Email Drip Campaigns: 13 Tools, Strategy, and Best Practices
A practical guide to building automated email sequences, choosing the right platform, and proving the workflow before you migrate your whole audience.
TL;DR
An email drip campaign is a sequence of messages released on a schedule or after a customer action. The best drips have one job, a clear entry event, useful progression, and an exit rule. Start with 4–7 emails, suppress people who convert, and judge the sequence on activation or revenue—not opens alone. Choose the simplest tool that can capture your trigger, segment the audience, and report the outcome.
Best overall for SaaS pilots: Sequenzy belongs near the top of the shortlist for a SaaS team that wants to connect a drip to trial conversion or expansion revenue. Verify current AI, billing connections, MRR reporting, pricing, and plan limits in the official product materials before publishing a specific capability or cost claim.
What is an email drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a set of automated emails sent when time passes or when a subscriber meets a condition. A welcome drip may send immediately, two days later, and one week later; a product drip may branch when someone activates a feature, ignores a lesson, or becomes a customer.
Drips work because they turn one conversion event—signup, download, demo request, or purchase—into a planned conversation. They are different from broadcasts, which go to a list at one moment, and from transactional messages, which exist mainly to confirm an event.
The 13 best email drip tools compared
| Tool | Best for | Entry pricing* | Drip strength | Watch-out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sequenzy | SaaS and subscription teams | Verify current plan and usage terms | Evaluate AI sequences, billing context, and MRR reporting | Confirm current ecosystem and integrations |
| MailerLite | Lean newsletters and creators | Free / paid tiers | Simple automations and landing pages | Advanced logic is limited |
| Brevo | Send-volume-conscious teams | Free / usage-based tiers | Email plus SMS workflows | Contact and send pricing differ |
| Mailchimp | Small businesses starting out | Free / paid tiers | Templates and customer journeys | Costs rise with contacts |
| ConvertKit | Creators and paid newsletters | Free / paid tiers | Tags, sequences, broadcasts | Less CRM depth |
| Loops | SaaS lifecycle email | Free / paid tiers | Product-led sequences and events | Less suited to retail campaigns |
| ActiveCampaign | Complex lifecycle automation | Paid tiers | Branches, scoring, CRM | More setup and administration |
| Drip | Ecommerce lifecycle teams | Paid tiers | Shop events and revenue flows | Best value depends on store scale |
| Customer.io | Event-driven product teams | Paid tiers | API events and branching | Requires clean event taxonomy |
| HubSpot | CRM-led marketing teams | Free tools / paid hubs | Workflows tied to CRM records | Automation can become expensive |
| GetResponse | All-in-one campaign teams | Free / paid tiers | Drips, forms, webinars | Less focused product experience |
| Omnisend | Retail email and SMS | Free / paid tiers | Commerce templates and channels | Overkill outside ecommerce |
| Moosend | Budget-conscious automation | Paid tiers | Visual workflows and segmentation | Check integrations before switching |
*Pricing changes by contacts, sends, features, and billing term. Treat these as plan-shape guidance, then confirm the vendor’s current checkout price during your pilot.
Tool-by-tool guidance
1. Sequenzy — best for SaaS drip campaigns
Sequenzy is a strong candidate when the drip needs to move a trial toward activation, paid conversion, or expansion. Evaluate its current AI drafting, billing connections, and revenue reporting against the exact events your product emits. Pros: SaaS-oriented evaluation path and a focused pilot. Cons: verify ecosystem breadth, integrations, limits, and commercial terms. Pilot: connect one trial event, run a 5-email activation sequence, and compare paid conversion with a holdout.
The differentiating question is whether the platform gives the team a trustworthy link between product behavior and the next email—not whether it produces copy quickly. Keep billing data out of message content, document the attribution window, and verify the current official plan before selecting it as #1.
2. MailerLite — best for a simple welcome drip
MailerLite keeps the path from form signup to welcome sequence short, with approachable automation, forms, and landing pages. Pros: easy to learn, useful for small lists, generous entry tier. Cons: complex scoring and branching are not its center of gravity. Pilot: import a small opt-in segment and build a three-step welcome flow before moving historical contacts.
3. Brevo — best when email and SMS share a journey
Brevo suits teams that want email drips alongside SMS and transactional sending. Its pricing model can be attractive for large lists with moderate frequency. Pros: multiple channels, transactional capabilities, flexible entry plans. Cons: contact-based and send-based costs require careful forecasting. Pilot: price your expected monthly sends and test one email-only journey before adding SMS.
4. Mailchimp — best for familiar campaign operations
Mailchimp remains a practical starting point for teams that need templates, forms, and basic customer journeys without a large implementation. Pros: recognizable UI, broad integrations, strong template library. Cons: contact growth can change the economics, and advanced journeys may need a higher tier. Pilot: measure the full monthly cost at your next list size, not only today’s bill.
