Top 7 Email Drip Campaign Examples

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Email drip campaigns are a series of automated emails sent by businesses to get leads to complete some kind of action. Campaign styles can vary depending on why the emails are being sent, how many emails are in the campaign, and how often they’re sent to leads. When creating an email drip campaign, it can be helpful to reference quality examples from real businesses to understand the most effective style, copy, visuals, and cadence.

The email drip campaigns styles we highlight below are:

• Welcome Series: Introduce your company, brand, and product or service. Read more.
• Order Confirmation: Verify details of a recent purchase made by the lead. Read more.
• Engagement: Establish a cadence of sending interesting content to leads. Read more.
• Re-Engagement: Call attention back to your business with enticing offers. Read more.
• Abandoned Cart: Remind and encourage leads to complete a purchase. Read more.
• Education Series: Offer valuable content about your solution or industry. Read more.
• Event Series: Notify leads of an upcoming event hosted by your business. Read more.

Welcome Series Drip Campaign Example

Welcome series drip campaigns are extremely common because they’re sent right after a lead submits their email address in exchange for a free asset you offer on your site, also known as a lead magnet. The campaign typically consists of broad information about the product or service and company as a whole. If a lead has shown enough interest to subscribe to your newsletter, immediately send welcome emails to capitalize on having their attention. 

Goodreads sends a welcome series campaign to users who’ve recently created an account on their website. In order, their subject lines read, “Welcome to Goodreads, {Recipient Name}”, “Book giveaways picked just for you”, and “Your 2023 book recommendations.” Now that the recipient has created an account, their welcome series campaign’s goal is to get the reader back onto the site by showing them personalized picks and recommendations.

Goodreads’ drip campaign shows new account members around with the very first email saying, “Goodreads is here to make your reading life better.” Following that initial welcome message, they immediately begin curating specific recommendations and displaying the book’s cover art. Similar to what Goodreads has done, create a welcome series campaign that feels hyper personalized to your recipient with strong calls-to-action (CTAs) back to your site.

Order Confirmation Drip Campaign Example

Order confirmation campaigns are sent after a lead completes a purchase from your business, typically through your website. These emails summarize the lead’s order with product details, payment information, and potentially shipment information. They’re meant to be informative about the transaction while also pointing the recipient back to your website.

Walgreens sends an automated drip campaign when customers complete an online photo order. The first is a confirmation that the order has been received with a summary of the purchase plus pickup details. The next is a notification that the order has been processed and is ready for pickup. Then a day later, Walgreens sends the same email notification of the order being ready with the subject line “Reminder: Your Walgreens Photo order is ready.”

Walgreens’ order confirmation campaign makes an effort to reiterate all the details of the order and give the recipient information about the location for pickup, including address and store hours. They also have a strong cadence for the reminder emails that are sent out. If your business sends order confirmation notifications, establish a consistent cadence for the release of the emails like Walgreens does with their daily reminders.

Engagement Drip Campaign Example

Engagement email drip campaigns are meant to keep a steady flow of conversation and awareness with your customers or clients. When you have a customer who’s purchased from your business recently, regularly, or are considered “VIP” members of your business, these automated emails attempt to enhance and maintain that relationship through lead nurturing.

Planet Fitness releases an engagement campaign to current members of their gym. Respectively, their subject lines are “No Time? No Problem!”, “Celebrating members like you! PerksFest starts NOW!”, and “Want a free month and a workout buddy?” They also use emojis in their subject lines. These emails present all of Planet Fitness’s offerings beyond just a physical gym, such as their guided workout videos, mobile app, partnerships, and occasional discounts.

Planet Fitness keeps a steady pace of engagement emails sent to leads that offer a variety of content, information, and discounts. They keep their branding consistent throughout all emails with their brand colors, logos, and fun fonts and icons. When creating an engagement drip campaign, make sure your visual branding is harmonious across the emails as demonstrated here — this’ll ensure your business is easily identifiable, especially if they’re sent on a regular cadence.

