How to Launch an Email Drip Campaign

Feathr's Email Drip Campaign is a powerful marketing tool, allowing you to compose a series of emails over time to a group of recipients, automatically triggered by activity, person field change, or date. An email drip ensures that, with a single launched campaign, your targeted recipients receive multiple emails in a series that you design and strategize. This can lead to improved engagement with your emails and improved efficiency in your marketing. Read on to learn how to launch a Drip Campaign.

Note: Drip Campaigns are available for Feathr's Essential, Advanced, and Enterprise service levels only.

Quick Start Guide:

1. Log in to Feathr.
2. Navigate to your Marketing Menu and click + Create and choose Drip.
3. Assign the campaign a Project and give it a name.
4. For the first step, select a trigger type, define the trigger, choose a send schedule, and select a template.
5. Repeat this process for each step you would like in the drip campaign.
6. Define your exclusions (optional).
7. Choose or create a campaign goal (optional).
8. Review the details and publish your campaign.

Getting Started

To begin working on a Drip Campaign, log in to your Feathr account, then either navigate to the Project where your campaign will live, or create a new campaign from the marketing menu using the + Create button at the top right. Choose Drip Campaign:

Then give your campaign a name:

Builder

The first step of an email drip campaign is to use Feathr's builder to plan out the emails in the drip. Laying out emails in the builder requires you, for the first email, to:

• Name the email.
• Select a trigger type.
• Define the trigger behavior.
• Select a send schedule, delay, and cadence.
• Attach a template.

Each additional email beyond the first requires the same information as above, except the trigger behavior is slightly different, and depends on how your recipients interacted with the previous (or first) email. More on that below.

To begin building your first email, select Edit step in the builder.

Next, you will choose the trigger type for your recipients' initial enrollment in the Drip campaign:

Trigger Types:

Activity happened triggers define an audience member through the interactions a person performs with your web pages or sent emails. There are many activity triggers to choose from, but some common activity triggers are a specific URL visit or whether an audience member donated to your organization. To learn out more about accurately tracking donations, visit our article about conversion tracking here.

Field changed triggers define an audience member through a change that occurs on the Person Attribute data of a person in Feathr. These can include native Feathr fields and custom fields you've created. When attribute data points are updated on a person record in Feathr, that change can trigger the email to be sent to that audience member.

Date Triggered events define an audience member by referencing the data from a chosen Date field on a person record. These can include native Feathr fields and custom fields you've created. For example, you can set up a trigger to fire when 90 days have passed from their "Last Donation Date," so the audience member can receive a timely donation ask.

Trigger

Defining the behavior you would like to use to trigger your email to send uses Feathr's filtering tools. Selecting a trigger type (documented above) limits the filtering options to just those that apply to your selection. Trigger types cannot be combined within a single email, but they can be combined within a series of emails in a Drip campaign. 

Use the filtering tools in the Trigger step to identify the trigger activity you would like to use to send the first email in the drip. You can add more than one trigger, and be aware of the and/or logic dropdown at the top of the trigger step.

Send Schedule

Next, you will select a send schedule for your first email.

Like with an Auto send campaign, in this step you choose when the email gets sent once it is triggered. You can choose to send it immediately upon the trigger activity happening, or delay it by a set time period.

You may also set the cadence of your triggered send by selecting if the email should only send to someone upon their first trigger activity, or every time they perform the activity.

Template

Once you've chosen the triggers and the send schedule, you will attach your email template to the Drip email. We recommend creating your email templates prior to building your Drip campaign. Learn about designing email templates here. 

When you've completed these steps for your first email, select Apply. That will save your first email and you may continue adding more email steps to your Drip Campaign in the builder.

Adding More Steps

To attach additional emails to your Drip Campaign, select Add step at the bottom of the builder, then once the new step appears, select Edit step to build it out.

How Additional Emails Work

Any emails you add as steps beyond the first step in a Drip Campaign work exactly like the first email, with the exception of the targeting rules. Because it is necessary for an audience member to have received the first email in a Drip Campaign before they get additional emails, the targeting rules for emails 2+ rely on interactions with the previous email.

As seen above, when choosing the targeting rule for additional emails, your options are:

• Send to everyone who received the previous email, regardless of how/if they interacted with it.
• Send only to those who did not open the previous email.
• Send only to those who opened the previous email.
• Send only to those who opened the previous email, but didn't click on any links within it.

The targeting for additional emails in the drip also allows you to choose a delay time, like you did with the first email. 

Then you can attach your email template, choose a subject and add merge tags (optional), and continue these steps until you've reached your desired number of emails.

Exclusions, Goals, and Details

Once you have built out your desired number of emails in the drip, and the triggering and timing of each, the remaining steps (exclusions, goals, and details) are identical to Feathr's Auto Send campaign type. For more detailed instructions on these steps, read this article.

In the exclusions step, you can identify or create a group that will not receive emails in the Drip Campaign, even if they do satisfy the trigger rules.

You may also identify a goal or goals for your campaign. Read more about goals here.

Lastly, you will select the time and date window options for when and for how long your Drip Campaign will be active:

Once you have chosen the date window and agreed to the terms at the bottom of step 4, selecting Publish will launch your campaign live.

Reporting

With a Drip Campaign, you have all the same sophisticated reporting as every other Feathr email campaign, with the added bonus of cumulative reporting for all emails in the drip, plus individual reporting for each individual email in the drip.

To view your report, click the campaign name once it is published. You will automatically be taken to the cumulative report for all emails in the drip. Use the top navigation row on the report to select and view reports for each individual email in the drip.

For more information on reading and understanding email campaign reports, read this article.