clear CTA button to start recovering carts, letting the recipient jump straight into Omnisend from the message.

Key takeaways

Drip campaigns generate two to three times higher performance than bulk emails. If combining three and more marketing channels, this number boosts even higher to a 250% purchase rate on average.

Welcome, cart abandonment, customer reactivation drip email systems are those that should be launched first. They are easy to implement and are highly effective.

Small details matter. A simple notification about free shipping might help seal the deal.

Always double-check if your copywriting is in line with an email trigger and overall brand communication.

When considering drip email tools, pay attention to the number of channels offered. The transition from email channel to omnichannel marketing will be easier that way.