DripCampaign help
DripCampaign sends a series of emails to your contacts automatically, one every few days, without you doing anything after the setup. Think of it as a sprinkler on a timer: you set up the pipes once and it waters on schedule.
Start here: the setup, in order
Each step needs the one before it. If a button seems to do nothing, you are almost always missing an earlier step.
- Create your business. Top of the screen, + New business. Name it and give it a short id (letters and numbers, like
acme). - Connect your Resend account (Settings tab). This is what actually delivers the mail, and nothing sends without it. The four sub-steps are listed on that tab: sign up, verify your domain, paste an API key, add a webhook. Press Check connection until it says your domain is verified.
- Fill in the rest of Settings: from name, from email (on the domain you just verified), your postal address (required by law, it goes in every footer), time zone and what hour of the day to send.
- Create a campaign (Sequence tab, + New campaign). A campaign is one series of emails, for example "New customer welcome".
- Add your emails (Sequence tab, + Add email). This button does nothing until a campaign exists, because there is nowhere to put the email. Each one you add opens the Email tab so you can write it.
- Write each email (Email tab). Pick a layout, write the headline and message, set how many days to wait after the previous email, then Save & preview. Use Send me a test to see it in your own inbox before anyone else does.
- Import your contacts (Contacts tab). Paste from a spreadsheet or choose a file, pick the campaign, and everyone starts at email 1.
- Watch it run (Status tab). It shows who is waiting for which email, what has gone out, and anything that failed.
The five tabs
- Sequence: the list of emails in order, and how many days to wait between each one. Drag rows to reorder. Add or delete emails any time.
- Email: write one email. Pick a layout, fill in the headline, message and button, then Save & preview. Send me a test mails it to you so you can see it in a real inbox.
- Contacts: paste or upload your list. Pick a campaign and everyone starts at email 1. Pause, remove or unsubscribe any single person.
- Status: who is waiting for which email, what has gone out, and anything that needs attention.
- Settings: your from name, from address, postal address, time zone, the hour emails go out, weekend skipping and a daily limit.
How the timing works
When someone is added to a campaign they get email 1 at the next send time (today at your send hour, or straight away if that hour has passed). Each later email goes out the set number of days after the one before it, at your send hour, in your time zone. If "Skip weekends" is on, anything landing on a Saturday or Sunday moves to Monday.
The scheduler checks every 15 minutes, so "9 AM" means somewhere between 9:00 and 9:15.
Changing a sequence that is already running
People already in the campaign keep their place. If you delete the email they were waiting for, they get the next one instead. If you add an email at the end, everyone who has not finished will get it. Editing the words of an email changes what people who have not received it yet will get.
Merge fields
Write %firstname% in the subject or message and each person sees their own name. %lastname% and %email% work too, and so does any other column from your contact list, for example %company%.
Where the email actually comes from
DripCampaign does not send email itself. It hands each message to your own Resend account (resend.com), a delivery service, which sends it from your own domain. That means you control the sender address, your reputation is yours alone, and you pay Resend directly (free up to 3,000 emails a month, then $20 a month for 50,000).
One-time setup, on the Settings tab: create the Resend account, verify your domain there (it gives you a few DNS records to add where your domain is registered), create an API key and paste it in, and add a webhook pointing at the address shown on the Settings tab so bounces and complaints come back to us. Use Check connection to confirm everything is green.
The rules (please read)
- Only email people who agreed to hear from you. Bought or scraped lists get the whole system blocked, for everyone.
- Every email automatically gets your postal address and an unsubscribe link at the bottom. That is the law, and the big mail providers require it. Fill in the address on the Settings tab before you send anything.
- When someone unsubscribes, bounces or reports spam, they are switched off for good and skipped on any future import.
Something looks wrong?
Check the Status tab first: the "Needs attention" table shows any send that failed and why. If sending stopped completely, look at Settings for the pause switch, and at the scheduler line at the top of Status to see when it last ran.
A button does nothing when I click it
- + Add email is greyed out until you have a campaign. Click + New campaign first.
- Send me a test and any real sending need your Resend API key in Settings. Without it you get an error message naming what is missing.
- Import needs a header row plus at least one contact, and the header must include an email column.
Nobody is getting email
- Is the business paused? Bottom of Settings. A yellow banner appears across the top when it is.
- Is the campaign paused? The Sequence tab has a Pause/Resume button next to the campaign name.
- Is your domain verified in Resend? Press Check connection on Settings. An unverified domain means Resend refuses every message, and those people get paused with the reason shown on Status.
- Is anything actually due? The Status tab shows the next send date per email. Nothing goes out before then.