Re-Engagement Drip Campaign Example

Re-engagement emails are drip campaigns that specifically target leads who haven’t engaged with your businesses in a while. Maybe they’re regular customers who haven’t completed a purchase recently, maybe they haven’t clicked on any triggers, or even opened any marketing emails in some time. Re-engagement campaigns are automated to try and catch those leads’ attention.

1-800 Contacts has a re-engagement campaign to get the attention of previous customers who’ve ordered contacts from them at least once. The goal is to get those previous customers to reorder contacts through their website. The subject lines for all re-engagement emails directly address the receipt by their name reading “{Recipient Name}, you still need contacts.” and “{Recipient Name}, ready for new contacts?”

These drip campaign emails use witty and sarcastic copy like asking if the recipient has gotten lasik eye surgery or some alternative, to excuse them from not reordering contacts recently. They also lean into the convenience of their ordering process by saying they’re ready for you to complete the transaction and that it can be easily crossed off your to-do list. When re-engaging with your leads, spotlighting your value proposition is an easy way to stand out in their inbox.

Abandoned Cart Drip Campaign Example

Abandoned cart drip campaigns are triggered when a lead has added items to their virtual cart on your ecommerce site but hasn’t completed a transaction to purchase those items. It’s to remind them of their existing cart and to push them to finish the transaction by either creating a sense of urgency or even offering a limited-time discount. 

AT&T has an automated email campaign that’s triggered when leads leave their website after adding a product or service to their cart but before they complete the purchase of it. Their subject lines are “{Recipient Name}, you left something in your cart” along with branded headers and a CTA button.

The headers AT&T use in this drip campaign are polite and easy to read and their CTA button reads “Complete my purchase”, which prompts the recipient to pick up right where they left off. They also present a high value incentive, offering a $100 reward card when an order is placed online, further prompting the lead to go ahead and complete the order for their own benefit. This is an effective hack for you to create a sense of urgency for the recipient to complete the purchase.

Education Drip Campaign Example

Education drip campaigns offer valuable content to your email list recipients that usually has to do with the industry you’re in. The educational content can be in the form of live or prerecorded webinars, blogs, workshops, or even online courses. These campaigns help build your business's credibility and industry expertise.

monday.com has an education drip campaign that offers a variety of content for their leads to better understand, navigate, and optimize their experience with their product. The first email of their campaign offers a free online course on how to build effective workflows in their software. The other emails in their campaign are about product feature updates with links to blogs where they talk about their new integrations, updates, and more.

monday.com’s campaign does a great job of keeping its customers in mind when deciding what content would be most valuable to them. Since their customers are ongoing users of their product, offering online courses and feature updates helps optimize their experience. When making your own education campaign, think about your lead and the style of content they’d realistically consider using, like short-form video tutorials instead of lengthy articles.

Event Series Drip Campaign Example

Event series drip campaigns advertise an upcoming event hosted or sponsored by your business. It can be a networking event, conference, fundraiser, or pop-up shop. The campaign series’ purpose is to drive enrollment, sign ups, or RSVPs by promoting what the event and experience consists of and the value it might bring to the lead.

Pawmetto Lifeline has a drip campaign for their upcoming fundraising event, Fur Ball. The following three emails were sent in order with the subject lines, “Save the Date”, “You’re Invited”, and then “GALA TICKET FLASH SALE”. Each email contains the same flier theme and design with specific details about the event itself.

This campaign is broken into three phases, first notifying the recipient of the event, inviting them to purchase tickets, and then a flash sale to encourage immediate ticket purchases. They give recipients the option to still donate to the cause without RSVPing to the event, including images of the shelter animals and the tax-deductible incentive. Consider offering alternative experiences for recipients who know they can’t attend your event but still want to engage with your business.

Bottom Line: Email Drip Campaign Examples

Engaging with your audience via email drip campaigns is an effective way to build trust by presenting leads with relevant information on an appropriate cadence. With the help of witty copy and compelling visuals, drip campaigns can be as enjoyable as they are valuable. Next, check out our complete guide to email nurturing, where we list the steps to setting up an email nurturing campaign, how to write nurturing emails, plus examples and tips.