Stop a Drip When a User Replies to a Drip Email

What is a Drip Campaign?

Drip campaign is a series of pre-written emails that are sent to subscribers based on an action (such as signup for newsletter or abandoning cart).

Unlike newsletters or product launch emails that are sent to everyone on the list, at the same time, drip campaigns are sent to people who take a specific action. It is usually more than one email in the series. The idea is to not bombard them with content or sales emails but gently nudge them to take various actions. Each email in a drip campaign has one or two engagement points.

Here are some examples of subscriber actions that can have drip campaigns associated with them:

• Signing up for your newsletters
• Placing an order
• Signing up for an event
• Registering for a webinar
• Abandoning a item in their shopping cart
• Leaving a review on your website
• Not placing an order for a while

4 Best Practices To Create A Drip Campaign

Take care of the customer journey

Drip campaigns should be sent only when relevant to the stage the customer is at in your email list. If someone just joined your list, you shouldn't bombard them with a drip about discounts available. Rather you should focus on the 'welcome drip' that informs them about your brand, your story or how to get value for free from the resources you have available.

Similarly, for discount emails, send them only when you have convinced them of the value of your products. Sending them too soon in their journey will seem pushy and your emails will be ignored.

Test the optimal number of emails

There is no magic number to how many emails should be sent in a drip. It can be just one - e.g. one welcome email or it can be multiple onboarding emails.

It depends on the kind of service or product you have. If it is too new or complex for people to understand, a longer welcome email series will help. If it is something as obvious as stationery, then you don't need to send many emails.

Usually, for DTC products a shorter welcome series but a longer abandon cart drip campaign works best. For Saas products, it's good to have longer welcome & abandon cart drip campaigns.

Don't rush or be too late

The timing of your emails is as important as the number of emails.

If a welcome email is sent after 5 days of subscription, does it make sense? Not really. Similarly, if a review email is sent right when the order is placed or the morning of the day when it is supposed to be delivered, it doesn't make sense.

So consider the gap between action taken and time of email to see if your drip campaign strategy is efficient or not.

Automate drip campaigns

This might seem obvious, but don't rely on doing the drip campaigns manually, even if you have a small email list. Choose an email marketing software that gives you the ability to automate your drip campaigns. It should do everything from recognising the actions of subscribers and triggering personalise emails.

This will save you time and effort. Not only that, it will avoid any hassles or delays… or mistakes!

3 Examples Of a Good Drip Email Campaign

Let's look at 3 different examples of emails in a drip campaign:

1) Headspace Plus subscription onboarding

This is the email we got when we bought headspace plus subscription. As you can see it won't be sent to everyone and anyone. It's only for people who buy the subscription.

It has a clear CTA that nudges you to open the app and start using it.

There were other emails in the series onboarding us to various features of the app.

2) YETI review email

We got this email 2 days after a mug from YETI got delivered. Notice that they waited for 2 days before sending this email. It's not too late or too early. So the timing of your drip email is also important.

3) Grammarly abandoned cart offer

This is the last email in a drip campaign we received after abandoning the Grammarly Premium subscription in the cart.

A Step-By-Step Guide to Stopping a Drip when a User replies to a Drip Email.

SendX allows you to control your drip sequences, and stop drips based on how a user responds to it. In this short guide, we will be looking at stopping a drip when a user replies to a drip email using an automation.

• Make sure you have a drip sequence ready. If you need help with that, click here. Make sure Track Replies is turned on, to allow SendX to use replies as triggers. You can read more about that here.
• Create a New Automation by going to Automations screen from the left side menu.
• Set a Name for the automation.

• Under Trigger, make sure you have SendX selected in the field on the left hand side, and Replied to a drip on the right field.
• From the drop down below, select the desired drip name.

• Under action, keep SendX as it is on the left field, and select Removed from a drip from the dropdown. Select the name of the drip you want to remove the user from (in most cases, it's the same drip sequence as the one in the trigger).

• Click Submit Automation to save this automation.

And that's it! Now any user who replies to an email in the selected drip email will now be removed from the drip.