How to Create a Drip Campaign

A drip campaign is a series of automated messages sent to a contact once they join a contact list. Using drip campaigns is a great way to save time, engage your contacts and or streamline information. If you want to provide your contacts with a series of pre-scheduled messages on a regular basis, then this is the perfect tool for you to use!

How To Get Started

Editing Your Campaign

Connecting your Drip Campaign to a Keyword (automatic opt-in)

Drip Campaign Use Case Example

Things you should know:

• A contact can only receive the series of messages once
• Once the contacts are added to your campaign, they will be unable to receive any new edits to your campaign.
• Drip campaigns can only run when credits are in the account. To make sure your drip campaigns aren't delayed, try adding the auto-refill to your account so you won't have to worry about your campaigns stopping.

How to get started:

Step 1 - Name Your Campaign

Click on Campaigns on the left panel, and then select Drip Campaigns in the drop down menu. Then click Create Campaign.

You will be brought to a page that allows you to create a campaign name. The campaign name will allow you to keep track of which campaigns are running from your EZ account. This name or title will not be available to the contact receiving your messages.

Step 2 - Connect Your Campaign to a Group

The group or contact list you connect to the campaign will be the one contacts must join in order to receive your series of text messages. This group must be empty to begin with to ensure that only new contacts added will receive the drip based on the timeline of messages you have created. Feel free to create a new empty group if the one you desire is not listed.

After you have added the new or empty group, you can add all contacts to that group that you would like to start receiving messages from your drip campaign. Or, you can connect your drip campaign to a keyword. Scroll down below to learn how to connect it to a keyword.

Step 3 - Create Your Messages

Write your message(s) and or add an image the same way you would on the New Message page. A preview of what your messages will look like will appear to the right.

Important note: Once your contacts have been subscribed to your drip campaign, edits you make to the campaign will not appear in their messages. They will still receive the original curated messages.

Step 4 - Schedule Your Messages

Select the hours/minutes or days in which you would like the contact to receive each message. 

Each message you create will begin from the time in which a contact joins the campaign. Depending on when they join, they will receive the first message of your series at the time established in your campaign depending on their time zone.

Please note that this same rule applies to each of the following messages that you create in your drip series. Therefore, your second, third or fourth message will occur on the days following the initial sign up to the drip campaign.

If you schedule a following message before the time established for prior messages in your campaign, then that message will automatically be rescheduled to occur earlier.

You can also click "Finish Later" to save a draft of the campaign if you aren't ready to initiate it.

Step 5 - Review Your Campaign

A preview of your messages will appear in the phone icon to the right of your screen. You will also see a description displaying when each message will send.

Click "Launch Campaign" when you are ready to activate the drip campaign. If you clicked "Finish Later" to save a draft, you can always go back to launch it when you are ready. 

When the campaign is launched, it will show the status, "Active" to the right of it on the drip campaign dashboard.

Editing Your Campaign

To edit a campaign, go to Campaigns > Drip Campaign. Then, click on the title of the campaign. You will see the option to Delete or Edit each message in the campaign or the title.

You can stop a campaign go to the drip campaign dashboard and click on the Stop button to the right of the campaign under the Actions column.

Connecting a Drip Campaign to a Keyword (automatic opt-in)

Keywords allow contacts to subscribe to your contact list automatically. So, if someone texts in a keyword that is connected to a drip campaign, then they will begin to receive messages from the drip campaign series automatically. If you would like to create a new keyword go to Keywords & Numbers and select Add Keyword.

To connect your keyword to a drip campaign:

• Go to Keywords & Numbers and click directly onto the keyword.
• Select Edit next to Connect to Groups

• Choose a group that has 0 contacts or select Create New Group. This group must be the same group that will connected to your drip campaign.

• Click Save

Now, go back to Campaigns > Drip Campaigns on the left panel. Then, assign the drip campaign to the same group that is connected to your keyword.

Adding Existing Contacts to a Drip Campaign

You may have contacts in your account that want to be a part of your campaign but didn't opt in with a keyword.

Simply go to Contacts and check the box next to the contact you would like to add to the campaign. Then, choose the Add To Group button. After that contact has been added to the group connected to the drip campaign, then they will begin to receive the series of messages for that campaign.

Tip: Learn more about adding contacts to groups

Drip Campaign Use Case Example:

Jan wants to send a series of texts for her pregnancy journey drip campaign to help guide new mothers through their term. She would like each new mother to sign up by texting in her keyword. The keyword would have to be connected to the same group that drip campaign is connected to. After they text in her keyword, they will receive an auto-reply saying that they have joined her text list.

In this example, she would like to send one message each month during a 9 month term. The first message in her campaign could be set to send 30 days after the contact has signed up. The second message could be scheduled to send 60 days after they sign up. The third message would be scheduled to go out after 90 days. This pattern would continue for each of the following messages since each one will go out according to the initial sign up to campaign.