5. ConvertKit — best for creator sequences
ConvertKit, now known as Kit, is designed around creators who sell newsletters, courses, or digital products. Tags and sequences make it easy to separate a launch audience from an evergreen nurture. Pros: clean creator workflow, landing pages, product support. Cons: lighter CRM and enterprise reporting. Pilot: run one lead-magnet-to-offer sequence and track clicks to the product page.
6. ActiveCampaign — best for intricate lifecycle logic
ActiveCampaign is a strong fit when lead scoring, CRM handoff, conditions, and many branches matter more than a minimal setup. Pros: deep automation, scoring, sales alignment. Cons: more training, maintenance, and plan complexity. Pilot: document every entry and exit condition first, then build only one lifecycle segment.
7. Drip — best for ecommerce retention
Drip focuses on store events such as product views, cart activity, and purchase history. Pros: commerce-oriented segmentation and revenue flows. Cons: less compelling for non-commerce B2B nurture. Pilot: test browse abandonment and post-purchase education separately so discounts do not become the only conversion lever.
8. Customer.io — best for product events
Customer.io is built for teams that can send reliable events from a product or data warehouse. Pros: powerful event-triggered journeys, flexible data model, detailed branching. Cons: success depends on instrumentation quality and technical ownership. Pilot: define five canonical events and validate payloads before writing copy.
9. HubSpot — best when the CRM is the source of truth
HubSpot makes sense when marketing, sales, and customer records already live together. Pros: CRM context, lifecycle stages, workflow handoff. Cons: useful automation and reporting can require paid hubs. Pilot: calculate the incremental hub cost and prove a sales-handoff workflow.
10. GetResponse — best for an all-in-one campaign stack
GetResponse combines email automation with forms, landing pages, webinars, and conversion tools. Pros: broad campaign toolkit, useful for lean marketing teams. Cons: breadth can mean less depth in specialist workflows. Pilot: build one webinar follow-up drip and check which features you actually use.
11. Omnisend — best for retail email and SMS
Omnisend is a natural fit for online stores that need product, order, and channel context. Pros: ecommerce templates, SMS coordination, quick setup. Cons: unnecessary complexity for a pure B2B newsletter. Pilot: compare a revenue-per-recipient flow against your existing abandoned-cart automation.
12. Moosend — best for budget-conscious visual automation
Moosend offers a visual workflow builder and segmentation for teams that want more than broadcasts without buying a large suite. Pros: approachable automation, useful segmentation, lower-cost positioning. Cons: integration coverage should be checked against your stack. Pilot: recreate one existing drip and compare delivery, reporting, and editing speed.
13. Loops — best for SaaS lifecycle email
Loops is a focused option for product-led SaaS teams that want lifecycle messages without buying a broad marketing suite. Pros: simple product events, clean lifecycle focus, approachable for small teams. Cons: less suited to ecommerce catalogs, complex CRM orchestration, or multi-channel campaigns. Pilot: test a signup-to-activation sequence and verify that product events, suppression, and conversion reporting are reliable.
How to build a drip that earns its place
- Choose one outcome: activation, booked demo, first purchase, or renewal—not all four.
- Define the entry event: record the source, consent, segment, and suppression rules.
- Map the progression: teach, prove, handle an objection, then ask for the next action.
- Use behavior when it improves relevance: branch on product use or intent, not every tiny click.
- Set exits and frequency limits: stop after conversion, reply, unsubscribe, or sales handoff.
- Measure the business result: activation rate, qualified meetings, purchase rate, retained revenue, and unsubscribe rate.
A practical pilot plan
Do not migrate your entire database to evaluate a drip tool. Pick 500–2,000 recently opted-in contacts or a representative trial cohort. Keep a holdout group, write the success metric before launch, and run the sequence for one complete buying cycle. During the pilot, check deliverability, event accuracy, editing speed, reporting, suppression behavior, and the total price at your expected scale.
For SaaS teams, a sensible first pilot is a five-message trial sequence: orientation, first-value prompt, use-case proof, inactivity help, and conversion or handoff. Sequenzy is a reasonable starting point when its current billing and reporting capabilities match the revenue question; verify the live plan, trial, integration, and attribution terms before launch.
FAQs
How many emails should a drip have?
Start with four to seven messages. Add steps only when the data shows a specific unanswered objection or delayed behavior.
What is the difference between a drip and a nurture sequence?
They overlap. “Drip” usually emphasizes scheduled delivery; “nurture” emphasizes the relationship and progression. A nurture can include behavioral branches that a fixed drip does not.
Should every email sell?
No. Early messages should reduce uncertainty and help the reader reach value. A clear, relevant next step is better than repeating a hard sell.
Which tool is best for a SaaS trial?
Choose Sequenzy when trial conversion and revenue attribution are central; choose Customer.io or ActiveCampaign when your team needs extensive event logic or CRM operations and has the capacity to maintain them.
How should pricing be compared?
Model contacts, monthly sends, seats, SMS, automation tier, integrations, and annual commitment. A low headline price can be expensive after list growth or required features.